Kmart and Sears

Walmart will gobble every retailer up until it's simply known as The Store, and everyone works there. As should be the case.

Sears disappeared "quietly" in Canada. Expect the announcement will be forthcoming.

I predicted about twenty years ago that this would happen and people around me didn't care. In another 20 years it will be just Walmart, Coke, and Disney, owning every aspect of people's entire lives .

And Google

And Amazon.

I'm sorry to Sears go - they were such a part of American for so long. My grandparents bought everything at Sears. When my grandfather returned from WW2 he and my grandmother went to Sears and bought everything they needed to set up house: washing machine, sewing machine, dishes, tools, garden equipment etc. etc. Many of those items are still exist. At one point Sears was the LARGEST RETAILER IN THE WORLD. Just think about that.

They really didn't have to go away. Sears was as American as you could get and they had tremendous goodwill from the American public. Just short-sited mismanagement. Sad.

The Sears wish book at Christmas time was a tradition for me as a kid in the 80’s!

I still shop at Kmart on occasion as there’s one near me. But their prices are not competitive and the store itself is usually a mess. I like that they have a relatively decent hardware section since Target doesn’t bother with one.

The Kmart where in my small town is mostly empty. Just a few employees. It's a huge store and I'm sure will be closing soon. I think the only people that visit them regularly are shoplifters. The store is empty - they must just walk around and take what they want.

It is still ridiculous to me, that Sears who practically invented at home shopping could not figure out how to sell on the web. I predict that eventually the company will go bankrupt, and all the stores will close. Someone will buy the name out of the bankruptcy, and it will either return as mail-order and web retailer, like Montgomery Wards, or Carlos Slim will buy the rights and open stores in highly Hispanic areas, since he owns Sears Mexico, which appears to be the only Sears that is doing well.

That interesting the Sears Mexico is doing well. I wonder why? Mexico has Walmart and Home Depot and all the other big box so I guess Sears found some sort of niche. I wonder if the stores return a healthy profit or they're just low-end and hanging on.

Sears is drowning in debt - I think I read that their most valuable asset was all their real-estate - even though much of it is leased. (I don't know how this works. Can a lease be sold?)

R11 It is probably because SEARS Mexico was sold to Carlos Slim and therefore wasn't bled dry by Eddie Lampert.

Sears owns Kmart, OP.

Blame Amazon

I wouldn't be to sure of the long range prospects of Walmart or Target either. I think the age of the supercenter is drawing to a close (at least in them building new ones). JCPenney is all but dead too. Kohls? Macys? A matter of time. Amazon will be like the central state owned department store in the Soviet union.

Walmart is rolling with punches. The have piles and piles of money and I'm guessing they will stay relevant. Their online site is big and very comprehensive. Good prices.

I agree r15 Target seems to have peaked. A few years ago it was fun to shop at Target. Now it's still busy but they seem to have come down a notch or two.

Kmart and Sears were not killed. Their destruction was self-inflicted by horrible management. Sears could have been Walmart, Target, Macy's or Amazon. If they had moved their focus to an online catalog business, they absolutely could have been Amazon. Sears had a long history of selling everything that people wanted by mail order. The management made very bad business decisions. It's a cop-out and false statement to say they were the victim of the retail environment.

The difference is R6 that the minds who established and grew Sears died off, and whoever was promoted or hired over the years to run it simply did for their own financial gain.

They're both dying, no doubt.

It's been to our benefit so far that it's been a slow death. If Sears completely goes under, as is suspected to happen later this year or early next year, it's very likely that collapse could trigger a recession.

You may think "Sears? Nah!" And the stores may not be all that profitable, sure. But the single most valuable part of Sears/Kmart at this time is its real estate holdings. And that could really throw the economy into at least a small tailspin, if not trigger a larger series of aftershocks.

[quote] Whoever was promoted or hired over the years to run it simply did for their own financial gain.

Eddie Lampert raped the company of its value and killed it.

[quote] I think I read that their most valuable asset was all their real-estate - even though much of it is leased.

Most of the older stores had some company ownership stake. I'm not sure when that changed - it certainly became smarter tax wise to lease back the store from the 80s forward, but some older stores are still company owned.

A lot of the smaller stores and some of the older mall stores, for sure.

The leased only stores have been among the first to close.

Sears in Hicksville, Long Island NY closed recently, leaving a massive building empty, a massive parking lot, along with Sears Auto which is in the far corner of the lot. It has to be quite valuable real estate if for its size alone.

I hope the end of K-Mart doesn't mean the end of the Jaclyn Smith Collection.

R19, you really think it would trigger a recession? Not a single person shops at these stores already and they’re operating at a massive loss. How could it cause a recession to cut the cord and get rid of them? Wouldn’t it allow Targets and Walmarts (and amazon) to come in and fill the gap?

Is Long Island's economy all that? Doesn't seem so on my visits to the in-laws - run down, high taxes. Even Wegmans isn't interested (that Sears location would be a goldmine for them) and we know how bad LI supermarkets suck. Around here in Atlanta I'm not even sure which Sears stores are open anymore. You hear they're closing this one or that one and then I can't remember what's still open (not that there is a reason to go anyway). I can see the big Sears in Santa Monica or whatever being valuable, but no one is looking for department store mall anchor spots any longer.

