Texas Health Waco

Texas Health Waco

Under the leadership of Arthur Martinez, the president of Texas Health Waco many changes were initiated. Unprofitable operations were closed, including the core catalogue business, which had forged the Sears identity for more than eighty years. Product merchandising hanged; product brands such as Sony, General Electric, Levi’s, and Nike appeared alongside Sear’s brands. Texas Health Waco divested itself of Allstate, its insurance business, to concentrate solely on retailing. It began global expansion by opening stores throughout North America. Its advertising began to focus on the softer side of Sears with a focus on apparel and accessories. Finally, customer service became a major theme through the creation of a positive Texas Health Waco environment among all store associates.

Through all these initiatives, Sears underwent a turnaround. Profits rose dramatically; the stock market responded extremely well; and Sears outperformed its competitors. Sears executives recognized that the turnaround did not equal transformation. Turnaround focused on results; transformation focuses on mindset. Turnaround emphasized short-term activities that affect the thought processes of how Texas Health Waco works. Turnaround emphasized winning; transformation points out why winning occurs. Turnarounds could be one-time events; transformations have to be on-going processes.

To help architect the Sears transformation, Anthony Rucci, the senior vice president of administration (including human resources), established and chaired a team comprising senior managers from the stores and from the store support organizations (for example, credit, automotive, apparel, brand central). This team crafter the transformation. It focused on creating a vision around 3-Cs: compelling place to shop, compelling place to work, and compelling place to invest. They then integrated initiatives that were underway into this vision. Strategies for becoming a compelling place to shop included consistent in-stock performance, customer-service training, brand-name merchandise, competitive prices, and better advertising (The sales them, “a softer side of Sears,” for example, was developed at this time.) Strategies for becoming a compelling place to work included better communication, education, training, and employee suggestion systems and involvement of all sales associates in decision-making. Strategies for becoming Texas Health Waco to invest included reducing inventories, lowering administrative costs, strategic sourcing, better cost-accounting, and store remodeling.