Sears Stores’ Post

Paul Smith People: Meet Joe In this monthly series, we celebrate the fantastic individuals that make Paul Smith special. Each feature provides a glimpse into the lives, journeys, and experiences of our talented team. Joe has an interesting story to share about his time at Paul Smith. He joined us in Retail a while back and has since transitioned to new roles within the company, developing his skills along the way! Read below in his own words ⬇ #PaulSmith #ProjectManagement

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a hidden treasure in my desk - coins that brought back memories of a unique recognition program I developed. During my store visits, exceptional teams were awarded these coins for their outstanding work in customer care, merchandising, and overall excellence. These coins, when accumulated, could be redeemed for rewards like paid time off, gifts, and more. Those who received these coins were celebrated as "LINDA'S ROCK STARS" throughout our company, comprising over 500 locations and 2000 employees. Everyone wanted to get these and the stores would actually call me and ask me when I was coming to visit. And, if I forgot to hand them out, they asked! 💫 This recognition program fostered a culture of appreciation and excellence, boosting morale and driving performance. The average tenure of our team was 15 years. 15 YEARS. With all the struggles we have today just finding staff, think about what you are doing to retain them? Simple yet powerful recognition goes a long way. Who wouldn't want to be a Linda's (your name) Rock Star? 🏆 Recognition matters – it's a simple yet powerful way to motivate and inspire teams. Let's continue to celebrate and acknowledge the exceptional efforts of our colleagues. If you want more information or help building your recognition program, contact me today. 🌟 #EmployeeRecognition #Motivation #Appreciation #retention #employees #recruiting #hiring #training #retailers #TopRetailExpert International Retail Group, LLC Ron Thurston RETHINK Retail Liza AmlaniWendy GannawayMelissa MooreChris IgweTorben Valsted

Leaders who have made a lasting impact on my life and career, Day 5. Shannon O'Brien. When you were Macy's Rosedale's Operations/Asset Protection manager, you were my manager as I went into a new area for myself. Having always been on the customer facing side of retail, going into my new position as Fulfillment OMNI Lead I was little out of my comfort zone. Something I learned about you right away is how strong of a leader you are. You tell someone to do something and they do it. You gain the respect of everyone working with you through strong command, but by also getting in there and doing the work yourself. You are not afraid to get your hands dirty and work right there with us. You would be out picking customer orders to ship, packing with us, and then running out to catch a shoplifter. After COVID you and I were some of the first people back into the store while the store stayed closed and we were only fulfilling orders to ship out. You made everyday great to be back at work. You have a great understanding of people. You keep a tight ship, but a friendly open door environment where everyone feels comfortable and confident in going to you for anything. There is no one I have worked with who has such a perfect balance of having a stern hard hitting conversation and displaying empathy, respect, and a safe place for colleagues as you. I'll always remember when mine and the receiving managers titles were changing from "Lead" to "Captain" and you ordered us each a captain hat to wear with our new titles 😂 You helped lead the store through so much change and you did it without it ever missing a beat. I admire you as a leader and as a human. Thank you, Shannon, for displaying strong integrity in everything you do. Thank you for leading through change. Thank you for being an amazing leader! #leadership #growth #career #motivation #inspiration

I get asked alot of times on what made me successful in running my businesses. My answer was simple. Rule #1: Take care of your people. If you take care of your people, your people will take care of you! Rule #2: Take care of your customers. If you take care of your customers, your customers will take care of you!! It's not rocket science! But so many people and companies get caught up in projects or the numbers and sometimes forget about these two critical things. If you always focus on these 2 things, everything else will fall into place. I promise! 😉 Because if you take care of your people then you build a culture where your people love to come to work at. Where they view each other as family. Where it is a TEAM TEAM TEAM mentality. Which the customer experience is the recipient of getting a positive more wonderful experience. Because they see people who truly care about them and all pitching in to take care of them. Plus, this leads to people wanting to join this "team" and be a part of this winning family oriented culture. I can testify to this as well as many of my past associates or customers. I am not saying that we were perfect. No. But we strove for perfection. And we had very little to no turnover. Extremely high promotions from within the program. Many who went from part-timers to full-timers to supervisors to upper management. And I have had a handful that became store managers (mostly women). Over the last 10 years, while many businesses struggled to hire, we were blessed to always have a strong base and a waiting list of hires. Typically only replacing my part-timers from high school and/or college after they finished school and went away. Hiring was never an issue. Thus, culture matters! And at the same time, I was also very blessed by God to also have successful year after year in sales. A result of taking care of our people! Anyone who knows me knows those are my 2 biggest passions. Because I firmly believe in being an advocate for my people and my customers, always! 😉

