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Sears and Kmart advertising

Here's new reporting on what the new Sears might look like. Hint: Not much in terms of retail. According to this article, former CEO and current Chairman Eddie Lampert is mainly interested in the real estate. Apparently the stores have great locations. So while he doesn't know much about retail, he does know real estate, and that's what he sees as the future:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/06/business/sears-middle-america/index.html

Reminds me of another former retail chain called Two Guys. They were owned by a company called Vornado. That company still exists as a huge owner of real estate in Manhattan.
 
TheBigA said:
Here's new reporting on what the new Sears might look like. Hint: Not much in terms of retail. According to this article, former CEO and current Chairman Eddie Lampert is mainly interested in the real estate. Apparently the stores have great locations. So while he doesn't know much about retail, he does know real estate, and that's what he sees as the future:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/06/business/sears-middle-america/index.html

Reminds me of another former retail chain called Two Guys. They were owned by a company called Vornado. That company still exists as a huge owner of real estate in Manhattan.
Click to expand...
They already did that to a store here. They still own the building but they closed Sears and rebuilt and re-leased the space.
 
Yet one more last ditch effort to hold off the inevitable.

I don’t know if they held all the land on which our local Kmarts once sat, but of the half dozen or so that closed within a fairly short drive of my neighborhood, just one has been redeveloped. The rest are empty hulks with no outward sign of movement. All will likely need to be torn down, though judging by the condition of the buildings when they were still, technically, open, they should be able to be knocked,over with a good stiff breeze. Ok, that is facetious, but still.....
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
Yet one more last ditch effort to hold off the inevitable.

I don’t know if they held all the land on which our local Kmarts once sat, but of the half dozen or so that closed within a fairly short drive of my neighborhood, just one has been redeveloped. The rest are empty hulks with no outward sign of movement. All will likely need to be torn down, though judging by the condition of the buildings when they were still, technically, open, they should be able to be knocked,over with a good stiff breeze. Ok, that is facetious, but still.....
Click to expand...

I live in San Francisco. The only Sears in SF closed about 15 year ago. Perhaps ironically, a Toys R Us and Mervyn's (local department store) opened in that space, and both subsequently went bankrupt. It is now a Target store.

The only Sears left near us is in suburban San Bruno in a prosperous mall. If Sears owns the space, it will be a valuable part of the liquidation. If not, the mall will rent it out quickly.
 
Sears owns the store where I went last week. That's what I heard an employee tell someone. He said the store closest to Charlotte couldn't pay its rent and that's why it closed.
 
It might just be me, but I have a feeling the advertising will go full steam ahead once Eddie Lampert is no longer in the picture and a new creation rises.
 
There is no possibility of that. In Sears' bankruptcy auction, the bidders are Eddie Lampert, who wants to continue operating some fraction of the stores, and liquidators. If Lampert loses, Sears/Kmart goes out of business completely probably by May or June.

And if he wins, I guess we hope Eddie has learned some lessons about running a retailer. But given the state of the company, it does not seem logical Sears/Kmart's second life would last long.
 
There is no new creation to rise. Sears is headed to liquidation....be it tomorrow, a week from now, maybe a few months if Lampert wins in his bid and manages to temporarily salvage some control so he can continue selling off pieces. Someone will scoop up the name and intellectual property, and perhaps find a way to do something with it at some point, but there won't be a "full steam ahead" of anything related to Sears.
 
I expect that Sears will become something like the Montgomery Ward website and possibly a small catalog, owned by some other company that bought the rights to the name, and it may be possible that the hometown stores in smaller towns are salvaged somehow, even though they're thinning out as well.
 
anotherguy said:
I expect that Sears will become something like the Montgomery Ward website and possibly a small catalog, owned by some other company that bought the rights to the name, and it may be possible that the hometown stores in smaller towns are salvaged somehow, even though they're thinning out as well.
Click to expand...

My mother used to work at the Sears catalog outlet store in U.C. back in the '80s, but in the early '90s, her hours were cut to the point that she didn't see any point in continuing to work there anymore. (And this was at least 25 years ago.) At some time since then, the catalog store there was apparently phased out.
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
There is no new creation to rise. Sears is headed to liquidation....be it tomorrow, a week from now, maybe a few months if Lampert wins in his bid and manages to temporarily salvage some control so he can continue selling off pieces.
Click to expand...

It looks like Abe was right. There will be 120 Sears or Kmart stores going through liquidations beginning later this week (apparently on Thursday). 84 Kmarts and and 36 Sears.

https://searsholdings.com/docs/080619_store_closing_list.pdf
https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...s-more-locations-shutter-end-2019/2168435001/

These closings will leave Kmart with a presence in just 23 states.
 
That is very sad. I thought the one in Sevierville would endure as it always got good business from the tourists being closer to the hotels than Walmart. It also was a very well run store, but it closed earlier this year as well.
 
I can't even remember the last Kmart I saw open. It has been that long. Probably Kmart in Pocatello, ID circa 2006. Gone by 2007.

Sears closed in my current market, (Tri-Cities, WA, a booming area) last year. I don't remember any advertising by either in the past decade. Probably was futile.
 
Characteristically this thread has veered off the advertising topic; but I can't help but think that the beginning of the end was Sears management acquiring KMart to please Wall Street. Including the debt to merge, KMart stores have been like a sea anchor around Sears' neck. If Sears corporate management were smart, they would save themselves by shutting down all KMarts, using whatever left to reposition Sears for strategic return. That includes a smart advertising campaign, on-line presence, and smart use of the few existing store locations.

Walmart killed what was left of KMart. It's time to let it go before it completely sinks an American icon.
 
Kelly A said:
I can't help but think that the beginning of the end was Sears management acquiring KMart to please Wall Street.
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Not sure that was the goal, but I can clearly remember there was a time after the merger when Sears stock was trading at over $100 a share, and people were saying the Sears folks were brilliant. Meanwhile, I had stopped shopping at both Sears & K Mart for numerous reasons. It just took a while for it all to catch up. But yes, for the moment, WalMart seems to have won the battle. But I can't help but think the clock is ticking for them too.
 
I did some checking and the only regular Sears store left in TN is Johnson City, also still with an auto center. There are still a few hometown stores and Appliance outlet stores in Nashville, Knoxville, and Hixson (Chattanooga area), which to me is odd since all the normal stores are closed.

I never shopped much at the Sears store in Jackson, TN, but I did go into K Mart quite a bit until they closed because I could take an alternate route home from work that would take me by them and Kroger rather than having to fight the crowd at Walmart, and I wish they were still there.
 
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