• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Sears and Kmart advertising

umfan said:
The civil rights Woolworth retention is in Greensboro, NC, I believe.
Click to expand...
There is a museum there. I thought the original chairs and counter were at the Smithsonian, but these could be replicas. I never went there, but the museum is constantly having financial problems.
 
I actually saw a Sears Christmas TV ad yesterday. I was at the gym, and not plugged into the sound, but I have confirmed that Sears is still advertising on TV.
 
on the topic of Sears/Kmart, all the remaining stores will wind up closing next year, even the profitable ones. i just don't see Sears/Kmart making it past 2019, hell they are barley gonna make it to January. i bet Amazon's looking to buy the best located Kmart & Sears stores that would be placed on the action block ones Kmart/Sears officially fold next year to launch a Amazon "Brick & Mortar" store to help compete against Walmart and Target to further their fast growing foot mark in the shopping industry.
 
Will_H_69_9 said:
on the topic of Sears/Kmart, all the remaining stores will wind up closing next year, even the profitable ones. i just don't see Sears/Kmart making it past 2019, hell they are barley gonna make it to January. i bet Amazon's looking to buy the best located Kmart & Sears stores that would be placed on the action block ones Kmart/Sears officially fold next year to launch a Amazon "Brick & Mortar" store to help compete against Walmart and Target to further their fast growing foot mark in the shopping industry.
Click to expand...

Where I live in NJ there are about 5 Kmart stores within a 5-10 mile radius. From what I can see they seem to be concentrated in blue-collar, somewhat urban areas. I noticed that Target tends to only open stores in areas that are more suburban, so in a way Kmart has a bit of a niche and is successful in areas where Target won't do business.
 
Target has been opening up some smaller format urban stores, so that may well change. Kmart, along with Sears, isn't sustainable at this point. It's all just a question of waiting for the when, not the if.
 
ansky212 said:
I noticed that Target tends to only open stores in areas that are more suburban
Click to expand...

True, if one considers Harlem and the outer boroughs to be more suburban.

AbrahamJSimpson said:
Target has been opening up some smaller format urban stores
Click to expand...

There are several sprinkled about Manhattan, including ones in TriBeCa, LES, East Village, and Herald Square.

LKellerIII said:
I actually saw a Sears Christmas TV ad yesterday.
Click to expand...

I saw a Kmart ad and a Sears ad on the local news this morning.

CBS Sunday Morning featured an interesting story today on the fall of Sears: What's in store for Sears?
 
Will_H_69_9 said:
on the topic of Sears/Kmart, all the remaining stores will wind up closing next year, even the profitable ones. i just don't see Sears/Kmart making it past 2019, hell they are barley gonna make it to January. i bet Amazon's looking to buy the best located Kmart & Sears stores that would be placed on the action block ones Kmart/Sears officially fold next year to launch a Amazon "Brick & Mortar" store to help compete against Walmart and Target to further their fast growing foot mark in the shopping industry.
Click to expand...

Really? I'd be surprised. I totally get why Amazon bought Whole Foods, but I can't imagine the point of taking their competition with WalMart and Target to big-box "brick and mortar" locations...at least not yet. Why would Amazon want to pay all that rent, and suffer the typical retail woes, like "shrinkage,"* which I'm sure is much lower in their warehouses? Maybe a couple years from now after internet sales have put the hurt even further onto malls, and they can pick up big-box locations for lower rents.

* Source - have worked in retail, though thankfully those days are behind me. I can tell you that shrinkage - mostly in the form of shop-lifting - is an enormous drag on profit margins. Yes - the retailers can, in a sense, just pass it on to their customers, but it is a factor Amazon does not currently have to deal with...except at Whole Foods.
 
The big department stores hardly pay anything in rent. When Bon-Ton Stores went bankrupt, I looked through their lease information as part of their bankruptcy auction, mostly to see what they were paying in my local mall. There were stores in certain malls where they paid less than $1 per square foot per year. I think the typical rent was closer to $3.80 a square foot per year. That seems like a lot if you have 25 million square feet, but given $2.5 billion in sales it's a tiny hit on profit.

Of course, the rent is just a small part of the cost of doing business as a retail store.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
The big department stores hardly pay anything in rent. When Bon-Ton Stores went bankrupt, I looked through their lease information as part of their bankruptcy auction, mostly to see what they were paying in my local mall. There were stores in certain malls where they paid less than $1 per square foot per year. I think the typical rent was closer to $3.80 a square foot per year. That seems like a lot if you have 25 million square feet, but given $2.5 billion in sales it's a tiny hit on profit.

Of course, the rent is just a small part of the cost of doing business as a retail store.
Click to expand...

My perspective is from being in retail management in the early 90's. I managed one of the more profitable stores in a large national chain. My store was in a stand alone dump of a building (leaked water in winter, for example) in a sketchy neighborhood, but our rent was practically nothing - and business was good. My fellow managers with fancy mall locations made much lower bonuses, and the only real reason we could figure was the high cost of renting in malls. But these were not "big box" stores - more like 3,000 square feet. So perhaps that made a difference.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
The big department stores hardly pay anything in rent. When Bon-Ton Stores went bankrupt, I looked through their lease information as part of their bankruptcy auction, mostly to see what they were paying in my local mall. There were stores in certain malls where they paid less than $1 per square foot per year. I think the typical rent was closer to $3.80 a square foot per year. That seems like a lot if you have 25 million square feet, but given $2.5 billion in sales it's a tiny hit on profit.

Of course, the rent is just a small part of the cost of doing business as a retail store.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of posts in other threads in which people who aren't in radio somehow assume the power bill is one of the biggest costs a station must deal with.
 
welp, by this time tomorrow, the remaining K Mart and Sears stores will start closing down as Sears Holding until tomorrow night to find a buyer to save the brand from it's impending death, and if no buyer is found, all remaining K Mart & Sears stores that haven't had a "Going out of Business" liquidation sale will indeed be the last K Marts & Sears store left to shut down.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/27/sears-may-need-to-liquidate-if-no-bid-comes-in-by-tomorrow.html
 
These big department stores typically owned their spaces at the mall. There was an article in the Meriden Record Journal that said Westfield Corporation owner of the Meriden Square Mall (I refused to call it by its homogenized name Westfield Meriden) can't do anything with the Sears space once it closes at the end of January because Sears owns the space. In theory Westfield can buy the space from Sears, but Westfield got a new corporate owner back in June and there's no guarantee they will keep the Meriden Square Mall. They are currently evaluating all the malls they own. I don't know if JC Penney owned their space at the Meriden Square, but when they closed in 2014 the mall leased part of the space to Spirit Halloween and in 2015 Reading, Pennsylvania based Boscov's department store took over the former JCP space and also expanded it for their first Connecticut location.

Over in the affluent town of West Hartford Sears owned their building in the Corbin's Corner Shopping Center. They transferred the ownership to Seritage Growth Properties, a real estate holding company that is owned by former Sears CEO Eddie Lampert. The two buildings - the department store and the auto center has been completely redeveloped. Tenants include Sacks off 5th, Buy Buy Baby, Cost World Market, REI Sports (relocated from elsewhere in West Hartford) along with Shake Shack, an Urgent Care Center, another restaurant new to Connecticut, etc.

By the way JC Penney is slowly heading down the same path as Sears. http://amesfanclub.com/forum/index.php?topic=5267.0
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom