The Timing Is Just a Coincidence...

...but I think we have a better picture of at least some of the reasons for this today than we might have had last week: Sears marketing president to leave.

Retailer Sears Holdings Corp.'s president of marketing, Dave Friedman, will be leaving the company to pursue other opportunities, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

...The news comes at a time when the retailer, home to brands such as Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances, faces tremendous pressure to boost sales.

Sales at the company, where hedge fund manager Edward Lampert is chairman and the biggest shareholder, have fallen every year since it was formed through the merger of Sears and Kmart in 2005.

Maybe having a hedge fund manager run your company isn't a good idea. Who knew! I'm no Professor of Businessology, and I only worked in marketing for eight years, but I have noticed that, when your chairperson doesn't seem to understand the intrinsic—if not easily quantifiable in Quicken—value of investment in impeccable customer service, treating it instead as an extraneous cost that can be easily eliminated in order to maximize profit, it gets to be a hard sell to customers whose loyalty has been used as an executive toilet.

Again, I'm no Dame Businesshead PhD over here, but I do seem to recall reading something, probably in Popular Mechanics or Ranger Rick, about how it costs a lot less to retain an existing customer than win a new one—and a lost customer who must be won back is the most expensive of all.

Anyway! I wish Sears the best. Go Team Money!

Sears shares were down 2 percent to $77.80 in early Thursday afternoon trading on Nasdaq.

Whoooooooooops.

[H/T to Shaker knitmeapony, on Twitter.]