OT. Sears Canada is done

[Dean Hoffman]

or

[Frank]

Don't know what keeps them alive here. They've been going down hill for years and keep making the same mistakes. Local K-Mart has lousy help. I knew the manager of their sporting goods department and they dropped his hours so they could reduce his benefits. He quit. You can't build a business treating your help like this.

[hubops]

Our modern retail environment is ruthless - and changing quickly. Some old models still survive, though ..

" .. employees often work their way up through the ranks, where the top executive makes no more than 10 times the lowest paid employee. According to data compiled by Bloomberg last year, it showed some U.S. companies have pay-gap ratios in the triple digits, sometimes exceeding 600. Lee Valley?s profit-sharing program ensures that all employees have a stake in the company, where 25 per cent of pre-tax profits are evenly split. After two years of employment, all staff, regardless of seniority or title receives the same equal share. "

John T.

[Frank]

Walmart seems to have this model. At local store, Walmart employees are all active and helpful.

I read in Forbes 500 that Walmart is the worlds largest company.

This is normally not true for retail companies but I recall the day that Sears was the largest of them and had more sales per square foot than any of them.

I have learned that companies are like people. They are born, grow up and eventually die.

[makolber]

and looking at the even bigger picture...

also civilizations

m

[rbowman]

You still have them? The Sears store in the mall here is being refitted for something else. They tore down K-Mart and build a Cabela's in its place.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Some years ago the rule at Ben & Jerry's was 7 times the lowest paid. When they were getting ready to expand the business they tried to hire a CEO to run the business but could not get one at those wages.

How do you mean equal? if the profit is $100 do 10 employees get $10 each?

US has some regulations on sharing and it is based on wages so a higher earner can get more. To determine each employee's allocation of the employer's contribution, you divide the employee's compensation (employee ?comp?) by the total comp. You then multiply each employee's fraction by the amount of the employer contribution. Using this method will get you each employee's share of the employer contribution.

[dpb]

That doesn't say, precisely what compensation rule they're using; what it says is that it is uniform for everybody after a two-year vesting period.

That's one of permissible rules but not the only one allowable under Code.

I'm not certain if a simple pro-rata by individual is allowed or not; it certainly would be beneficial to the lower-earning echelon of employees while the IRS rules are mostly designed to preclude skewing to the top so could see it being allowed (although I didn't try to look up the actual code language).

[Frank]

You are right. I've been concerned that we may be facing what my Roman ancestors faced with the barbarians at the gate.

[Frank]

Yes. K-Mart is in a mall about 2 miles from me. We shop in the mall for food and our drug store is there so I go to K-Mart there maybe once every month or two. Sears is in a larger mall about 5 miles away with a Penny's catercorner. I have not been in either for a couple of years and mall is like a ghost town. Walmart about a half mile from Sears is bustling and I go there nearly weekly.

[Dean Hoffman]

Cabelas is merging with Bass Pro. or

[hubops]

I always found Sears Canada to be top-notch - back in the 1970-80-90's .. product and service. In earlier days - Sears CraftsMan brand had no way of tracking their "lifetime guarantee" customers ... they suffered from abuse. I did it - free screwdriver .. not sure about bigger items. ... soon everyone else offered "Lifetime Warranty" regardless of quality - different game .. welcome China ! I say RIP Sears Canada ... thanks - I won't be returning my very old 10 inch 60 tooth carbide combination blade .. .. it's still in use. John T.

[dpb]

On 11-Oct-17 12:34 PM, dpb wrote: ...

Well, I got kinda' curious so I did some looking...IRS rules are, indeed, written with the express purpose to limit stacking to the higher-compensated employees so while it would likely be about the only such plan in existence there's nothing prohibiting it other than limits on not exceeding the employee's salary-related limit of how much is allowed as non-wage which is the lesser of 25% of compensation or $54,000 for 2017.

[Wade Garrett]

Actually, what happened was Bass Pro Shops acquired Cabelas for about four billion dollars.

Remains to be seen what BPS will do with the Cabelas stores going forward. Sometimes acquiring companies maintain the former competitor's brand identity, sometimes they kill it off.

[rbowman]

My ancestors were the barbarians at the gates... The Romans should have figured it out when Varus' legion went missing.

[rbowman]

The three attractants at the mall for me were Walden Books, B. Dalton, Radio Shack, and Sears, all long gone.

There was a motorcycle show there last spring and I was surprised to see most of the store fronts were occupied. They might not have been the same stores as the last time I was there but at least they're still filling the spaces.

[rbowman]

I grew up in Montgomery Ward territory and PowerCraft was the same deal. "Gee, this 1/2" ratchet just up and spit little pieces out (when I had that 6' piece of 1" pipe on it)." New one, no questions asked.

[rbowman]

So I heard. I'm not that fond of Cabelas. We've got a couple of local sporting goods stores that are as good or often better on prices. I didn't care for Cabelas plan to buy up a lot of acreage and turn it into hunt clubs for the wealthy either. That might fly in Texas but not here.

[rbowman]

Was it Gander Mountain that went down the toilet?

I was surprised when a friend's family went to Graceland and said BassPro is living in that pyramid now. At least they found something to do with it.

[Dean Hoffman]

Curiosity killed the cat but got me to snoop about this. Cabela's headquarters is in Sydney, NE. Sydney has about 7,000 people with about 2,000 working for Cabelas. On a similar note, Vise Grips were made in Dewitt, NE. The plant closed there a few years ago. Three hundred people worked there. Dewitt had about 570 people. It's hard to imagine places like Detroit where hundreds, maybe thousands, lost their jobs and the city shrinks.