Alan Lacy Quotations

We believe that Sears Canada shareholders should consider the actions of the senior management and the largest independent shareholder when making a decision with respect to whether to tender their Sears Canada common shares.

Sears has had a very different problem from Kmart, ... Our service and products are as good as our competitors but they're not where our customers are. This now gives us the opportunity to grow off-mall locations closer to the customer.

We are extending our offer to provide shareholders with a continued opportunity to tender to our $16.86 offer, which we believe represents a full and fair price.

Kevin left the company at my request because I lost confidence in his personal credibility, ... His departure is not related to business performance and does not constitute a change in credit strategy.

Our credit business contributed very strong growth in operating income, ... We are pleased with the quality of our credit portfolio and our ongoing productivity improvements.

Our actions reflect our heightened focus on productivity and returns. We will continue to identify opportunities to more effectively deploy resources and enhance overall company profitability of Sears off-the-mall businesses,

Our offer represents full and fair value for Sears Canada. We firmly believe that our offer provides the best alternative for all Sears Canada shareholders and that Sears Canada's current market price reflects unrealistic market expectations for a higher bid.

We'll emphasize better classic apparel while highlighting our strong appliance, electronics and home improvement merchandise,

We are pleased that sales in core businesses such as lawn and garden, tools and apparel have shown signs of strengthening, especially considering the difficult economic environment,

We are concerned that speculation reported in the press may be misleading the market regarding our intentions.

We probably are going to become a little bit less of a department store, with less emphasis on apparel, ... I think the exit from cosmetics is an example of this. We are very much in the process of reworking our business model and how we go to market and how we spend money.

We recognize that we really don't make enough money in our retail business, ... If you look just at our retail segment we're not happy with our retail performance here.

We are moving away from a traditional department store business model. That has to change,

While revenues continue to be soft, our focus on gross margin, inventory levels and operating expenses is driving substantial profit improvement,

We knew that this would be our toughest quarter as we reached the height of our reposition efforts, ... This is a difficult environment with the possibility of war with Iraq and the West coast port lockout challenges we face in the critical holiday season.

We think in terms of pricing and assortment we have very good offerings, ... But we have not been able to break through consumers minds in terms of value perception.

An economy that was clearly bad has gone to worse after those (Sept. 11) tragedies took place,

As in the second quarter, we have been able to weather the difficult top-line environment by effectively managing our retail operating expenses and inventories.  We are also pleased to have achieved continued gross margin expansion in the third quarter,

They should start very slowly and build up. They probably should have a physical examination, especially if they are older. For students, taking a running or a walk-jog class wouldn't be a bad idea because they would be able to get valuable information from that.

As work on improving the performance of full-line stores progresses, it has become clear that a broad cosmetics business no longer fits with our financial and strategic objectives for Sears full-line stores,

That really is the only piece of equipment that you need for running. The shoe all depends on the person because there are all different kinds of shoes and it depends on your foot size, your weight and different people have different stride patterns.

On a stand-alone basis, Sears Canada's retail business faces an increasingly competitive retail environment in Canada, and the principal factor that will determine the value of this business is the prospects for its retail operations.

If people can't pay the credit in 180 days, and these are people who would pay in the 240 days they get from Sears, that would affect them,

If you go to a local running store, such as Often Running, they can do a good job at fitting shoes according to the type of person you are and how many miles you are running a week. Good running shoes generally cost from $70- 80 and up.

In what is traditionally a clearance month, sales were up in our principal clothing categories, with women's ready to wear, children's and men's apparel all reporting sales gains, ... Outerwear finally benefited from winter's late arrival, with a sizable improvement over last year.

Clearly business is slowing down. Everybody is cutting back a bit, but our focus has been to structurally change how we do business because how we do business is not working,

The Great Indoors is a viable, important format that has always resonated with customers. The business continues to hold great promise.

The Great Indoors clearly is geared around home remodeling, re-decorating, so to some extent there's more economic linkage there than just daily life. But there's an awful lot of fashions and soft elements to this box that you don't have to be gutting your kitchen to go shopping there,