R23 You are missing the point - it's not the business they do, it's the value of the real estate.

What's a Kmart and Sears?

Kmart and Sears are the same company, if one goes the other goes.

The Sears in the small town I grew up in was overpriced and only sold stuff old people were interested in. Even the staff there were snooty and rude to anybody under 50 as if they forgot they were working in a mall. I was not sad to see it go.

The latest list of stores to close are closing in November, which makes no sense to me. Most stores regardless of who they are, only make enough money in November and December to make them profitable for the year. These stores have been racking losses all year and now that the prime shopping time is coming around they are closing them. The management should be taken out and shot.

The Sears stores closing in November 2018

Golf Mill Shopping Center, 400 Golf Mill Ctr, Niles, Illinois

Cape Cod Mall, 793 Iyannough Rd., Rte. 132, Hyannis, Massachusetts

Eastern Hills Mall, 4545 Transit Rd, Williamsville, New York

The Mall at Fairfield Commons, 2727 Fairfield Commons, Beavercreek, Ohio

San Jacinto Mall, 1000 San Jacinto Mall, Baytown, Texas

Broadway Square, 4701 S Broadway Ave, Tyler, Texas

Grand Central Mall, 500 Grand Central Ave, Vienna, West Virginia

The Kmart stores closing in November 2018

1500 Fitzgerald Dr, Pinole, California

6865 Hollister Ave, Goleta, California

635 Dutchess Turnpike, Poughkeepsie, New York

6626 Metropolitan Avenue, Middle Village, New York

4251 John Marr Drive, Annandale, Virginia

thank God for Internet shopping. I can't stand crowded stores full of assholes anymore

In my opinion, Sears had the best employees. They were commissioned sales people. They changed from full time to part time and that began the their decline.

Shopping is basically a chore as in a dull a pita. Having to trudge through ugly aisles of dumb crap doesn't help matters.

Kmart and Sears have both offered depressing shopping experiences for well over a decade. Stores look like they are closing, even if they are not. Dirty, under-stocked, and poorly staffed, they make one wonder if there is some convoluted plan that makes it make more financial sense to run them into the ground than to maintain them.

The main problem is Eddie Lampert....the majority shareholder/CEO. He is a the most disgusting, vile, greedy mother fucking cunts out there. I worked at the Canadian Sears. Not many years ago, we have half a billion in cash flow in the bank and no debt. Today, 18 000 people lost there job this year, the pension plan was $250 million dollars short and yet billions have been given to the shareholders. This has been going on for years......cock sucking us dry to fund and line is own pockets. Now that he has done a trial run with Canada, he is doing the same with Sears America....piece by piece, he will sell it off. He is a heartless son of a bitch and doesn't give a fuck about anyone but himself. He'd fuck his own mother over. He will lie to make himself look good, but he is taking Sears and Kmart down

Shares were selling at 78 cents yesterday??? What’s the point of even trying to keep the business afloat at this point? Close 11 more stores. 20 more stores. 16 more after that. It’s death by 1000 cuts.

Do they honestly believe that if they go down to 50 stores that things will suddenly be great and they will turn a profit?

I dunno, remember when bookstores were predicted to be gone due to Amazon? Sure, lots did go, but the ones that were able to stay afloat (likely due to their loyal customersJ seem to be doing okay now. The ones in my town are usually crowded. I browse a lot on line but don’t buy much any more. The products are usually disappointing and the filtering is for shit.

I don't get the argument that Sears real value these days is it's "real estate". Almost none of the Sears where I've lived were standalone stores. Most of them were in malls. Malls which themselves are dead, if not completely abandoned. Many of these dead malls are now being torn down in recent years. I thought the stores themselves leased the space from the malls, they never "owned" their spaces, and even if they did, who in the heck would want to go to a store with a dead mall attached to it?

One thing I will miss about the "Super K" where I lived when I first moved out on my own in 2001 - they had a relatively full grocery section. Their prices were just as cheap as Wal-Mart in most cases (at least as for what I bought regularly), but nobody shopped there, so I could do my grocery shopping in total peace. It wasn't packed with your typical trashy circus freak Wal-Mart customers, and the checkout lines were more or less non existent. Oh and it was easy to find a parking spot too, lol.

"The Sears wish book at Christmas time was a tradition for me as a kid in the 80’s!"

I loved the fat Christmas catalogs by Sears and J. C. Penney. I was dazzled by them as a child; they really were "wish" books, so much a part of Christmas.

There used to be 6 full line Sears stores in St. Louis City and St. Louis County. The one in Northwest Plaza was huge, with over 300,000 square feet (the average Walmart Super Center is about 180,000 sq. ft.)

Today there are none.

R24 Next to Hicksville is Westbury which is saturated with every stool imaginable along with Garden city which is where the Roosevelt Field Mall is. Any recession which may have happened in the past three decades has not affected these areas. They build more and more stores. It's insane. Every time you think they're done building stores, more stores. So who knows what will happen with the Sears Hicksville location, which happens to sit directly across from the Broadway Mall and IKEA, but without a doubt it'll be more shopping or high-end condos which have also become a "thing" in Westbury/Garden City. Although property taxes on Long Island are astronomical, Long Islanders have lots ove money to spend to keep all of these stores open. Good economy.

