Eddie cuts, Sears bleeds
Eddie Lampert‘s status as a retail renegade may be in jeopardy.
The prickly hedge-fund tycoon has long been blasted by industry critics for merging Sears and Kmart in 2005, then skimping on everything from advertising to store upkeep as he hoarded cash to buy back the company’s shares.
That, according to retail intelligentsia, has sent shoppers fleeing Sears and Kmart’s increasingly dilapidated stores for rivals, from Wal-Mart to JCPenney.
In annual shareholders’ letters, Lampert has countered testily that the conventional wisdom of running ads, cutting prices and upgrading stores in order to generate sales isn’t always profitable. In his most recent such letter in February, Lampert called his chorus of critics “an echo chamber of self-support and self-congratulation.”
Nevertheless, Sears last week reported its first quarterly increase in sales at stores open at least a year — a closely watched industry metric, long held in contempt by Lampert — since the merger. While slight, at just 1.2 percent, the same-store sales gain was particularly eyebrow-raising for Sears, as it was driven by aggressive discounts on appliances.
Positive sales at Sears and Kmart are “evidence that customers are shopping our stores and buying our products every day,” a company spokesman told The Post.
That’s a different approach than what Sears’ investors are used to. Maybe they’ve been listening to Lampert’s cash-obsessed rants for too long. On Thursday, Sears said the appliance discounts fueled a 38-percent profit drop, and the company’s shares tumbled 11 percent.
James Covert
Arena row
Pop sensation Justin Bieber is not only helping Universal Music Group’s Island Records sell a ton of CDs, he’s helping the Prudential Center get the upper hand in the bare-knuckle battle for New Jersey’s $50-million family show and concert arena business.
Bieber, 16, will be appearing at the two-year-old Prudential Center, known as The Rock, in August, in a show that would likely have gone to the rival Izod Center in the past. Izod, after all, was supposed to be the family show and concert venue — after ceding the New Jersey Nets to The Rock, where the Devils and Seton Hall University play.
The Rock was supposed to be for sports — but it now seems to be getting the upper hand over the long-standing Izod Center on all fronts. It has recently hosted the circus and Disney on Ice for an equal or greater number of shows than at the Izod — and its two Taylor Swift concerts this month were the third-highest grossing two dates of her 14-month tour.
Last year, the Izod Center rang up $31 million in non-sports events, or 60 percent of the arena concert and family show business — The Rock put $20.4 million into its coffers, according to Venues Today, an industry publication. Those numbers could be reversed this year.
In fact, in the fiscal year that begins next month, The Rock will host 217 events compared to 147 this fiscal year — enough added business to swing the arena into the black for the first time, according to Jeff Vanderbeek, the chairman and managing partner of Devils Arena Entertainment, which operates the building.
The upswing in business comes as Vanderbeek’s company takes control of the new arena, after AEG, the massive, LA-based management company, was replaced earlier this year when its contract expired. It still has one employee in the building — a booker.
Vanderbeek, a former Lehman Bros. executive, thinks the arena can eventually host 285 events a year, and that winning a permanent NBA team once the Nets decamp for Brooklyn is not out of the question. “We still have a lot of wood to chop,” he said.
Meanwhile, the NJ Sports & Exposition Authority, which runs the Izod Center, is bleeding red ink. The arena could host fewer than 100 events next fiscal year, way below the 200 events it had forecast just a few years ago.
Gov. Chris Christie is expecting a report on the future of all entertainment, gambling and sports venues by June 30. “We want to stop them from coming to [the taxpayers] for money,” a spokesman for the governor said. “We want to make it self- sustaining.”
Richard Wilner
No license
The New York Jets’ uphill battle to sell personal seat licenses to help pay its share of the new $1.6 billion stadium is not only get ting strafed by a bad economy, a pricing structure that appears a bit high and a plan that is being poorly exe cuted, but it is also being hurt by friendly-fire.
Some Jets fans who have already purchased PSLs are running for the exits and selling them online — some at a 16 percent discount, even though they are not legally allowed to sell them until 2011.
In one instance, a fan is selling two PSLs in section 113, row 3. The list price of the PSLs plus the two $700-a-game tickets is $64,000. But the fan is selling them for $55,000, according to the listing on Sta diumPSL.com, a stadium seat li cense online marketplace.
Such moves could hurt Gang Green’s ability to sell through its inventory of the pricey licenses — and the team is not taking these sales offers quietly.
“We are the exclusive seller of our product and we take this provision seriously,” a team spokesman said last week. “Any attempted transfer will not be honored by the team.”
Richard Wilner