Steve & Barry's on the brink of bankruptcy?

Your not giving them credit for all the great things they did.

I don't think they deserve credit for the good things they did when they don't take credit for the poor things that they did. It's not fair. I am not going to sit here and pat them on the back and say "you know what, even though hundreds to thousands of your employees are in turmoil and their way of life and the income to support their family is in jeopardy, great job on selling items under 20.00. Obviously your hard work paid off since you are close to bankruptcy and liquidation."

So if that is what you are looking for then there it is. Like I said in my previous post, they had a great idea and a great motive but executed it poorly... stop hiding behind your corporate office S&B.

This is obviously a very scary times. But, let us not forget our friends in the India office working so hard to make S&B a great place to shop.

True story

True Story:
Once upon a time there was an owner who wanted something in the store. He asked the dept manager to get it there. The dept manager said OK it's ready to ship I just need your approval. Three months later and after 90 days of two to three people asking him for approval daily!!!!, he finally said OK. The following day everything was in the store. The owner went out of his way to tell the dept manager that it was very disappointing to see that it took three months and that the dept manager should resign for such a bad (RESULT). The dept manager said "You held it up the three months in the approval status." The owner replied "You should had done more to make him sign it. Like banging on his door at 3:00am in the morning every night until you received approval."

Another True story:
Once upon a time a new store opened in a distant state. A call came into the Corporate Castle saying they were missing 300 of one item. The items were packed up and put out for an AM delivery. Later in the afternoon a call came in from that same person who I will call Clifford the big red dope asking why they weren't at the store yet. The dept manager said because the corp jet is broken and hung up on Clifford.

I am off to Eat a salad, Drink a Coffee, and play with my Blackberry. Sound familiar?

Dead king thats a very true story

So I just returned after a few days off from my store, I made a point to avoid checking email trying to relax and forget about the troubles at hand, sure I would return today with some good news waiting. Boy was I wrong. So, I'm reading that they are shutting down 100 stores, but can find no details as to where the information came from, what stores, or when it is happening. Anyone out there know ANY details? I was the guy when all of this came to light that blindly defended the company, and just had faith that they were being honest with us when they said there was nothing to worry about. Now, actions are definetely speaking louder than words. Only a year ago, I was talked into moving more than 600 miles to open a new store, and right now, S+B is the only thing me and my family have (and to top things off, we have a baby due in a couple of weeks), and they can't even so much as communicate with us over what's going on?! This is certainly not the company I thought it was, or that they made themselves out to be. Even if S+B gets through this, if trouble arises in the future I find myself asking "will we will be left in the dark again, waiting to find out where our future leads?" Not me, I won't be put through this again. Here lies their major problem (other than the many financial pitfalls that have been well documented over the past week). I have a feeling the majority of the managers in the stores are going to get tired of playing this game and are going to find jobs elsewhere in the next few days. Sure they will have to lay off managers anyway with store closures coming, but they are going to end up a manager or two short in the stores that remain open (if they don't go completely under that is). Right now with payroll cutbacks the managers are the only thing keeping any of the stores even operational right now. They truly no longer have the ability to recruit and hire new managers (even if they had the resources they don't have the credibilty to convince anyone to come work for them anyway). It is like a domino effect, and it has gone too far for anyone to stop now, before the whole thing comes crashing down. If there was any news at all to give us hope we all know they would have passed it on by now going into the weekend (the investors I was told about last week were obviously a bust, and an excuse to give us to stick it out!). Right now S+B is trying to keep things quiet, because they know the end is near, and without us blindly doing what we are told they would have no one to run the stores through the company closing. Even now if they file chapter 11, that still isn't going to pay the vendors, which means we will have nothing to sell, which means either way we are going out of business. They are disguising mountains of debt with the 30 million that is on paper, but once the rest of the vendors, contractors, and various other businesses they have screwed over come forward, that figure will probably multiply well past 9 figures. The real back breaker is that Steve and Barry themselves should have plenty of finances to bail the company out, but they either are so poor at managing money that they don't have the resources left anymore, or they don't care enough to do so. Neither answer is encouraging, and they obviously lied to all of us in regards to what this company is all about. It was never to do the things they preached to us, it was always about them and how much money they could make. I think we all need to say enough! They had us convinced that there was no iceberg, but the reality is that this ship is going down, and a lot sooner than anyone probably suspects. So me, I am swimming for a life raft, who's coming with me?!

I waited and waited, deciding on whether or not to post. You people all need to wake up. Read the articles again. How much is the interest alone on the loans? Is TA Associates going to step in? I see a mass exodus on the horizon. Hell, look at some the networking sites out there. SNB has a ton of very familiar names on some of those lists. I am not waiting around for the unemployment line. The early seeker gets the job! See ya all later.

CG187 your very well spoken when it comes to putting what we Managers have been going thru into words..I dont have the self discipline not to look constantly on the internet hoping to find something encouraging I am in a similar personell situation as you, expecting, and I feel as if I am in freefall and betrayed is not suffecient enough to describe the feeling. The silence is deafing and its screaming that the thing to do for the best interest of our families is get out. I hope this correspondence continues with yourself and any other SB employees that would like to voice their opinion on the matter. Different perspectives nerver hurt we should know better than anyone that communication is VERY important in times like these.