I just came across this article on the Hicksville Long Island Sears location. Shopping, apartments, and theater.

[quote]Next to Hicksville is Westbury which is saturated with every stool imaginable

That sounds like it's really shitty.

There are a lot of stand-alone Sears stores around.

Oops, sorry, store

The media has been doing both stores obits for a few years now, so who knows? February 2017 we noticed our king-size bed mattress failing. We didn't sleep together anymore, so I went junking and found a fabulously ornate iron double bed for $300. I went to Sears and got a new mattress and box springs. Since I bought my last Sears mattress in 1994, I've noticed Sears has made both the mattress and box springs thicker. This bed is very comfortable, but now I have a 2-step thing that keeps me from falling out when I get in. The Sears store I bought the mattress at closed this summer. As someone earlier said, very soon it's going to be WalMart or Amazon, and that's it.

Amazon has taken over the world..

The last mattress I bought was on amazon. A tempurpedic type that came in a bag. I love it and see no need to ever buy a mattress anywhere else again.

It’s hard to think of a reason to buy much of anything at physical store anymore except for produce and some other food stuffs. Amazon just makes it so easy.

R49 There are many things that I just cannot/will not by over the internet, I want to touch it, look it over, try it on, or try it out, before I purchase it, and a mattress is one of those items. Also, what happened to people? Shopping is not a chore, but a thrilling adventure, especially searching the clearance racks and finding that one great bargain, that is perfect for you, or as a gift for someone special.

r38 Sears developed and owned a lot of malls during their heyday. I'm sure the real estate has all been sold or spun off by now, however.

All your base are belong to us.

Who cares? I shop at Bloomingdale's.

The K-mart in the town where I grew up looked like a going-out-of business sale ten years ago. Empty shelves, no inventory, disorganized and understaffed...I'm surprised they lasted this long.

R22 Hopefully her Bootsie Gumdrops line comes out before they go under.

Tim Allen researched and wrote bits for his early standup (esp. MEN ARE PIGS) based on the Tools section of Sears, even giving them shout-outs in his final filmed shows. The clip I linked shows young Tim vlogging an 80s Sears; chuckling over the names of hammers & wrenches & saws & sanding belts, and trying to charm Security out of tossing him to the kerb (the young Security guy who clocks them is easily bribed with comedy tickets).

HOME IMPROVEMENT was of course the result of this.

Strangely though, Tim went on to do commercials for K-Mart and not his beloved Sears....

[quote]Shopping is not a chore, but a thrilling adventure, especially searching the clearance racks and finding that one great bargain, that is perfect for you, or as a gift for someone special.

A gift from r50:

Sears has been screwed for decades. Sears used to be one of the old time stores where everyone in management was required to work in the floor during the Christmas season so that they had a sense of that customers wanted and how the store worked (or didn't work). In the 80s that changed to having management be as isolated as possible from the actual store so management could make decisions based on numbers, not people.

Then Sears got into the credit card business. In the late 80s, they actually said that they were in the credit business, retail was just a sideline. This is where the stores really began to suffer. Since then, actual retail has never been the focus of the company. Basically, for the last 30 years, they having been living off the Craftsman tools and Kenmore lines, which had enormous brand loyalty, but even those loyal customers will only take so much.

[quote]Target seems to have peaked. A few years ago it was fun to shop at Target. Now it's still busy but they seem to have come down a notch or two.

Target seems to have developed a problem with their supply chain in the last few years - at the two near me, it's ridiculous how often they run out of some basic item and then don't restock for weeks or even months. As horrible as Walmart is, when you go one week and they're out of something, if you check back the next week they almost always have restocked.

Sears sold their Craftsman tools line to Stanley Black & Decker, and now you can buy Craftsman tools at both Lowe's and Sears. Lowe's even honors the famous lifetime guarantee, replacing a Craftsman tool even if you bought it at Sears. So there's no longer a compelling reason to go into Sears any more.

Why do people like Amazon? All they have is junk.

I don't get the big deal about on-line shopping and why people love it so. If I want a book to read, I go to the store and get it TODAY! If I order it on Amazon (today, Saturday), it won't arrive until Tuesday at the earliest, unless I pay an exorbitant shipping fee that is more than the cost of the book). That's progress?

And I won't even consider buying pants, shoes or anything that requires a good fit on-line. When I leave the store, I want that shit to fit right and don't want to go through the hassles of returning on-line bought stuff.

I stopped by Kmart earlier this summer to buy some Cambridge legal pads and was surprised they were two dollars cheaper than Amazon's price.

R58, credit was also the downfall of another retail chain, W.T. Grants. In the '70s, when Grants stores began to see a drop business, they decided that a really good way to up sales would be to offer store credit cards to all customers who shopped there. Trouble was they didn't bother to do credit checks on anyone!

Off topic but the security guy who interrupts Tim Allen in that video is 80s pornstache hot. Go to 3:10.

Add Mattress Firm to the list of troubled retailers - they may file bankruptcy and closed 700 of their useless locations soon.

"There are many things that I just cannot/will not by over the internet, I want to touch it, look it over, try it on, or try it out, before I purchase it."

