The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle
Commentary on the Flux of Events
Rumors rumbling out of Wall Street (specifically out of Prudential Securities, as reported by the LA Times) portray Kmart in whirling around the drain (WAD) mode. Kmart stock fell 13 percent to a 30-year low yesterday. This is the second time in ten years that the Troy, Michigan based chain retailer has been in WAD mode. It escaped during the mid-90s with major expansions of some units into "superstores" and closures of others. For the next several years it rode the tsunami of the strong dollar / cheap import / credit card binge economy. Now that American citizens have binged themselves into insolvency, and with the US landscape grossly over-built for big box retail, the gruesome work-out begins.
A couple of curious details stand out. The LA Times story depicts Kmart as "dogged by dirty stores." Eeeuuuuwwww. . . . As if fighting commercial highway traffic for miles past all the fry pits and muffler shops and parking lagoons and other ghastly infrastructure of the world's highest standard of living to trudge the aisles of a poorly-lighted agoraphobia-inducing merchandise warehouse wasn't bad enough. The other detail was "poor merchandise control." Which means, I suppose, that Kmart doesn't have a clue what the fuck is coming in the back door and what's going out the front door -- which points to a very deep and troublesome aspect of the chain retail business, namely that the success of such an operation depends on the esprit-de-corps of miserably low-paid locals with no stake in the business beyond their pitiful weekly paychecks.
Well, the weakest members in the wooley rhinoceros herd may go down first, but the wooly rhino species of national chain retail is going down. WalMart may have a jazzier computer-driven inventory control system, but they employ the same kind of local peons that Kmart does, and calling them "associates" or "grand poobahs" will make little difference in the not-so-long run.. Big Box is going down to Chinatown. If you are a young person with a bent toward business, think about how you might work to reorganize commerce at a local and regional level. Your fellow citizens are going to need it, and you will get rich doing it.