Didn't you read the comments TNT? People are waking up! But it is never soon enough in these situations. Sure, the interest is probably ridiculous, but what puzzles me is it isn't just TA associates money invested, but GE as well. If these two incredibly lucrative firms are cutting their losses with S+B (which they obviously have with neither stepping up to help this week), then why would anyone else? Why should we? Maybe they are hoping they can settle and get something back in a lawsuit, who knows. When a person steals millions of dollars from someone else it's called theft, when they do it with a business it is considered bad luck, or a slump in the economy! If S+B goes down, Steve and Barry themselves need to be held accountable for all of the money they owe.

cg this has been in the works for a while now...most of us just weren't in a position to realize. When you launch a line and don't have the product to meet the demand, or when you hit a major time of the year (back to school) and don't have the merch you start to ask questions. Depending on your store cluster (A+ being best, E being worst) you are allocated certain merch. When the A+ stores aren't getting reallocated there is something wrong. We saw this with Starbury, Bitten, Bubba, and now Wonderwall. The A to C cluster stores will be fine for now because they are somewhat profitable. The others however; don't wait for the hammer to drop. Things may look up. We may get our stuff in order. But don't think for a second that if we don't, they (NYO) won't swing that hammer.

I dont care to get into politics of why theres a money problem I can only hope that they have the guts to tell us if were going to loose our jobs befoe back to school sales or if there going to wait the day before xmas to tell us.with high gas and food prices the economy is bad enough i dont want to be left out in the dead of winter

I dont know about you Currentlyemployeed but honestly how productive has your or anyone elses store been since this all hit I mean I am really trying not to let this hinder my personel work ethic and standards but I am in a daze and keep checking SOC for emails or announcements thinking something has been posted. I really enjoyed my 4th applying for jobs. I have more than 4 years of my life with this company and I know that sounds like a small amount to some but If you outsiders only knew what it was like 4 years ago compared to now and the accomplishments that gave us a sense of pride. We made such a differance to families who couldnt afford to cloth their childeren in a presentable way until they came to our store. I mean how many retailers can you say gave you that sense of purpose of what you were doing everyday. Another example is when you noticed the 20-35 female professional demographic coming in at that 4-6 pm weekday and saying to yourself "This Bitten thing is working" we can accomodate both ends of the specturm and feel good about it. That is what bothers me the most such genuine feeings based on a company with such disgeniune motivations.

Bubba, I really feel for you and know exactly where your coming from, and am sure there are countless other employees out there in the same boat. I really don't see how the company will operate past the next couple of weeks, and I don't believe there are any stores out there (no matter what cluster they fall into), that will even be able to remain open through back to school. Right now they are lining their ducks up, and squeezing the last of what they can out of the stores. Think about it, no new shipments from the factories to the DC (the DC is probably almost empty as well, anyone know?), our DM's are telling us to sell what we have, regardless of what it is (even winter merchandise!!), just empty out your backroom!! They are slowly having us deposit money from our safes into the bank, leaving us minimal resources to do business with. Labor is cut almost in half at many stores causing them to fall into disrepair, and everything beyond next week has become a huge grey area. Monday will be the official S+B lay off day at the good ol' NYO, and something in my gut is telling me that next week will be the last for most of us at the store level. They had through this week to find a solution, and obviously couldn't, so now it's a matter of how they close things down, and doing it in a way that benefits them the most. Unfortunately for us, that way is probably the least beneficial to the thousands of employees who are hanging in the balance right now, and our families that depend on us.

Did you see the email from Jesse about going on "vacation". Lets think about this if we are closing stores this week who is the first person we would call at the NYO to see if we could save our jobs by relocating if you notice in the email he explicitly states that he will not be avaliable. OK not so out of the ordinary except this is the ONLY time in 4 years I have been privy to Jesse's freakin vacation times. We actually had a good couple of days volume wise..makes you think about what we could do if we had merchandise to sell..So employees out there how often have customers asked you about the situation...whats your days been like at work..sending people home that you see looking in the breakroom fridge for food because they havent gotten enough hrs to buy a freakin lunch...these "lousy" employees I hear people mention in other forums..I dont know about you guys but the core group that has been in your stores the last couple of weeks I would take them to any retailer and win they are hard workers and good people. Does anybody remeber the conferance call when ERIC stated that NYO does 80% of the work and they depend on us in the feild for the remaining 20% that stayed with me and represents the arrogance at the NYO...Even at the last call ERIC moderated suggestions about saving money (other than the idiot that said he would give 5000 of his salary and everybody else could do the same) I hope that was a plant because that was crazy..anyway there was STILL the "what the hell do you know" attitude in his voice. Anyone have a visual audit recently (dont give the dates of course just a yes or no). Again I appreciate the correspondence right now its my only outlet.