I'm the same way. But people are lazy slugs these days who don't want to get out of their chair to go anywhere to get anything. They want to order everything online and have everything sent to them so they don't have to move their fat asses anywhere.

[quote]"There are many things that I just cannot/will not by over the internet, I want to touch it, look it over, try it on, or try it out, before I purchase it."

Like rentboys.

I miss book and CD stores.

There’s a high end furniture store I’ve liked for decades near me. The last time I was there, much of their inventory was 7+ years old and there were no customers in the store. The saleswoman blamed the internet. Even still, she was as much of a pompous cunt as she was seven years ago when she had customers. So, no wonder, I guess.

"Sears has everything!"

Including imminent death.

R64, Sears did do credit checks. I used to have Thanksgiving every year with the composer John Kander. A friend needed a lawnmower; so we went to Sears. As a lark we all applied for a Sears card. The only one that was turned down was the one for John Kander, the guy who wrote New York, New York. (the truth is that they probably thought that he would use his gold/platinum/titanium or whatever they had in the 1980s AmEx rather than a Sears card. )

I will recommend Kenmore appliances til the day I die. My A/Cs are all quieter and perform better than the GE models. My clothes washer/dryer is 25 years old with no service. My dishwasher is 20 years old, also no service. Can’t beat it.

Sears created the Discover Card. I think they sold that division a few years ago.

R65 Tim Allen is never OT when it comes to Sears.

Sears once actually released a line of tools under a 'Tim Allen' brand, I recently learned. Many of the available tools were kids'/craft-related (marketed as toys/merch for HOME IMPROVEMENT), but there were also several heavy duty items sold to adults for legitimate home maintenance purposes like big wrenches and hammers and a fullsize drill.

I assume the company still own The Sears Centre, IL?

Just last month a huge wrestling event played there to a sold-out +1k crowd.

R75 I'm pretty sure that involves naming rights, not ownership.

When they sold the naming rights to the Sears Tower that's when you really knew it was over. They really let themselves go. BTW Sears becoming an Amazon wouldn't have worked without creating a separate online business under a new name. People already had the perception of Sears as a sad company by the late 90s. Amazon was a fresh online bookstore that expanded to the conglomerate of today. People wouldn't jump at the opportunity to shop on Sears online, it would need a new name. But it could have happened.

Nothing lasts forever

[quote] People wouldn't jump at the opportunity to shop on Sears online

They could have done some version of "Make your Macbook your Wishbook." I know the Macbook was not introduced until 2006, but they could have done something. In fact, using the familiarity of the Sear catalog would have probably got another, older, demographic doing internet purchases earlier than they did.

Only the Poors shop at these dire places.

Poor r80. So perceptive of the obvious.

There was a sidebar discussion about mattresses above. Just a few days ago, MattressFirm (formerly Sleepy's) announced that it was filing for bankruptcy and closing its stores. You can still try out and buy mattresses at JCPenneys.

What's happening to retail is really sad. To stay in business, even the cheapest stores are investing a lot of money in their appearance. You see a lot of wood floors, carefully designed displays and decorations, thoughtful lighting. It's not just rows and rows of pegboard under fluorescent lights any more like it was in the 80s. But still it doesn't seem to be enough. Amazon offers same-day delivery in some areas, too.

Well, if no one's going shopping, then where are all the cars on the road headed? Traffic is still hell on the weekends.

The thing that killed Sears for me years ago was the fact that they charged for shipping EVEN IF you waited weeks for them to ship it to your local store for pickup. It was like adding insult to injury... you had to wait, AND they basically charged you for the deficiencies of your local store.

Sears should have spun off Craftsman/Kenmore as a retailer selling just those brands.

The Sears name was tarnished years ago... but not their appliances.

R82, I would love to know where you shop, because I do not see national chains putting money into brick and mortar stores. It seems as if stores are an inconvenient side-line to internet sales. I can no longer count the number of times I have been told that something is not in the store but can be ordered online.

Absolutely agree, R85.

I recently needed a book ASAP. I saw it on amazon for a good price, but decided this was necessary enough to walk over to B&N and pay a little extra to get it now.

I didn’t see the book on the shelf and when asked a worker if they had it, he snapped at me that they don’t keep it in stock at the store but I could order it online and have it delivered to the store for pick up. How is that any different than amazon, where the price was much better?

Amazon delivered the book two days later.

A lot of the Sears Kenmore appliances were produced by Whirlpool/Maytag.

The downfall of Sears must be the only topic DL has in common with forums like GlockTalk.

Apparently no matter your political stance or particular concern for civil liberties, there's still a universal consensus that the Craftsman brand crashed & burned in the '90s. On this EGs and weird gun-toting hetero DH stand united.

[quote] R87: A lot of the Sears Kenmore appliances were produced by Whirlpool/Maytag.

IIRC, these are all owned by the same umbrella company and are essentially the same products. Consider as “compainion” brands. The dirty secret of appliances is that even “competing” brands are sometimes manufactured in the same plant.

Likewise, recently, Milanta liquid antacid was removed from stores because there was contamination found in the manufacturing equipment and/or some other issue. So why was Maloxx also removed from stores? Because it was made at the same plant, too, dispute different brand owners.

