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Sears and Kmart advertising

No “ship my pants” this year. For those who remember that campaign.

National ads wouldn’t seem to make sense with the company pulling back from some areas entirely. What’s left seems so moribund that there’s no point anyway.
 
crainbebo said:
Sears bought K-Mart in 2004. Then they fell down the toilet fast. But in fact they were closing stores pre-Sears buyout, there was a purge of closings in 2000 and 2003. Far cry from the early '90s heyday, when they had 2,300+ stores nationwide and everyone bought their back-to-school clothes, RCA TVs and Macgregor shoes there.
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Actually, K-Mart bought Sears in 2004 and merged the two into Sears Holdings, Inc. This was done right after K-Mart emerged from its own bankruptcy reorganization.

By 2006, profits had increased to $1.5 billion, but when the recession hit, they went into a loss situation and have never recovered.
 
KeithE4 said:
Wouldn't the bankruptcy judge have to approve such spending? I would think it'd be hard to justify buying advertising time when the company is thisclose to going out of business.
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I worked for a couple of retailers that filed Chap. 11 when I was younger. Advertising was unaffected. In fact one of them continued to sponsor a car in NASCAR and hired Bill Cosby to do some ads (which we all thought was strange given the fact the company was bankrupt).

Of course they intended to emerge from bankruptcy and continue operating.
In the case of Sears from what I've read their creditors would actually prefer that they liquidate.
 
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Sears Holdings didn't do any TV/radio advertising during the 2017 Holiday Season. Last year for Black Friday they did a Sears/KMART all-in-one flyer. This year Connecticut got slammed by closings.

Waterbury Sears closed at the end of July along with the Milford KMART.

Milford and Waterford Sears announced the were closing when they filed for bankruptcy in October 2018.

Meriden Sears was announced in November about 3 weeks after the bankruptcy filing they were closing.

What's left in Connecticut?

Sears at the Buckland Hills Mall in Manchester (nice store) and the Sears in Danbury are safe for now. It should be noted the Danbury store downsized to one floor a couple years ago. The 2nd floor was subleased to Primark.

Then there are two KMART's left in Connecticut. One in Vernon. And one in Watertown, which strangely just replaced its retro 1980s-era logo with a newer logo.
 
MarcB said:
Sears Holdings didn't do any TV/radio advertising during the 2017 Holiday Season. Last year for Black Friday they did a Sears/KMART all-in-one flyer. This year Connecticut got slammed by closings.
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The whole company has been slammed by closings. Sears/Kmart had 979 stores nationwide at the start of the year according to the LA Times. With the closures this year, considering those stores currently going-out-of-business as closed, the company will have about 530 stores.

wadio said:
Lowes now sells Craftsman tools. Not sure why. I think the Kobalt house brand is actually better.
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Sears sold Craftsman to Stanley last year to raise cash. Craftsman has also been sold at Ace even before that.

A couple of newspaper reporters visited Sears locations in Chicagoland and White Plains, New York to find scant few customers. That's your reminder that advertising works.
 
I remember the last time I went into a Sears store, which may have been 8 years ago, the cashier was so lonely, she was also acting as a greeter, welcoming me into the store from her spot at the register. She & I may have been the only people in the place.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
The whole company has been slammed by closings. Sears/Kmart had 979 stores nationwide at the start of the year according to the LA Times. With the closures this year, considering those stores currently going-out-of-business as closed, the company will have about 530 stores.



Sears sold Craftsman to Stanley last year to raise cash. .
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And Stanley itself was bought out by Black & Decker several years previous. Production of those iconic Stanley tools had already been sent to other, more bottom-line-friendly countries. Nothing is made here in Connecticut anymore, as the only people left af SB&D's New Britain headquarters are executives, engineering and design personnel and media relations types.
 
TheBigA said:
I remember the last time I went into a Sears store, which may have been 8 years ago, the cashier was so lonely, she was also acting as a greeter, welcoming me into the store from her spot at the register. She & I may have been the only people in the place.
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2007 was when I realized Sears was in trouble. That was long before they were shuttering stores left, right and sideways. I stopped at the King of Prussia Mall in King of Prussia, PA on my way to visit friends. I went into the Sears to get into the mall (and use the restroom). There were no customers. About 4 employees asked me if I needed help finding something. They were disappointed when I said "Just the Men's Room." My mind was blown as to how can Sears be deserted at the largest shopping mall on the East Coast. I went out into the mall itself and it was packed. The Sears in KOP closed in 2014 (I believe) and was divided into a Primark and Dicks's Sportings goods.
 
