Posted on 02/23/2012 10:31:44 PM PST by Steelfish
FEBRUARY 24, 2012 In Retreat, Sears Set to Unload Stores
[Subscriber Content Preview] BY MIGUEL BUSTILLO AND DANA MATTIOLI
After seven years of trying to rebuild the iconic retailer Sears, hedge-fund manager Edward S. Lampert reversed course on Thursday, announcing that Sears Holdings Corp. will unload more than 1,200 stores in an effort to raise up to $770 million of much-needed cash.
Many on Wall Street interpreted the move as the beginning of the breakup of the company. Sears on Thursday reported a loss of more than $3 billion for 2011, and same-store sales have fallen for six straight years. The company's shares, which fell below $30 last month, rose almost 19% on Thursday to $61.80 on news of ..
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
No one goes to the mall anymore.
Their home service sucks.
More evidence that the economy is roaring back, according to Obama.
No customers do. Lots of black youth do however.
Gonna be a run on Craftsman tools.
This century’s Sears & Roebuck is Amazon.com. Sears can’t compete with Amazon and Overstock for non-brick & mortar sales, and it can’t compete with Walmart for in-store sales. It had a good run, but it’s over.
Means nothing. Sears has essentially been little more than a real estate play for years now.
OTOH, I have my own theory about the downfall of Sears and Wards, and others. They used to carry guns, ammo etc, and good well made, if somewhat plain, clothing. Then they went all "high fashion", with glitz in the store displays, and eliminated those yucky guns.. and started their long goodby.
Both Wards and Sears once had their own house brand of firearm and ammunition as well as fishing and other "outdoors" type supplies. Western Field and J.C. Higgens respectively. The nicer models from Sears were called "Ted Williams" models.
Let’s see if my math skills are still OK for a 59 year old retiree. 1200 stores; probably 200 employees per store, (part time and full time, commission, hourly and salaried). That would be 240,000 lay offs nationwide. And don’t forget the seasonal employees that now won’t get the summer/winter work. Way to go Barry.
Sears was not always in the mall, and many of their newer stores, in conjunction with K-mart, are not in malls, more often they are out buildings in large strip centers. Might have stores such as Academy Sport, Sports Authority, Target, and lots of eating places, nearby.
I was in a mall just before Christmas that was packed... but the Sears store did not have many customers in it.
When these quarter of a million people apply for unemployment we'll be told that the unemployment rate miraculously went down to 7.9%.
Why do I get the sick feeling that Bain Capital is just waiting in the lurches???
Just looked at Sears Holdings. Sears, Roebuck & Co. has 2700 stores, so closing 1200 of them is a big chunk.
Strangely enough, I’m wearing a Hawaiian shirt from Sears right now. Sad to see them slip away.
The Kardashian Kollection at Sears
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/dap_10153_12605_DAP_kardashiankollection?sid=ISx20070515x00001a&psid=23x1754605
And don’t forget the Sears Auto, Sears Optical, Sears Photo Studio, Sears Home Improvement and Sears Hearing Aid Centers employees. Mrs. 2ndDivisionVet is the manager of a Sears Optical Store. That’ll be the final nail in our coffin.
This is the end of the old catalog days, just another event in the evolution of capitalism. Businesses that have outlived their business model must die so that fresh thinkers can thrive.
I have loved and bought many Sears products. The Sears and especially Craftsman names are still good well recognized names. There are some companies which are sitting on a pile of cash, what somebody must do is snatch up the name and promote it as the “American Made” alternative to all the junk out there. Sell off all the real estate, pump up the internet sales.
It could be done if done right (Hank Meijer are you listening?)
That's cause their prices are always so high.
I'll pay more for Craftsman tools, but for everything else their quality is no better than what is available for 80% of the cost elewhere.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people./sarc
“More evidence that the economy is roaring back, according to Obama.”
Yes, I’m hearing these pundits talking on the radio about the employment situation getting better - what a hoax. It’s like listening to “war of the Worlds” on the radio. A friend of mine is having his whole area closed and their work outsourced; these are high-paying financial sector jobs, and nothing will bring them back. I hope he and his family are OK; they were frugal while he was raking in the money, and he has already taken his children out of private schools.
Nobody in his “circle”, or in the millions of “circles” out there with similar stories, can be convinced this is anything but horrible. Obama is finished.
Mark for later reading.
LLS
Unfortunately Craftsman tools are no longer of the quality that they once were, either.
I think it’s unfair to lay the decline of Sears at Obama’s feet simply because Sears has been in a complete and utter tailspin for well over a decade, exacerbated by the foolish decisions to acquire/merge with K-Mart and to sell their exclusive Craftsman line outside of their own store and catalog system.
Sears used to be the best place to go for appliances, but it would take longer to check out and schedule a delivery, thanks to poorly-trained staff and antiquated systems, than it took to shop and compare the items in the first place.
You hit the nail on the head. Poor management over the last 20 years doomed Sears. Their primary asset is land.
This is altogether bad. I’m going to miss the ability to look up and order the part for a 1972 Sears garden tractor when they are gone. Ditto for appliances.
they have a nice online site with diagrams and parts numbers.
For those who are worried about Craftsman, Lowes has Kobalt, and I was told that everything that was good about Craftsman, Kobalt has, including lifetime guarantee, etc. Also that it was Craftsman people that started Kobalt anyway.
It may that it’s all just Stanley tools underneath made to somewhat better specs.
I bought one of the last contractor's saws Craftsman sold and I would put it up against any I've seen recently in the box stores! It replaced my Dad's 45 year old 8 inch Craftsman table saw. My drill press and Band saw and several power tools are craftsman. I would be lost without Craftsman.
I've used their on-line service and its been pretty good so far. Just have to catch the sales.
Which is the reason no paying customers go.
I’ve bought some Kobalt stuff and it doesn’t compare to Craftsman by any means.
I just purchased their sliding miter saw and was beyond my expectations. Nice and solid and accurate right out out the box.
Oh! Wait! KMart already tried that. Never mind.
As a master mechanic I would have to get any Craftsman tools at a strong discounted price, I’m too spoiled by the higher quality Snapon tools. The feel is different, the tolerances are different and the steel is definitely different.
Even the Snapon cloned tools from Taiwan look and feel better than the Sears branded hand tools.
About the few things that I will buy from Sears is the widescreen TV’s over the years, theirs are better for the most part, the prices are better. Every single HDTV I have bought from Walmart which has been three over the years has turned to crap within a month.
I gave up on Craftsman electrical tools years ago. The handtools I will buy from time to time. I still have some of my first ones I got as a teenager back in the early 80s and held up just fine. I had one return. A 3/8 ratchet had a messed up ball/spring out of the box in the early 90s.
Good observations - I would add that Wards owned Foot Locker and their “electric avenue” was Best Buy before they opened nationwide. If wards turned the stores into a series of mini stores promoting what worked instead of “crappy looking” aisles of old fashioned retailing they would still be in business.
Yep. I’m so glad that I’m retired and living overseas. This year is going to get ugly. This is just the beginning of the layoffs that will happen before summer due to energy regs, (power plants closings due to EPA), high fuel prices, Obamacare cost/fees kicking in , 100,000 military being RIF’d, and of course, the One’s Green energy bankruptcies. Have to give to him, he is almost done destroying the US.
With any decent management, this century's Amazon should have been Sears & Roebuck.
This is the company that invented direct marketing to the home. For them to completely miss the concept of internet marketing (until it was far too late) is a textbook example of poor business forecasting.
Merge is accurate, acquire is not. K-Mart acquired Sears - which makes it even more pitiful.
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