Amazon hasn't done a damn thing that Sears didn't pioneer. The only difference between Sears and Amazon is computers.

Huge regional distribution centers? Sears had them as early as the 1920's. There was one here in Philly on Roosevelt Boulevard and it was a huge, multi-storied monolith (over 12 million square feet under roof) that could be seen for miles. It was only one of many scattered across the country.

Pick up merchandise. Not only could you pick up catalogue ordered merchandise in regular Sears stores, there were specific catalogue stores where you could order stuff and have it sent there for pick up or delivered to your home. These catalogue stores were located in neighborhood strip malls.

Sears catalog sold everything, not just clothes and appliances, which is why the damn thing weighed at least 5 pounds. Bathroom tub surrounds, foam bolsters, and kitchen cabinets are just some of the things I ordered from them.

Maintaining all of this enormous infrastructure and overhead is what caused Sears demise, and I predict it will eventually happen to Amazon as well.

R71, I didn't say that Sears didn't do credit checks. I was speaking about one of their competitors, WT Grant.

Sears never focused on the shipping. Free shipping over a certain amount, prime shipping in two days, amazon prime movies and TV shows. What about amazon prime now? Free delivery within two hours? Amazon music. Kindle. What about subscribe and save discounts? Did sears offer that? Did Sears sell groceries?

Amazon has done A LOT more than Sears could even imagine. They fully embraced technology.

Macy's is walking the same plank.

R89, contamination is an entirely different issue. Being made at the same plant does not mean the same product.

I had a friend whose family owned a factory that made sewing machines. They made machines for Brother, Kenmore, and Singer The sewing machines may have been made at the same factory, but they did not have the same parts, nor were they the same quality. The factory would tool up to make one brand's machines and then retool to make the other brand's machines. The two companies machines were not made at the same time using the same parts. In one instance, the machines were primarily made in China. The factory just did the minimum amount of work so the machine could be sold as "made in America".

Similarly, after much badgering, I got KitchenAide to admit that their mixers were not the same quality. The ones made for discounters are of a lesser quality so they can be sold at a lower price point. It may appear to be the same mixer with the same attachments, but unless the style number is the same, it is a different machine and possible different quality.

Back in the day, Sears even sold houses and cars.

R93, Macys and other stores that sell primarily clothes aren't in much danger from online purchases, because clothing is something that's really hard to buy online without trying on.

For one thing, there's NO size-consistency, even within one style for a brand. You can try on 17 pairs of Levi's 501 jeans that are all nominally 35/32, and 14 of them will be different... with waist sizes ranging from ~33 to 38, and seat & thigh fit that's AIL OVER the place. Wrangler is just as bad. I have a pair of 32" cargo shorts that fit fine, but 34" pairs of the same style that are too tight & 36" that fall down.

1990s-era Gap, maybe. Their consistency was legendary. If you knew you wore slim-cut 33/32 of some style, you could have literally walked into a store, bought 4 pairs sight-unseen, then gone on a trip confident that they'd ail fit perfectly when you wore them for the first time (they were also really good about pre-shrinking fabric BEFORE cutting & sewing... I'm pretty sure Levis has never shrunken-before-manufacturing, and usually doesn't do it before shipping either.

And despite "selling online", stores like Old Navy STILL don't usually have 35", and NEVER have 37"... in-store OR online. I could almost deal with waiting for shipping if the stores at least kept a "not for sale" reference pair of 35" in stock & had reliable consistency (so if the reference pair fit, you could feel confident that the shipped pair would be identical). But they don't.

The "Zappos" business model (ship a range of sizes, keep what you like, return the rest) doesn't work for clothes... too many people will wear things once and return them. It happens with retail, but is exponentially worse when people don't semi-fear being scrutinized (& possibly denied) by a face-to-face employee who's on to their game.

R89, the same applies to things like lawnmowers. A Snapper Lawnmower sold by a dealer uses stainless-steel bolts & nuts, usually with locking washers. The plastic is thicker & higher-quality. Burrs are removed, and QA is a lot more intense. The Walmart models use bolts that will rust, cheaper plastic that will bend & crack, and are a lot more variable in quality, with shorter warranties.

Ditto, for things like LCD TVs. TVs made for Walmart use lower-binned white backlight LEDs that don't have the color purity, brightness, or consistency of higher-binned LEDs used for models made for better stores. Or they'll omit "optional" components, like the 23 cents' worth of parts that would allow a TV to natively handle BOTH 60hz and 50hz content via HDMI (regardless of country or official TV standard). Or they'll omit everything except a single HDMI port, and *maybe* a composite + analog stereo inputs (vs multiple composite + s-vidso + component + S/PDIF & Toslink + HDMI ARC).

Binning differences are insidious... and might not result in a different model number or UPC. It also happens over the life of a product... the first manufacturing run or two might use higher-binned LEDs & get high reviews. Later runs have "quality fade" & use cheaper and cheaper components. That's why TVs that start out with 4 & 5 star reviews might end their lives with 1 & 2 star reviews... the later ones literally aren't as good as the earlier ones. Pro tip: the second manufacturing run is usually the best one -- they've fixed problems discovered from the first run, but haven't started the insidious cost-cutting yet. Round 3 is usually a mixed bag... fixing a few tiny issues, while introducing new ones.

