Merger, She Wrote – KMart and Sears become One

The merger of Kmart and Sears is affecting retail commerce in ways both obvious and subtle. Most business press is covering large details, such as the questionable decision to position both chains under the name Ksmears. Yet with this merger comes a veritable flood of new business practices, models that might affect careers and communities for some time to come.
For instance, this is the first retail chain (though certainly not the last) to offer midlevel-rent apartments in some of its aisles. While this venture is still in the preliminary phase, with only three shelves set aside for housing units, economists will watch closely the economic and social impact of having people commuting to work and school from within one of their store complexes.

New Ksmears outlets will also be the first to include small convenience stores within the larger complex. Said Ksmears CEO Edward S. Lampert, ‚”We’ve had fast-food cafeterias and the like in our stores before, but this will be the first actual store within a store, for people who have gotten lost or dizzy from hungriness. They’ll want convenient access to some more nourishing Ksmears products, at a price that’s competitive with those outside in the larger store, so they’ll have the strength to continue shopping for bargains. Also, these convenient stores will function as rest stops for those driving through.”
Indeed, the new Ksmears complexes will include drive-through service and will even have major arteries of highway diverted through them, to insure better flow and convenience. Parking lots will be seamlessly integrated with display areas. This will function to help generate traffic (of both the purchasing and automotive kind) and supplement the parking for the airport attachment.
The new company hopes to integrate the two chains quickly and obtain greater savings through improved operational efficiency. It will also maximize profits through cheaper labor on its manufacturing side.
‚”Don’t get us wrong,” said Alan J. Lacy, Ksmears vice president. ‚”We’re still committed to providing jobs for third world children, but we have to improve our productivity to remain competitive with the Wal-Marts and the Targets of the world, and you can only exploit desperate, hungry people so much. It has come to our attention that several countries are far less squeamish about human cloning experiments, and while those experiments have resulted only in disturbingly disfigured subhumans, those quasi-humans will work under far more stressful conditions than even third world regular humans will. I reiterate, we will always provide jobs for third world children. Some cheap products need tiny fingers to produce, but some need hands with twelve fingers, and we’re pioneering on that front.”
How will these changes impact U.S. labor and small businesses? Just great! Everything’s going to be fine. Prices are low, and profits are high. Someone’s getting rich. That’s all that matters. Remember, our lifestyle, foreign policy, government borrowing and ecology are all unsustainable. So what if we all end up wearing one of three uniforms as we sell crap to each other? The important thing to remember is that we’re all going to die.
By Dan Kilian

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 17th, 2004 at 2:39 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.