Edward Lampert Quotations

The entrance strategy is actually more important than the exit strategy,

If you're unwilling to try new things and to fail and learn, you don't have a shot. That doesn't mean you are going to be successful, but you have to try to change.

I'm not from a retail background, but I am a shopper.

I think a lot of times when people talk about merchants, it's almost a nostalgic look back at the time where the world moved at a very different pace, and information was very different.

I want to be known as a great businessman,

The pushback I get is, 'He's a hedge fund guy.' Full stop. Some places, that can be a badge of honor. In others, it's almost a term of derision.

I was very clear why we put these companies together and what our goals were. It was really to allow both Sears and Kmart to compete in what I thought was going to be a more challenging but evolving industry.

To operate a company of the size of Sears Holdings or Wal-Mart or Target or Home Depot or Lowes, you need a combination of skills, and each of those skills needs to be sufficiently strong.

Trying to move the volume of products we're talking about from place to place to get it ultimately into the customer's hands, to price these items, to market these items, I think the retail business is incredibly complex. But if you get it right, it's a beautiful thing.

If we put a product into Sears, we don't want to have to pull it out in a year, or two years, or three years. We don't want to do that only to have it yanked away.

This idea of anticipation is key to investing and to business generally. You can't wait for an opportunity to become obvious. You have to think, "Here's what other people and companies have done under certain circumstances. Now, under these new circumstances, how is this management likely to behave?"

Many of our retail competitors have much lower cost structures that allow them to run different business models that are valued by both employees and customers alike,

We don't want two separate cultures but to blend it into one great culture. ... The idea is to make the stores more competitive while staying focused on the customer.

Alan, Aylwin and I believe these changes will achieve greater clarity in our operating management and align this corporate structure with our vision of Sears Holdings, ... Our goal is to build one company with multiple ways of connecting with our customers, including our various store formats, online offerings, service relationships, and credit products.

These two experienced and highly effective executives will bring Sears Holdings a new level of creativity and focus on marketing and our customer relationships. I particularly value the winning attitude and record of success that they will bring to Sears Holdings, and I expect them to help lead the ongoing change in Sears' culture.

In the past, we had a situation where people worked here but could not get results. We need to invest in those people.