Good riddance to both. I have always viewed both as white trash stores. As a “joke” for my tenth birthday, my bitch mother wrapped all of my birthday presents in Sears bags. I cried, and I’ve hated her ever since.

Shopping online directly from China is what's gonna happen.

R99, shopping directly from China has already happened. What do you think Wayfair is? Not to mention all of the "I bought my prom dress of the internet and this is what arrived" stories.

R96, what alternate universe are you posting from. Buying clothing online is a huge business. Most of the women I know never enter a store. Also, odd numbered sizes have been dead for decades (39R jacket, myself; so, I know). Increasingly, we are given the options of s,m,l rather than actual sizes.

I live in a building that has several millennial age young women, and confirm R100's comments.

Those whores shop all the time online. There's 12 packages a day coming in, and often a few per day being returned. Many sites have free shipping.

I have a friend who orders three of everything...tries them on, buys the one that fits and sends the others back.

A&P was the largest retailer in the world in the 1950's. Looked what happened to them. The same thing can happen to Walmart.

Stores come and go but the way this one was purposely pillaged and killed is particularly egregious. At one time, it was a major source of middle class jobs. Had they adapted early on, they could have flourished. Instead, the sick fuck owner used it to play out his Libertarian fantasies knowing all along (yet denying) that he was not interested in the retail part of the company’s balance sheet. It’s wreaked havoc on hundreds of communities while toying with real people’s lives

[quote] Looked what happened to them

Oh, dear.

But seriously, what is A&P and what happened?

They're going to go the way of Blockbuster and Abercrombie and Fitch. Once giants of their industry, now they're abandoned buildings where local loadies sniff lines of coke and Tiki Torchers hold secret Nazi meetings.

I like Amazon because you can literally find almost anything. Screws for the internals of my computer? Yup. Specialized screwdrivers? Got em. Used copy of a book out of print since 1994? That's listed too. Except for clothes which I want to try on before I buy, it's impossible to compete

Sears tried out this hardware-only store in the 90s-00s that was great. Perfectly in between Home Depot and True Value, and they hired helpful people and put it in convenient locations. The prices were very good given their buying power as a larger entity.

They closed them all. No idea how they managed to fuck that up.

I DO know how they fucked up "The Great Indoors" though because it actually was a case study in b-school, though Sears mostly claimed it was due to improper site selection. If you actually went to one of these places, you'd have found 1 salesperson for every 6000 square feet and no prices on anything... so not selecting the right demographic to put your store in was only half the story. Bad management & incompetence was most of it. I really liked those stores (like a Home Depot / Bed Bath Beyond hybrid), but god forbid they could figure out how to run them.

WSJ is reporting that Sears is filing for bankruptcy.

(I didn't link to the article, since WSJ has a paywall.)

awwww, this photo

[quote]If you actually went to one of these places, you'd have found 1 salesperson for every 6000 square feet and no prices on anything...

Yep. This is why I stopped going to Sears. There was never any salepeople around to ask for help. How could you sell hardware without people to point you in the right direction? Even during the holidays is was awful. I gave up.

Who gives a shit if Kmart or Sears lives on? Life is about the living.

"Good riddance to both. I have always viewed both as white trash stores."

You sound pretty white trash yourself, you little shit.

I worked security for Kmart for a brief time many years ago. Horribly mismanaged, rampant shoplifting and the employees were stealing them blind. I had to escort a vendor once and he said this place is a fucking dinosaur.

I'll miss Sears for the Craftsmen tools but I think they are still available online.

I'll miss them both. I'll miss cruising other customers, having retail staff flirt with you, pick up things on a whim.

The lines. The fucking liiinnnneeeesssss. I gave up on Sears years ago. One antique register open, which was having ongoing problem, the cash register looked to be from 1973. I tried to go to another register upstairs at the jewlery counter (the only other opened register that I could find in the whole fucking store) and was told she could ring it up there. I placed the shit down and told her to keep it. I left the store and called the manager and advised him to look for another job, his store will be closing. And it has closed. Completely mismanaged shit hole. They did it to themselves. Not to mention the ruined their Kenmore brand, which became cheap crap that didn't hold up. The single thing worth something was their tool brand, but even that, not worth those damned lines. Fuck them.

Montgomery Ward went out of business 18 years ago and now finally Sears, two old, once important names in retail that just didn't remain current. Im surprised Sears survived this long, if you ever had any interaction with their headquarters in Chicago you would know that everything they did was always imcompetent.

I shop online a lot because I don't own a car. So when I want something it has to come to me. I know that a lot of people require seeing something in person, but I don't. As long as I know what the dimensions are and as long as the merchant has a decent reputation, fuck it. Ship it to me. I've had excellent luck so far, thank goodness!

I'm more surprised by Toys 'R Us going under. You'd think there would always be parents who loved to take their children to toy stores to look around and actually see, touch, and consider their playthings, games, and such - and new parents who wanted to check out baby gadgets first hand - but I guess not. Sad.

Although - I'm old enough to still resent malls for destroyed down town areas, with little shops and mom and dad shopkeepers, and just the feel of the city, even small ones. I think malls caused a lot of urban blight. Just as sad.