CTListener said:
And Stanley itself was bought out by Black & Decker several years previous. Production of those iconic Stanley tools had already been sent to other, more bottom-line-friendly countries. Nothing is made here in Connecticut anymore, as the only people left af SB&D's New Britain headquarters are executives, engineering and design personnel and media relations types.
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There is stuff made in Connecticut, I just don't know what. A friend of mine started working for them in 2017. They did however rip down the old Stanley Factory (abandoned for close to 30 years) on Myrtle Streeet in New Britain in 2018.
 
I can remember starting in radio in the mid-70s and the national ads for K-Mart and Sears were ubiquitous---especially K-Mart. That was the campaign with the 2 little kids which I believe was radio-only. Seemed to be in every ABC Information newscast.

Here are a bunch of their TV commercials, starting in the 70s. https://youtu.be/vpDTmnvAz-o
 
LKellerIII said:
Anybody else posting here remember there 70's slogan - "Sears Has Everything?" Sounds kind of ironic now, huh? I don't recall when Sears bought K-Mart, but even as far back as the early 80's, K-Mart was a joke. I grew up in a podunk suburb of Los Angeles. When the drive-in theater finally closed about 1975, what opened up on that acre? K-Mart. People in the town used to joke that we weren't good enough for a a White Front or Zody's...both of which are long defunct.

I see a lot of postings about how the internet made Sears irrelevant. In actual fact - Sears was pretty irrelevant before the internet was popular.
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Dang amazing to think at one point Sears was seen as like the Wal-Mart, Amazon, ebay or Target of its day as a big box store.
 
Haven't seen any advertising near me lately, but then again, the nearest stores (that I was aware of) were at least a day's drive away from me! Not exactly convenient!

Even when they WERE still advertising, I always noticed how clean the stores looked in the commercials! And I KNOW that there were no stores near me at the time that were that clean!

Makes me miss the old days.
 
RadioPatrol said:
Dang amazing to think at one point Sears was seen as like the Wal-Mart, Amazon, ebay or Target of its day as a big box store.
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Sears, Roebuck, and Company (original name) in its hey day, was not only a big box store, but did a yuuuge business with their catalog, sending goods of all kinds through the mail, particularly to people in isolated rural areas that had no other source to get those goods. You can imagine - you live in Nowhere, Oklahoma, so you can either drive your model A over bad roads for 4 or 5 hours to the nearest city to get your goods, or order them from the Sears catalog, and have them delivered to the nearest post office. In many ways, Sears WAS the 'Amazon' of the late 19th to mid 20th centuries.
 
TheBigA said:
I remember the last time I went into a Sears store, which may have been 8 years ago, the cashier was so lonely, she was also acting as a greeter, welcoming me into the store from her spot at the register. She & I may have been the only people in the place.
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She probably thought you were a Secret Shopper. Not greeting an entering customer
will get you put on report.
 
LKellerIII said:
Sears, Roebuck, and Company (original name) in its hey day, was not only a big box store, but did a yuuuge business with their catalog, sending goods of all kinds through the mail, particularly to people in isolated rural areas that had no other source to get those goods. You can imagine - you live in Nowhere, Oklahoma, so you can either drive your model A over bad roads for 4 or 5 hours to the nearest city to get your goods, or order them from the Sears catalog, and have them delivered to the nearest post office. In many ways, Sears WAS the 'Amazon' of the late 19th to mid 20th centuries.
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I remember hearing about the Layaway program that Sears and Kmart had in the past and it was then considered an innovation in retail though.
 
RadioPatrol said:
I remember hearing about the Layaway program that Sears and Kmart had in the past and it was then considered an innovation in retail though.
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Many retail chains, large and small, had layaway plans back then. I remember seeing layaway counters at King's, a New England department store chain, and Lechmere Sales, which sold consumer electronics, appliances and sporting goods, when mom and dad would go shopping there.
 
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