The Hard Road to the Softer Side

"And then, when it could least afford to, Sears lost its way. It gradually forgot about its customers. It no longer understood (or cared) who its competitors were. It shifted its focus inward, to the interests and needs of its huge bureaucracy, all at the expense of the customers who found themselves in declining, dismal stores. The greatest retailer in world history had become a company with a great past, a disappointing present, and a dismal future." "The Hard Road to the Softer Side: Lessons from the Transformation of Sears is the story of how Sears recovered from this downfall, told by the visionary who built the team that forged the company's rebirth. When Arthur Martinez took charge at Sears in 1992, he found a once-great company facing a loss of$4 billion, with a Soviet-style bureaucracy, little idea of its target customer, and an army of 300,000 disheartened employees. Many experts thought Sears was too far gone to save."--BOOK JACKET.