Sears Canada loses another top executive

‘BAD MANAGEMENT’

HOLLIE SHAW TORON TO •

revolving door reputation is only getting worse after announcing Carrie Kirkman is on the way out less than a year into her role as president of the retailer.

Kirkman, an experienced fashion executive formerly with Nine West Canada, Jones Apparel Group and Hudson’s Bay, was named president and chief merchant of Sears Canada in November.

At the time, she was keen to discuss the retailer’s latest strategies to draw in its two target customers, nicknamed ‘Linda’ and ‘ Amy’, the former a longtime Sears customer in her 50s with grown kids, the latter a younger mother of school-aged children.

But the shrinking department store chain shifted course yet again late Monday, when Kirkman’s pending exit was announced in the middle of a statement to reaffirm the company’s strategic objectives of real estate development, ongoing cost controls, and an overhaul of its digital commerce and IT platform.

Kirkman had been “brought aboard to focus on strategic brand partner development,” the statement said, adding new brands will debut this fall. Kirkman will end her official tenure in the C-suite and as a board member in August, but will still be available to the retailer in an advisory capacity to help with brand development.

At the same time, Sears said, retail veteran Heywood Wilansky, a former CEO of U.S. retailers including

and DSW Inc. who joined Sears Canada’s board just last month, will take on a new position at Sears Canada, but his role and title are somewhat different from Kirkman’s: senior advisor for merchandising, marketing and retail.

“This is a really bad management practice,” said Alan Middleton, a marketing professor at York University.

“With all the change and confusion about titles and everything else, these repeated executive shifts create an immense amount of confusion about who is doing what.

“Suppliers and investors certainly will look at this and Carrie Kirkman wonder. And for employees who make the business work on a day-to-day basis, it creates a sense of uncertainty and confusion about who is in charge. Think about what leadership is all about. This looks like they can’t make up their mind about what to do.”

Sears Canada, whose sales have dwindled to $3.1 billion from $6.5 billion in 2002, has been without a CEO since the company began earning the reputation of going through too many of them.

Ronald Boire, the fourth and last in a string of shortstint CEOs, left last July after just six months in the top spot to run U.S. book retailer Barnes & Noble. At the same time, Brandon Stranzl became the ostensible public face running the company when he was named executive chairman.

Kirkman was one of multiple new recruits Stranzl had brought into the company, explaining in April that many senior leaders that had been at Sears Canada “for a very, very long period of time,” had been replaced.

The exits included that of chief operating officer Klaudio Leshnjani, who left in December and was replaced in April by Becky Penrice, former head of human resources, and CFO E.J. Bird, who left the company in April. Bird has been replaced by interim CFO Billy Wong as the company searches for a new finance head.

“I am not really surprised by this news because pretty much every year Sears Canada changes its top person, but I am surprised it happened this quickly,” said Bruce Winder, partner in Toronto-based Retail Advisors.

“Every time they bring in someone to grow or reform the business it fails to materialize. Kirkman was not given much of a chance if (merchandising) was her true mandate.”