We're gonna live this atomized "Jetsons" sort of life where we only do transactions online or with robots - soon. Banks seem to be closing up physical buildings and going online as well, with just atm machines and a few centers where there are loan agents (and how long will they even exist - that could all be done online as well). Ditto post offices?

What will survive? Just healthcare and tech jobs? I guess education - but universities are doing away with tenure and hiring disposable cheap adjuncts more and more, as well.

Toys R Us was the WORST. Easily in the top 10 most overpriced stores I’ve ever been in. You can buy the exact same things on amazon for a fraction of the price.

Toys 'R us didn't go bankrupt because it couldn't compete with Amazon & Walmart, it went bankrupt because corporate raiders hijacked it like pirates, then paid their own self-imposed ransoms by mortgaging it to the hilt.

Companies like Bain Capital don't take over unprofitable, over-valued companies... they take over solid, profitable companies that would be worth more as destroyed, dismembered corpses sold piecemeal on the auction block.

They take over companies like Microsoft. Huge, with so much reserve capital they could go for a hundred years without turning a profit as long as they manage to avoid hemorrhaging money. The catch is, billions of capital locked up in a company that increasingly shows signs of "corporate alzheimers" might not be "economically efficient" for shareholders, but destroying a company to wring that surplus equity OUT is rarely beneficial to anyone besides the raiders themselves.

It's a real problem that needs regulation (and/or changes to tax laws to punish it), but it's a compound problem -- figuring out what's the common element in past raids & how to define it, and having the political will to DO something about it in a way that minimizes unintended side effects on the stock market in general.

Complicating matters is the reality that most big public corporations DO eventually seem to eventually develop "corporate alzheimers". I think there might be *maybe* two dozen large American corporations that have survive more than a hundred years with their core identities relatively intact AND continue to innovate & thrive. Companies like GE or Wells Fargo are more like parasitic zombies that adopt the name of their corporate host's withered husk, but really have no historical ties to it (and sometimes, CEOs whose only qualification for "being CEO" is that they've been anointed by their financial-industry peers to BE CEOs).

I'm glad, so very glad.

Kmart employee chokes up as he makes his final announcement before the store closes permanently.

Is this manager gay? He’s kind hot in a blue collar way.

Every time I hear Americans cackle with glee that hallowed retail institutions are falling by the wayside to make way for companies like Amazon and Walmart, I just think about how we're getting the country we deserve.

Yep r125. People do this all the time with Macy's because it took over their beloved Marshall Field's or (insert name of regional department store). That ship has sailed and when Macy's goes there goes another choice we have in the market where you can actually go to a store and try things on.

Macy's is dying the slow awful death it deserves. They took those jobs away from the serious dedicated sales people and gave part time jobs to people who don't get paid enough to give a single shit. GREED. FUCK THEM.

There is only room for 2.5 budget retailers

There was WT Grant and Korvettes, the K-Mart and Zayre pushed them out. Then Venture pushed out Zayre. Then Target pushed out Venture, then Walmart pushed out KMart (the .5 refers to a small regional store or a dying one at any time).

Now we have Target and Walmart. Target will be the next to go, but not for awhile, We need another upcoming budget to throw that one into Chaos.

r128 Your logic is faulty because neither Zayre nor Venture was a national chain.

R129, by that stanard, there weren't *any* "national" chains pre-Kmart... just "regional" chains whose regions were "big cities in the US, minus California & adjacent states", or "big cities in the US, minus the Deep South (except South & Central Florida, which were kind of like New York's unofficial southernmost boroughs).

I'm not sure how far Zayre went beyond Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida... but it was in all 3 in the 70s & 80s (with some relationship between Zayre & Ames in Florida as well... Zayre on the East Coast of Florida, Ames on the West coast of Florida).

Macys? Nope. Prior to the late 90s, they were *totally* a "New York" store. They got Florida by purchasing Burdines (after Burdines bought Maas Brothers & Jordan Marsh), and got Ohio by purchasing Strauss.

Dillards? Nope. They didn't exist in the South until they bought Maison Blanche, which expanded into Florida during the 80s.

In Florida, at least, the stores that sold stuff like electronics, small appliances, and computer desks were Service Merchandise, Best (not "Best Buy", just "Best"), and Lurias. God, I bought so much shit from SM as a teen... though oddly, I don't remember them ever selling videogames or computers (Best, however, had a large computer dep't.) Ironically, K-Mart was one of Commodore's most important vendors for the c64, but it never sold ANYTHING Amiga-related. Ever. Kmart was also one of the VERY few stores that still sold videogames between "the crash" and NES-era (though consoles were seen as something for ghetto kids who couldn't afford a real computer).

Zayre was in North Carolina in the late '60s/early '70s. I had summer jobs there.

[quote]Macys? Nope. Prior to the late 90s, they were *totally* a "New York" store.

Macy's was in San Francisco and throughout northern California (and northern Nevada) beginning in 1947. And in Missouri and Kansas since 1949. Macy's was also in other parts of the country (Atlanta, Toledo, Newark) under different names well before the '60s.

The fucked up thing about saying Sears "lost" to "big box stores" is the fact that Sears IS a "big box store"' ... and WAS one, in almost every halfway nook of America... before the concept even had a name.

