Edward Lampert quotes:

To operate a company of the size of Sears Holdings or Wal-Mart or Target or Home Depot or Lowes, you need a combination of skills, and each of those skills needs to be sufficiently strong.

To operate a company of the size of Sears Holdings or Wal-Mart or Target or Home Depot or Lowe's, you need a combination of skills, and each of those skills needs to be sufficiently strong.

I was very clear why we put these companies together and what our goals were. It was really to allow both Sears and Kmart to compete in what I thought was going to be a more challenging but evolving industry.

If we put a product into Sears, we don't want to have to pull it out in a year, or two years, or three years. We don't want to do that only to have it yanked away.

The entrance strategy is actually more important than the exit strategy.

I think a lot of times when people talk about merchants, it's almost a nostalgic look back at the time where the world moved at a very different pace, and information was very different.

The pushback I get is, 'He's a hedge fund guy.' Full stop. Some places, that can be a badge of honor. In others, it's almost a term of derision.

Trying to move the volume of products we're talking about from place to place to get it ultimately into the customer's hands, to price these items, to market these items, I think the retail business is incredibly complex. But if you get it right, it's a beautiful thing.

I want to be known as a great businessman,

I'm not from a retail background, but I am a shopper.

This idea of anticipation is key to investing and to business generally. You can't wait for an opportunity to become obvious. You have to think, "Here's what other people and companies have done under certain circumstances. Now, under these new circumstances, how is this management likely to behave?"

The entrance strategy is actually more important than the exit strategy,