When you own more than 25% of Sears, it gets you a seat on the retailers’ board of directors and gives you the opportunity to help steer the company in the right direction. So what does it say about Sears Holdings that its former second-largest investor has decided to liquidate the mutual fund that includes Sears, and vacate its seat at the table? [More]
eddie lampert
Bankrupt Sears Canada Asks Court For Permission To Liquidate, Shut Down
By 10.10.17
Like its American cousin, Sears Canada is in financial trouble. Unlike Sears Holdings, it doesn’t have a vast real estate portfolio that it can sell to raise cash. To that end, the company announced today that there is no way to keep the business going, and it will close all stores and liquidate. [More]
Sears Holdings CEO Lends Company Another $200M To Stay Afloat
By 7.18.17
As other retailers around it go out of business or reorganize, Sears Holdings, parent company of Kmart and Sears, is still in business somehow. Why? Those other chains don’t have what SHC does: A massive base of stores that it owns and can sell, and a CEO able to lend the company a few hundred million here and there. [More]
43 More Sears And Kmart Stores Are Closing: Is Yours On The List?
By 7.7.17
Sears Holdings, parent company of Sears and Kmart, announced today that it plans to close down another 43 stores. As with previous rounds of closings, Kmart stores dominate the list, with 35 stores in 21 states set to turn their blue lights out forever. [More]
Sears Could Stay Afloat… If It Had A Few Dozen More Tool Brands To Sell Off
By 5.25.17
Given all the doom and gloom headlines about Sears Holdings Corporation, you might be surprised to hear that the company turned a profit last quarter. Until you realize that the only reason Sears didn’t lose money is because it sold its once-beloved Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker. [More]
Sears CEO Says Suppliers Are Taking Advantage Of “Dire Predictions” About Retailer
By 5.15.17
Eddie Lampert, the manifesto-writing chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings, really wishes that members of the media would quit reporting that his company is imminently doomed. Why? The news reports are causing problems in the retailer’s negotiations with its suppliers. [More]
Sears CEO Eddie Lampert Wishes Everyone Would Stop Using The B-Word
By 5.10.17 — Updated: 6.13.17
Look, shoppers and members of the media. Eddie Lampert, the chairman, chief executive officer, and biggest shareholder in Sears Holdings Corporation, owner of Sears and Kmart, wants us to stop using the “B” word when talking about the company, because it spooks suppliers and shoppers. That word, of course, is “bankruptcy.” [More]
Here’s How CEO Eddie Lampert Could Survive A Sears Bankruptcy Just Fine
By 3.23.17
Edward S. Lampert is the manifesto-writing chairman, CEO, and biggest shareholder of Sears Holdings. Lampert’s hedge fund keeps lending the flailing retailer money, but if the parent company of Sears and Kmart doesn’t manage to escape its death spiral, Lampert won’t lose everything. [More]
Sears CEO Tells Employees Things Look Great After Losing $2.2 Billion In 2016
By 3.9.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
Years ago, Sears Holdings chairman Eddie Lampert came to our attention by publishing a 15-page manifesto about pretty much everything. Since then, Lampert has taken on the job of CEO, despite not having any experience in the retail business and having what at times seems like an active dislike of the retail business. He periodically issues mini-manifestos for employees and for the public about how everything is fine, and published another this morning. [More]
Sears Lays Off 130 Corporate Employees, Still Hoping To Escape Death Spiral
By 2.23.17
Sears Holdings, the parent company of Sears and Kmart, had a pretty bad year in 2016. The duo of once-mighty retailers is now locked in a death spiral, selling its real estate, its own iconic brands, and closing stores to stay afloat. And now Sears Holdings is laying off 130 corporate employees. [More]
Sears Holdings Outlines New Plan To Escape Death Spiral
By 2.10.17
Everyone except chairman and CEO Eddie Lampert thinks that Sears Holdings is in an inescapable death spiral, as the company sells its brands and real estate and lays off employees. Today, the company outlined plans for the near future that are more of the same: selling more real estate, selling off more key Sears brands, and depending on the Shop Your Way rewards program and e-commerce when the customers it still has aren’t especially interested in either. [More]
7 Things We Learned About Sears Holdings’ Apparent Death Spiral
By 1.9.17
According to Eddie Lampert, CEO and Chairman of Sears Holdings, the company is in the middle of a “transformation” into a profitable enterprise that integrates online and offline retail. Yet everyone from former high-ranking executives to anyone who has ever set foot in a Kmart says the retailer is in an inescapable death spiral. [More]
Sears And Kmart Pretend To Run A Retail Business For Another Quarter
By 12.8.16
Sears Holdings, the company that owns Sears and Kmart, is focused on “restoring profitability,” but so far the only method that the massive department store chain has found to do that since 2012 is by selling its stores to an affiliated real estate investment trust. Sears has a lot more real estate to sell, and could keep this charade up for a while yet. Will it? [More]
As Sales Continue To Drop, Sears Borrows $300 Million From Its Own CEO
By 8.25.16
As more shoppers go online — or turn to retailers that don’t feel like they’ve just given up — same-store sales at Sears and its corporate kin Kmart have continued to sink, leading the once-great department store chain to borrow $300 million from the hedge fund owned by none other than Sears Holdings CEO Eddie Lampert. [More]
Kmart Employees Report Sudden Merchandise Purges, General Sense Of Doom
By 7.25.16
Kmart isn’t closing all of its stores. Nope. That’s the company’s official policy, and what they tell anyone who asks. Yes, they’re closing some stores, both gradually and in big batches, but that’s part of the company’s “transformation from a traditional, store-network based retail business model to a more asset-light, member-centric integrated retailer.” Yet some employees are quietly worried that the whole chain is about to shut down. Update: Kmart denies this report. [More]
Sears Holdings Cares More About Wall Street Than About Customers, And That’s Why It’s Doomed
By 6.16.16
Eddie Lampert, the manifesto-writing hedge fund manager who runs Sears Holdings, the company that owns Sears and Kmart, doesn’t understand retail. That’s isn’t always a bad thing in a manager: sometimes leaders with fresh perspective bring in fresh ideas. For Sears and Kmart, it’s meant over a decade of no investment in the company and the slowest liquidation and dismantling in retail history. [More]
The 5 Meanest Quotes From Report On Sad State Of Sears
By 6.3.16
Last week, Sears all but admitted that it was looking to cast off the little that remains of its identity with the possible sell-off of its signature house brands Kenmore, DieHard, and Craftsman. What the heck happened to this once-great pillar of American retail? A number of industry insiders have their theories, and they aren’t pulling punches. [More]
Sears Loses $580 Million In Last Quarter Of 2015, Still Working On That ‘Transformation’ Thing
By 2.25.16
Earlier this week, we received an email from a reader with a tip for our Sears and Kmart store closings list. We checked it out and learned that her local Sears store was actually staying open, which took her by surprise. “It sure looked like that part of the mall was being taken down,” she wrote, relieved, mirroring many shoppers’ reactions to the continued existence of Sears and Kmart as a company. [More]
