Last weekend, a story hit the Internet about the current fears of Kmart employees that they’re being asked to move all stock to the sales floor because the company is in slow-motion liquidation. The communications staff at Kmart’s parent company, Sears Holdings, realized that they had to do something when news outlets began sending them questons about the employees’ accounts. Maybe they also needed to communicate a little better with store employees. [More]
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Kmart: Stockroom Purges Are About Efficiency, Making Employees’ Jobs Easier
By 7.26.16
Kmart is not pleased with recent news reports about the chain’s imminent doom, and today posted a blog post of its own in response. The prediction of fearful employees that the chain is about to shut down is inaccurate, the chain’s leaders say, and the stockroom purges aren’t a first step toward liquidation. [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]
53-Year Kmart Employee Was There When Store Opened, Will Help Close It Down
By 6.13.16
In 1963, a young man working at a Walgreens in Illinois heard that a new discount chain called Kmart was opening a new store and looking for employees. He earned $1 per hour, and the shiny new store would pay $1.25, so he applied for a job. He began work in the maintenance department on May 15, 1963, was there when the store opened, and plans to stick around until the store’s last day of business on July 24. [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]
No, The Deals At Store Closing Sales Are Often Not That Great
By 5.19.16
When the bright “store closing” signs go up outside of a store that’s being liquidated, that’s meant to attract shoppers in search of deals. The problem, though, is that liquidation sales mean first marking items up to their original retail price, then gradually lowering them, meaning that prices are higher than they were when the “liquidation” started. [More]
Kmart And Sears Add Stores In MI, WV, IA, LA, WI, And GA To Closings List
By 5.3.16
Sears Holdings needs to make some cuts, and has been closing its stores in addition to taking on roommates and cutting back on corporate staff. In addition to the 50 or so store closings that Sears Holdings announced locally at the beginning of the year and the 78 store closings that the company announced two weeks ago, today the news broke that three additional Kmart stores will close in Georgia, Michigan, and West Virginia. [More]
Kmart’s “Plants For Life” Guarantee Doesn’t Cover Rogue Lawnmowers, “Acts Of God”
By 5.3.16 — Updated: 6.2.17
If you’re the kind of person who can kill a plant just by looking at it, Kmart’s “Plants for Life” guarantee might sound like the solution to your brown thumb: the retailer is offering a lifetime guarantee on its trees, shrubs, and perennials that gives a customer a replacement or store credit if their plant dies before its time. Claiming that replacement, however, means first clearing your plant from a slew of plant-death scenarios included in the offer’s fine print. [More]
Sears Holdings Will Close Additional 68 Kmart Stores, 10 Sears Stores
By 4.22.16
In their recent rounds of store closings, Sears Holdings tried something new: they announced them to the stores’ local news outlets, but didn’t release a nationwide list of stores slated to close. We started compiling our own list based on local news stories and reader tips at the beginning of this year. Late Thursday, Sears Holdings announced an additional 78 store closings, and saved us some work by putting out a national list. Scheduled to close in this round are 65 Kmarts, 3 Super K stores, and ten Sears stores. [More]
Sears Holdings Plans At Least 4 More Kmart Store Closures In May
By 3.2.16
After a tough year of losing half a billion dollars less than they did in 2014, Sears Holdings, parent company of Sears and Kmart, announced plans to close about 50 stores in the coming months. What the company no longer does is send out big announcements with lists of stores slated for closure, instead submitting local closings to local news outlets. That’s cool, but we’re a national news outlet that likes to pay attention to national trends, so we compiled a list for anyone who is interested. [More]
Yes, There Really Is A Dentist’s Office In A Kmart In Miami
By 2.26.16
We learned about Kmart Dental in Florida from reader Jason, who sent us a link and noted that it “has got to be the oddest thing inside of a Kmart anywhere.” We don’t know whether it holds any strangeness records, but a dentist’s office inside a discount store is pretty unusual. We wondered how they ended up there, and whether Kmart dental offices were a common thing that we had just never heard of, so we called them up and asked. [More]
Kmart Buys Closeouts From Liquidating Companies To Offer More Tempting Deals
By 2.17.16
Maybe they got the idea from their own store closing sales. Kmart announced today that it is seeking out a new type of merchandise in hope of finding more fabulous deals. It wants to compete with retailers like Big Lots and Ollie’s by purchasing dirt-cheap merchandise from liquidating companies. The chain’s president, Alasdair James, says that the retailer wants to offer its customers “truly brag-worthy” and “extreme-value deals.” [More]
Stock Analyst: Sears Is No Longer ‘Viable As A Retailer’
By 2.10.16
You might not realize it when looking at our coverage, but we aren’t cheering for Kmart and Sears, the stores of Sears Holdings, to go out of business. The company’s continued survival is impressive, and sort of a surprise, but one stock analyst thinks that the company won’t survive without doing something drastic. [More]
Sears Holdings To Accelerate, Expand Planned Store Closings
By 2.9.16
The only bit of good news in the most recent financial report from Sears Holdings, parent company of Sears and Kmart, is that the sibling stores had better sales during the holiday season than last year, and not just because they kicked off Christmas in mid-September. Unfortunately, the news isn’t very good other than that: the company is still losing money in its retail business, and plans to speed up its planned store closings. [More]
The Pilot Of NBC’s ‘Superstore’ Was Filmed Inside A Real Kmart
By 2.8.16
What happens when a TV production team wants to make a show set in a big-box discount store, but can’t build an entire store set because they’re only filming a pilot episode? To film “Superstore,” a new (and funny) show on NBC, they lightly remodeled a Kmart store in Burbank, California, and used it as their set… while the store remained open. [More]
If You Pass Out While Shoplifting, Medical Personnel Will Notice Your Hidden Stuff
By 1.26.16
It might seem like stuffing merchandise under your clothing and then passing out in a store is a solid method for shoplifting without being noticed, but this is not true. When a woman who passed out twice in a Utah Kmart store was taken to the hospital, medical personnel noticed that she had Kmart merchandise hidden under her clothes. [AP] [More]
If Kmart And Sears Stores Close Without A National Press Release, Does Anyone Notice?
By 1.13.16
Last week, department store chain Macy’s announced its holiday season results and its plans to close 40 stores in the coming months. Shoe retailer Finish Line announced plans to close 150 stores by the year 2020. Yet what you never hear about in the national news anymore is how many stores Sears Holdings, corporate parent of Sears and Kmart, is planning to close, even as they continue to shut down underperforming stores. [More]
