Sears Canada loses another executive as president exits
Sears Canada’s 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 schoolaged 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 Bon Ton Stores Inc. 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 adviser 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,” he said.
“Suppliers and investors certainly will look at this and 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 short-stint 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 an April interview that many senior leaders who had been at Sears Canada “for a very, very long period of time,” had been replaced. “We have new people in almost all of those roles.”
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 Network.
“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.”
He noted former CEO Calvin McDonald left in 2013 amid reports he clashed with the retailer’s board about how much capital to use to help Sears reinvent its business.
“But it doesn’t make any sense to allocate capital to the Canadian business, because they look as though they are trying to sell off as many assets as they can before they wind it down,” Winder added, noting the retailer’s ongoing bid to sell off its leases and cut its costs.
In its most recent quarter ended April 30, same-store sales at Sears Canada declined by 7.4 per cent over the prior year, while the company cut $80 million in annualized costs during the period.