By all rights, Sears SHOULD have BEEN Walmart... or at least Best Buy. It had everything Amazon is trying to build up now... nationwide footprint that included the most prime retail space in America (anchoring nearly every mall, and/or standalone stores where there wasn't a mall), respected brands of its own, enormous negotiating power over vendors, its own lucrative service network & credit service. Fuck, it built & occupied the tallest skyscraper on earth for years... and people STILL call it "the Sears Tower" regardless of who owns its naming rights today.

Sears' management fucked up. Totally, at every level, from stores to CEO. If Sears had even had the foresight to MIMIC Amazon a year behind, it would be the #2 or #3 retailer in America today. Apparently, its credit service in particular was a little TOO profitable... Sears' management got to the point where it saw its stores as an annoying afterthought that distracted it from being the bank it desperately WANTED to be.

I wonder why they never started their own big-box discounter (in the years before the Kmart merger.) Some of the other big department stores did it (e.g., Dayton-Hudson: Target; May Co.: Venture; L.S. Ayres:Ayr-Way; Rich's: Richway; Rhodes: Rhodesway, JCPenney: The Treasury, etc.)

I think another problem of Sears was the HUGE disconnect between how management & shoppers saw their image.

Management: we're in every mall in America, everyone knows how great we are, we can charge somewhat premium prices with occasional good sales & consumers will flock to us!

Consumers: Sears is kind of shabby, their clothes aren't even slightly fashionable (and death to the social lives of schoolkids.. Even in kindergarten (late 70s), wearing "Toughskins" got you ridiculed, and having "Husky" prominently on the label was pouring gasoline on the fire)., and their prices aren't all that great. And if you live in a small town, they rape you on shipping that's slow & treat it as a profit center.

In alternate terms, Sears' clothing had negative fashion value, but Gap/Ambercrombie-level prices. Sears was where your mother went to buy you clothes for Christmas that you'd never, ever wear, because not even OLD fashion-oblivious people dressed THAT badly.

Walmart, in contrast, "Gets It". Their clothes have zero brand prestige, but are dirt cheap & fall within reasonable middle-class fashion norms. When I think of Sears clothing, I think, "50/50 poly-cotton, unflattering cuts, and designs that were barely ok 3-5 years ago"

During their 1960s heyday their clothing was well made and stylish. Their catalog covers showed an upscale image....even though their prices were not.

Hard to believe this was Sears

Any of you bitches get this from the 1979 Sears Wishbook?

[quote]Hard to believe this was Sears

Not for me. You can see the cheap synthetic fabric a mile away.

R139 It very well maybe a synthetic but you can't tell from that photo what that cloth is. It could be a synthetic...it could be a silk shantung.

But the point is, the image they were going for was a sophisticated one. It wasn't flannel shirts.

Sears silk shantung

Sorry to resurrect this old thread but I just discovered the Kmart at 3rd and Fairfax in LA was one of the closures last year. I didn’t ’t listed at the time so I assumed it was going to hang on a bit longer. It was a pretty much a shithole so I can’t say I’m surprised but it was always busy so I would think it was one of their more profitable stores. But I guess they’re trying to tear down the whole shopping center to build more condos. Great.

Thurd end Fehrfachs.

The only reason Sears is failing is because of that greedy asshole Eddie Lampert. Believe me, he didn't "save Sears" he is now going to sell it off bit by bit and pick the caurcus clean. He's an evil prick, with no soul

I kind of miss the old K-Mart that used to be in Wilton Manors. It was a hardcore old-school K-mart... no Target-like "Big K" or anything. It was like a quaint time warp straight out of the 1970s, when K-mart was cheap, nasty, and totally proud of it.

It was cheezy as hell but I miss the “flashing blue light special” sales.

Kmart was part of my life. I got better goods there for pennies on the dollar. They made the best fresh giant subs slathered in mustard and stuffed full of crunch sweet onions. God, I'm depressed.

For a six-month period in the oughts, I would make alarms go off when I exited some stores (and entered one store). I had no idea what was doing it until a security guard in Borders asked me to take off my shoes and see if that's what was setting off the alarm. And indeed it was.

I had gone to K-Mart with my cheapest friend and found a pair of $2 shoes I liked enough to buy—hey, two dollars for a pair of shoes; why not? Turns out the person who checked me out didn't turn off some alarm that had been manufactured into the shoe. No great loss. The insole was rotting into this lumpy mess. I went and bought a new pair of Asics, and all was well.

Ugh. K-Mart.

^ I did not buy the Asics @ K-Mart (if, in fact, that needs to be stated).

The K-Mart on 34th is always so busy whenever I walk by. I’m sure the rent isn’t cheap, but I can’t imagine they’ll ever close that store.

42 here, and I do miss the times when KMart had an arcade, a deli/ice cream section, and a restaurant.

Sears' menrooms always had high quality blue collar cock to sample!

Yeah, K-Mart's in-store restaurants were surprisingly good. The one I grew up with had BOTH a restaurant ("the Grill") at the rear AND a snackbar at the front.

Actually, that reminds me of another store: Zayre. I wasn't old enough to play them, but i remember the electro-mechanical arcade games that Zayre stores had in their entrance areas in the early/mid-1970s, with games that were a weird hybrid between mechanical games & video games.