12.29.00
While I do work in a Younkers Salon, and I am an employee of Younkers, I don't actually work for Younkers.
Our salon is what is know as a lease department, meaning that my actual employer is a primarily faceless corporate entity that pays a fee to the DSG* for our location in the downtown Younkers store.
My real boss is some dude I've never met who runs HMS - Hairstyling Management Systems ("We care about our stylists!"). He sends out silly memos and has no actual idea about how things work in the real world.
When I first became aware of the Younkers Salon, it was owned by Glemby International. Years later, when I was in beauty school, it was owned by Premier International. When I started working there it was owned by Signature Salon Group. Now we're HMS' bitches. According to Overlord Carol, in the 22 years she's worked at the salon, there have been at least 8 different companies that have operated the place. It was even a Regis salon at some point!
Anyways, back to my point. There was some scuttlebutt a few months ago about Younkers possibly buying out all of their salons from HMS. Supposedly things were actually at the contract negotiation stage, and then we lost our inside source, and we don't know a thing now. As a side note, HMS also owns all of the salons operating out of the various and sundry Montgomery Ward stores in the US. Of the 300 or so salons in the HMS stable, I would hazard a guess that at least 150 to 200 of those are Monkey Ward salons.
So imagine my surprise today when I found out that Montgomery Ward just filed Chapter 11, and intends to completely liquidate their enterprises before the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2001. Suddenly HMS is going to have a lot fewer salons, and this kind of makes us wonder about our welfare.
Ideally, we'd all end up real Younkers employees with benefits and perks, but then we would have to follow all of their retarded rules and regulations, and we'd most likely have to learn a new color and perm line, and get different retail products, and otherwise cause panic and confusion among our clientele, and the world at large.
Damn I'm glad that I will only be around this booby farm for another couple of years.
*DSG = The Department Store Group - Formerly known as Saks Incorporated**, also previously known as Profitts Incorporated. Everytime the original company that started buying up the department stores scores a higher-profile chain, they change their corporate name to reflect the acquisition. A couple of years ago they scored Saks Fifth Avenue and all their accessory stores. A couple of years before that, they got Profitts. I don't know what the name was before that. If memory serves me, Younkers, McRaes, Profitts, Herbergers, Carson Scott Pirie and Parisian are the components of the DSG.
**When they bought out a faltering Saks empire, they changed their name to reflect the purchase, as previously mentioned. However, the rocket scientists who negotiated the buy-out left a rider in the contract that should Saks ever get out of the negative profit margin and back into the positive, they could buy-out their shares at some ridiculously-low market value and sever their ties to the rest of the then-Saks Incorporated company.
In a move to increase profitability company-wide, many name brands were removed from the shelves and lots of store brands were introduced to take their place. Suddenly we no longer carried regular Levi's and Champion Sweats or even Hawkeye apparel, but now we have Living Quarter (housewares), Consensus (junior mens), CSX21 (fashionable junior mens), RBM (mens formal - and named for Brad Martin, Saks Inc.'s CEO), Relativity (womens moderates), Pursuits (womens better), Danielle Martin (womens better - named for Brad Martin's wife), Studio Works (womens moderates), U.R.I.T. (childrens), and possibly some things I'm spacing on.
The upshot is that not only did Saks get out of the red and into the black in record time, but they took Brad Martin (and his wife, Danielle, of course) with them, in the dissolution of the partnership. Strangely, RBM and Danielle Martin are still brand names, and when you call the store credit line, a prerecorded Brad Martin urges you to suggestive sell add-on items to the customer.
I'm hoping they'll just stick with DSG for now.
