Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 27, 1993 TAG: 9301270313
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE SHOCK FROM SEARS
ANOTHER SHOCK arrived Monday with the news that Sears plans to close its Telecatalog Center in Roanoke, eliminating some 1,200 jobs as part of a corporate restructuring.Sears workers and their families are most shocked, of course, but the news also sends tremors through a region already reeling from announced job losses at other major employers, including Dominion Bank.
Perhaps the accumulation of shocks will be enough to stir the region from complacency, to remind its residents and would-be leaders that our local economy, as isolated as it may seem, is not immune from change.
It is resonant, in this regard, that the Roanoke jobs will be phased out as part of Sears' decision to end its catalog business altogether. As much as any local bedrock bank, the Sears catalog has for generations conveyed a kind of retail familiarity and comfortable continuity, the sort of institutional presence that changes little and that, one assumes, will always be there.
It won't always be there, as it happens, and failure to change probably has something to do with that. The catalog business itself is booming, as mail order companies increasingly target specialized markets. But the result was increased competition for Sears, which suffered by trying to be (and mail) all things to all people.
Sears is only the latest giant of corporate America, from General Motors to Boeing to IBM, to slash thousands of jobs during this so-called economic recovery - in part because they've been insufficiently flexible. In the case of the catalog, tradition cannot forever save an operation whose after-tax losses range annually in the $150 million range. Americans may retain a fond place in their hearts for the Sears catalog, but they're calling in their orders to Orvis and the like.
An official with the Virginia Employment Commission in Roanoke notes that many of the part-time Sears employees have other jobs, "so they're not as seriously impacted as those at Dominion Bank." True enough. But one of the changes much in evidence here as elsewhere in the past decade has been households' increased reliance on second and third sources of income to make ends meet. The phasing out of the Sears jobs will hurt.
Like many such hurts, Sears' decision was not made in the Roanoke Valley, but far away. The decision had little if any appreciable relationship with the quality of work done here. But this is only another reminder that what is true in other spheres of life holds in economics as well: Things change, including some things over which we have little or no control.
The point: to focus on what we can control. If this region's leadership cannot protect the jobs of Sears or Dominion employees, it still can work to increase the availability of other jobs for the displaced to move into.
It still can help foster an environment conducive to the spawning and nurturing of locally based employers, and with them, investment and employment decisions that are made here and reflect local profitability.
It still can recognize one of the lessons behind Sears' troubles: that chances of competitive success are enhanced by securing and exploiting a niche. Regions succeed this way, too.
To do so, it helps to have a regional leadership capable of assessing local assets and liabilities, defining appropriate goals, and organizing a strategy for achieving them.
Maybe telemarketing is to be one niche for this region, in which case perhaps one day another telemarketer will again employ hundreds in the former Sears facility. The Sears sign, like all impermanent fixtures, is subject to replacement.