Posted on 12/27/2011 6:53:42 AM PST by Kartographer
Sears Holdings Corp. said Tuesday it will close 100 to 120 of its full-line Sears and Kmart stores as it struggles to attract shoppers. Sales for the fourth quarter are off a disappointing 5.2 percent compared with last year.
“Given our performance and the difficult economic environment, especially for big-ticket items, we intend to implement a series of actions to reduce on-going expenses, adjust our asset base, and accelerate the transformation of our business model. These actions will better enable us to focus our investments on serving our customers and members through integrated retail – at the store, online and in the home,” said Chief Executive Officer Lou D’Ambrosio in a statement.
The company will take a fourth quarter tax-related non-cash charge of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Our Sears has a Lands End department. I buy all my girls dresses in there year round. They are the only place that sells decent clothes for girls. I don’t want my girls looking like tramps and I don’t have time to run from store to store to dig through garbage to find one gem. I’ll have to go strictly to online shopping for them if our store closes.
IMO, Sears went downhill shortly after they became the “softer side of Sears”.
Apparently Sears needs to copy A&F and Hollister and have shirtless models hang out in the lobby of the their stores.
No lines at Hardees here in mid America. Food not bad either.
The economy continues to improve and Obama’s approval is moving up quickly.
We’re in great shape!
I won’t be surprised if my local Sears (Shoreline, WA) is on the “close” list. It’s a two-story building that often seems to have only 10-12 customers in the entire store. It’s had a “going-out-of-business” feel for years, just like the local Denny’s. (One of the two local Denny’s has already closed.)
The demise of Sears was foreseen long ago. It started when Sears stopped being a consumer oriented business and wanted to become a huge conglomerate.
They did this by building dependency among their suppliers, then threatening to cut them off unless they slashed their prices, and then, after hurting them, to buy them out at a discount. Then while keeping the good reputation and status of that brand name, to ruin it by slashing quality.
Many good American businesses were destroyed this way, and Sears made a lot of enemies.
At the same time, Sears ended its long held a hire-to-retire policy that created strong loyalty among its employees, instead firing those with seniority and hiring cheaper replacements. So their service quality withered.
Then, much to their surprise, this started to hurt their business. Granted, those responsible had either been promoted to upper management or moved on to ruin other corporations.
But Sears was ready to blame everybody but themselves for their decline. The big merger with KMart, of a failing business bought up by another failing business, was just the icing on the cake.
Yet it is a long, slow, terminal illness that afflicts Sears and will eventually kill it. A tragedy, really, but that’s what you get when you hold management vipers to your breast.
That is because Burger King puts everything in the Microwave. They did that with me with my burger years ago and has never been there since.
“The unemployed buy nothing or far less than normal. “
I’m glad you repeated that several times. Its a fact a lot of people apparently ignore or don’t factor in.
My wife buys some things from Lands End like the slippers she gave me for Christmas. She still shops the old fashioned way, out of a print catalog using the telephone. L/E must mail us a catalog 12 times a year. I noticed Craftsman Tools in our local Ace hardware store recently.
The K-mart stores need a big overhaul in design. Even the newest one I have in my area does not look as good as my 5 Target stores and the Wal-Mart stores in the area.
K-Mart is what is holding Sears down, just like Eckerd Drugs used to do with JCPenney. The quality of the merchandise that is at Sears is much better than the quality of the stuff at K-Mart.
Some of older members here might remember the previous name of K-Mart called SS Kresge. I used to have one in a local mall just 20 feet away from the Sears anchor store.
I bought a $1200 laundry washer from sears around the 1st of Nov...now on 3rd unit ...Fairly significant problems right out of the box. They could never promise delivery dates as they have build to order (I belive Whirlpool but not sure) and the delivery people are not the manufacturer or sears people. Last one took over a month for delivery and was late several times. The instore people were very nice but would come out and say that they couldn’t get delivery any faster then a customer could get it done online/phone.
I don’t go to Burger King because as a Type II diabetic I can’t be eating 1,800 calorie meals.
Ha! Love that she shops that way. I finally showed my mom how to shop online and she had all her Christmas gifts purchased in one evening and delivered to her door several days later. She loved it! :0)
The local big mall Sears is the same way. I go there for eye exams and I am often times one of the few people prowling the aisles. The product lines and store in general look old and slightly depressing. The online shopping phenomena will kill many of the old retail giants.
As far as I know my late father had only one credit card to his name- an old 60’s looking Sears card. When I was growing up all my clothes came from either Sears or JCPenny. It’s truly a sign of the times that this icon of American consumerism is dying off.
what happened to Kmart is that they got "dirty" looking....poor merchandize layout...too crowded with stuff...and their prices really were not all that great....
Fred Meyer here on the west coast is a little bit up the food chain from the Kmarts and Walmarts...clean stores, with a supermarket attached, decent prices, and most of all, they have good coupons....
I predict the next big closing will be in the grocery dept and I predict Albertsons will close many stores...our local one can't keep up with Fred Meyer...
By the way any of you guys remember Zayers? We used to go to one in Athens Ga. years and years ago till it closed.
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