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 holdings
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]
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 And Kmart Will Sell Returned Merchandise By The Pallet To Other Businesses
By 3.8.16
When you return stuff to a store or in particular to an online store, generally it doesn’t end up back on the shelf. It ends up part of a collection of other returned items, which are sold at a discount to retailers specializing in closeouts. If you’re a businessperson who needs a truckload of baby stuff or watches, this may be your chance. [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]
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]
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]
Kmart Expands Layaway Program, Hopes You’ll Trust Them This Year
By 9.10.15
Layaway is a very simple transaction: you pick out an item, a store puts it aside, and you make payments on it until you’ve paid it off and you can bring it home. It was a dying retail tradition when tightening credit markets and a massive recession led stores, notably discount retailers Kmart and Walmart, to bring it back. This year, Kmart wants customers who may no longer have a local store to use layaway plans to buy holiday gifts. [More]
Sears Hires Experienced Consumer Appliance Executive To Run Hardlines, Maybe Sell Stuff
By 8.25.15
In a department or discount store, “hardlines” refers to tools, appliances, and furniture: the items that your parents still shop at Sears for, but that you don’t. Sears has hired a new executive in charge of their hardlines departments, which include the company’s three most important house brands: Kenmore appliances, Diehard automobile batteries, and Craftsman tools. [More]
Sears Holdings Reports First Profit Since 2012, Not From Actual Retailing
By 8.20.15
We’ve had a longtime joke here at Consumerist that Sears Holdings isn’t actually a retail company, but an advanced anti-capitalist prank pretending to run a retail company. We expected the company to either turn things around or go out of business. What’s happening instead is something that some retail observers had predicted: the company is profitable for the first time in years, but only because it sold a few hundred million dollars’ worth of stores. [More]
Sears Holdings Comparable-Store Sales Down More Than 10% In Last 3 Months
By 8.3.15
In all of our reporting on the recent woes of Sears Holdings, the real message is that we want Sears to stage a comeback and return to the retail greatness of decades past. Yet things don’t look very promising over at Sears HQ, and today the department store chain announced that its sales across comparable stores have fallen more than 10% in the last quarter. [More]
Sears Leadership Still Convinced That Rewards Program Will Save The Company
By 6.8.15
Shop Your Way Rewards is not a difficult program to join. The process consists of giving your e-mail address to a cashier at Sears or Kmart, and…that’s pretty much it. It doesn’t cost anything. Yet the leadership of Sears Holdings Corporation remains fixed on the program and the idea of having “members” rather than customers, and we still can’t figure out why. [More]
Sears Shareholders Sue, Claim CEO Is Stripping Company For Parts
By 6.1.15
For many years here at Consumerist, we developed a theory that the venerable department store Sears was secretly a vast anti-capitalist prank, which actively avoided selling merchandise. Its goal was something else: perhaps waiting for the retail real estate market to turn around and cash in the land and buildings that it owns. A group of Sears Holdings shareholders are starting to think the same thing, and they’ve filed a lawsuit against the company and its manifesto-writing CEO, Eddie Lampert. [More]
Sears Pension Fund Requires Cash Infusions From Sears
By 4.15.15
Sears really didn’t need any more problems, financial or otherwise. Yet the company does have a problem that doesn’t involve its loss of $1.7 billion last year, run-down stores, fleeing customers, and alleged problems with suppliers? The company’s employee pension plan also isn’t doing very well, which has been another drain on the company’s finances. [More]
Sears Holdings Lost $1.7 Billion In 2014, Considers This An Improvement
By 2.26.15
Sears Holdings has many assets: mostly, stores in malls that are slumping toward irrelevance, and strong brand recognition and loyalty among Americans over age 50 or so. The company is fighting to stay in business, and current efforts like offering Sears Canada stock to investors and selling stores to a real estate investment trust and leasing them back are part of that effort. Is all of this working? Well, Sears leadership sounds optimistic. [More]
Credit-Swap Traders Think Sears Will Fail In The Next Year
By 2.19.15
Credit default swaps are a confusing concept, since some forms resemble gambling on the failure of a company without even owning any stock in it. As a consumer, especially if you’re someone who likes to shop at Sears, you should know that now that Radio Shack has declared bankruptcy, the hot retailer that credit swap traders are betting will fail is Sears. [More]
