Sears streamlines organization

-- Home Textiles Today, 1/22/2008 1:00:00 PM

Hoffman Estates, Ill. – A simplified organizational structure and operating model is planned for Sears Holdings Corporation, in a move that chairman Edward Lampert said will “empower individual businesses and teams to focus on the customer experience and performance” and thus “build a stronger company, and be more attractive to partners and talent.”

The $53 billion company will soon be configured into a range of five different types of business units, Sears said, and “the leadership of each unit will have a separate, internal profit and loss statement to allow greater focus on managing the profitability of the unit, and rapid decision making to capitalize on opportunities and mitigate risks.”

The five types of units:

* Operating business units for current lines of business such as home appliances, electronics, and apparel;

* Support units to provide operational and administrative support to the operating businesses including marketing, store operations, customer strategy and finance;

* Brand units for growing the value of Sears Holdings brand portfolio;

* Real estate business to increase “the sales productivity” of the physical real estate;

* Online business unit to increase the sales productivity of the “virtual real estate.”

“Our board of directors, our senior leadership team and I believe this will make Sears Holdings a more responsive and competitive company in the future,” Lampert said, adding, “We are not doing this overnight; this is a phased transition to enable our business units and their key partners to learn how to leverage the new model.”