I think the name Firestone is a bad odor, period. I would not be surprised if this were going to be the end of a long, long, long, old established company. For them to recover, it's not going to be a very easy thing to do.

I think that they reached the point where something had to happen to Burlington Coat. (CEO) Monroe Milstein was not active for quite sometime, and I think it was mostly his sons running the company. I think his sons were running out of ideas. They weren't expanding and they felt it would be too much of an effort to make the company shape up and be competitive.

We were dealing with a very cautious, very careful consumer who was not really inspired to buy anything because there wasn't anything worth buying.

I think if you've made it, why not name it?

These two companies gave a must-have lesson for all retailers, Sharper Image combed the globe for unusual and exciting products that weren't run-off-the-mill ... Retailers made the mistake of taking customers for granted and the payoff came two weeks ago in much weaker Christmas sales because of ho-hum kind of merchandise.

One word - dismal. There's nothing else to be said but absolutely dismal.