I'm currently an S&B associate, who's going through all the sames things that managers and others have posted here. I'm working to support myself and my wife on the Steve and Barry's paywage and I'll admit that I'm not very happy with the lack of information coming out of home office. However, as I read these posts, my question becomes "What type of person posts to an internet blog asking their corp. offices to answer their questions?" Has all professionallism gone out the window simply because Steve and Barry seem to have lost thier's? What does that say about us when we resort to posting on an open blog that we work for a company that f*ed us and left us to die? As I said before, I'm trying to support my wife on what they pay me as an hourly keyholder. Some of the people who are posting here are managers and directors. I've worked for S&B for a little over a year and I've come to expect more then this from my managers. I know we're all going through a major mind f* but to let this degrade you to posting repliest to childish people on the internet? That makes me sad. Personally I think I have better things to do from here on out then post to people who have no more worries from Steve and Barry's, cause they no longer work here. As long as the pay checks clear they're still paying you to do a job. Look for other jobs elsewhere on your own time, but please stop posting sad replies to sad people. I was raised that you don't air your dirty laundry. Am I happy with they way all of this came out? No. But I'm still staying professional enough that I'm not bashing a company that has helped me pay rent, utilities, and gas for the last year. Please, show some self control and self esteem. Someone posted that Steve and Barry's has hired excellent managers and staff to run their stores. They were right. I've been very proud of this company ever since I started and not because of anything that NYO has done, but because of what I've done and what my management team has done. I'll find another job if I have to (and yes it's looking like I will have to) but I'm not letting what's happening to S&B sour my outlook. I've grown tremendously since I've worked here and I'll always be greatful that I took this job.

SBKEY:

I post here because I no longer work for the company due to something I can't say right now...but suffice it to say that this company has been corrupt for quite some time. I tried to help some innocent employees and was screwed. Oh, and the person responsible for some very bad things????? He's been promoted right up through the ranks. HINT: He's a man! Hint: these were women who had some issues. Ya know?

TPTB have NEVER been Just. TPTB have never been honest....or helpful or responsible or LEGAL!

I've seen male managers do very well while being racist, sexist and harrassing. TPTB know it goes on and instead of taking care of these offenders, they PROMOTED THEM. One is a DM in a state known for "not messing with it." Anybody know his name?

I know there are women who were/are treated with "Special attention". So, yeah, I was loyal too...till I figured out the corrupted nature of many there.

I hear that DM is on vacation right now. Looking for a job? Hmmmmmmmmmm.

You all have a right to voice out. This was OUR, YOUR, MY company as it was always said that WE are a part of something great and WE are RESPONSIBLE.
So, to be left out in the cold without a voice is wrong, BUT to add some comfort to all of this, this I can say without any reservation.

Barry is a competitor. He was wealthy before, during, and yes after. Money isn't his goal. Winning is. Success is. S&B is.

He will not bring himself to loosing the only thing that matters. He will find a way. He will figure things out.

Keep faith if only over the next week or two that this is a business that has a need and is already in place. Other companies will see the value and maybe step in.

On the other hand, GS, ADT, and SS should be removed as they (IN THE IMMORTAL WORDS OF SS) "ARE ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE"
Barry was and is the only reason this company grow. He should stay.

I'd like to point out the part about being proud of what my store has done, not what NYO has. And of course I'm not saying that very store, in every district is some great honorable place that no one does anything wrong. I have no doubts that what you're saying happened, exemployee. I however have seen the sexual harrassment thing happen as well and the guy got fired for it. The associate still works at my store and they're not treated any differently then before. Has this always been the case? Probably not. There are reports of things like what you've told us happening in EVERY major company. I've known enough Walmart managers to know that things like that happen all the time. I also know that Books-A-Million has a rep. of sleeping your way up is the only way to get promoted. Again, I'm not saying that Steve and Barry are great business men that deserve better then this. I'm saying that the stores deserve better, the managers should be more professional because thats what I have come to expect. Professional Managers with more experiance in thier belts then all of NYO, and who know that this isn't the way you conduct yourselves outside of your company. Once you leave thats your call. But you're still the face of this company, and despite whats going on you make sure that no one messing with your company. You say what you want to other managers, other associates, in the office, personal email, but like this? No. Like I said in my last post that was how I was raised; loyal (maybe to a fault). However that doesn't mean you don't look for other jobs. Right now you'd have to be stupid not to be. No one can afford not to have a job next month, or next week. I hope that everyone reading this that still works for S&B finds some safehaven from this storm.

All know what bought us into this situation, and I would start with those who were put in place to lead this company. Why in Gods name would we put people straight out of school to Manage a $650 million company who do not have a clue of what retail is all about from allocations to Director of Stores, where is the logic here? They do not know a woven from a knitted let alone what it takes to physically operate a store. Put them in your shoes and ask them to perform the directives they issue and all of them would fall flat on their face in a day. It's time for this company to get back to their roots which means Steve and Barry being more hands on and watching how these super IQ toddlers they put in place spent all their money. I'm confident S&B will rebound from this but at the cost of many losing jobs, the first must be the IQ toddlers in the NYO. We actually have some qualified people working in Port Washington who have been with us for a long time but were pushed aside to make room for the IQ's. We will be here to the end.