Jeez, it's been a while. A lot has happened since I last posted. Some up's, some down's and a lot of change. Q4 has finally ended and as we're entering Q1 I am leveling up in my career. I would like to share some notes my leader has expected of me since I became a team leader two years ago. There is a lot of company jargon in it, but basically the expectation was to manage my area of a $100M store in a popular Queens location. (Not many stores make this much, so it is considered very high volume) A lot of growing pains happened here. I had to manage two deliveries, one from warehouse and one from an extra backroom in another location (offsite is very uncommon). I also had to manage my team! I like to believe my strongest attribute is relationship building and that has helped me out a lot with finishing many tasks and creating future leaders. Four months into my new role, I ended up moving to Virginia Beach to take on probably the biggest challenge of my career. Turning around a store with red metrics. Two other team leaders were joining me in the transfer from other states. And apparently turnover of team leaders was above double digits. Yikes, right? I wasn't sure what I was getting into until I arrived. Unorganization, messy management ( they ended up quitting), misdirection from district leadership (eventually was fired). A lot of pain, sweat and tears came from this experience. The store wasn't very busy because the shelves weren't being filled. So, of course that lead to poor NPS metrics. Then came Q1 of 2023. A brand new store manager who understood the store situation of emotional pains. The culture was a mess. I was a mess from the experience of my former boss. I won't get into the details. What has happened, happened. We took the new process step-by-step and one of them included my strongest attribute - relationship building. Store culture was one of the highest priorities in fixing the store's metrics. Taking the time to ask someone how they are doing and what I could do to help is something I take pride in. I am very much a people person first whether it's a customer, friend, strangers. As culture grew, so did the store. Red metrics turned to yellow. Yellow to red. Red to yellow. And then one day over the Summer/early Fall we finally did it. We turned the store around to a green metric store. (Finally off the company naughty list lol). Process consistent, NPS was positive, culture was glowing! In the midst of all this, I only managed a small portion(but technically toughest/tedious) of the store. Today, the leaders had a meeting about news I knew about already (I'm home today taking a mental day). But with official announcements placed in, I will solely be taking over the entire store metric operations! This means doing more of what I like; digging into data, numbers and problem solving. I am very excited for this new role that will be added to my repertoire of already built skills. LI said stop typing so Ill end it here!

On Sunday, Macy's will have a new CEO when Tony Spring takes the reins from Jeff Gennette. The blunt truth is that Mr Spring will inherit a business that has a lot of problems and lacks a coherent plan to tackle them. He can take Macy’s in one of two directions. He can break with the past and really start to refashion Macy’s into a retailer that meets the needs of modern consumers. This includes investing in the basics of retail and ensuring that good standards are adhered to, especially in stores. Alternatively, he can carry forward the policy of gentle iteration and partial tinkering around the edges which, ultimately, will result in the continued decline of the iconic chain. While Mr Spring is a Macy’s insider, he has had a lot of success in heading up Bloomingdale's, so there is at least a glimmer of hope that he will bring some new thinking. Mr Spring will also need to deal with mounting chatter from Arkhouse, which is pressing for Macy’s to open talks. On this front, he needs to set out a very clear and compelling vision to investors so it’s patently clear why the Arkhouse bid should be dismissed. Failure to do this will lead to more pressure from activists. As if all these things weren't challenging enough, Mr Spring also starts his tenure at a time when consumer spend on discretionary goods is pressured and finicky. This makes his job a bit like running up a down escalator that is on super-speed mode. Good luck, Mr Spring! More of my views in the Retail Dive article linked in the comments. #departmentstores #Macys #retail #retailnews #leadership

Many of us have either shopped at our heard of Macy’s but….. Do you know the story of the man behind it? I certainly didn’t and what an inspirational story! R. H. Macy is man who never gave up after each of his failures and his success came from his persistence. He tried 5 professions: Whaler Retailer Gold Miner Stockbroker Real estate Broker And 6 attempts at owning retail companies all of which had failed… Until his 7th attempt which we all know as Macy’s Department store. The POWER of Persistence: What keeps us going in the midst of adversity is having a strong sense of our purpose. It’s what fuels us to embody the power of persistence. —————————————————————— John C. Maxwell Strategy for cultivating Persistence: 1️⃣ Find your purpose 2️⃣ Eliminate all of your excuses 3️⃣ Develop incentives for your victories 4️⃣ Cultivate inward determination continually 📚 Read “Failing Foward” for details on this strategy. ———————————————————— Spark The Mind. Fuel The Dream. Book a FREE Wake up Call Lester Sydney Tap the 🔔 in my profile for more content on motivation, inspiration and personal development.

Recognition...is a key motivator. ...is deserved for a job well done. Some may say, one gets paid for doing a job, but that "good job" or extra thank you can go a long way in building trust, and loyalty among your team. We have had several conversations around our disappointment in our in-store experiences throughout 2024. Walter Holbrook did an excellent job of recapping the state of store experiences and inventory levels in a recent post. I'm here to give kuddos to DICK'S Sporting Goods. No matter what store we are in the service is excellent. Today we were in the West Nyack, NY location at the Palisades Mall looking for a new T-Ball bat. Julio came over, and brought us to the right section, but that was just the beginning. He gave us a few tips on how to look for the right size. He showed my son a couple tests to make sure he got the right one and stayed with us until he was satisfied. It's hard to retain knowledgeable talent. Kuddos DICK'S Sporting Goods for finding Julio! He was great with my son. He even wanted to look for a new glove even though he knew he didn't need one 🤣 Is there anyone in your recent travels that deserves a shout out? Let's see what comes with tomorrow's earnings release! #retail #customerexperience #customerservice #stores #service

We watch as another once prominent retailer files for financial protections recently. 95 stores were announced to be closing on April 22nd. It’s always a sad day for the teams that work hard everyday. Sadly they were not the only chain to file in the last few months. And it appears according to the news to be others to follow. Question? In your professional opinion- ✅Do you feel this retailers reign in the clothing sector ended by its own doing? ✅Could it have been avoided? ✅What other factors do you believe contributed? If you are hiring close to any of these locations closing their doors. Offer an opportunity to the team members not sure what to do next. #leadership #retail #jobs #teamwork