The entrance strategy is actually more important than the exit strategy.
Edward Lampert
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.
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 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.
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.
To operate a company of the size of Sears Holdings or Wal-Mart or Target or Home Depot or Lowe's, you need a combination of skills, and each of those skills needs to be sufficiently strong.
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.
I want to be known as a great businessman.
