How sad to read this. Soon it’ll be “Buh-bye Sears…”:
Sears has been on a downward spiral almost since the day it merged with Kmart in 2005. And that plunge seems to be picking up speed.
The company said this week that it may sell its 51% stake in Sears Canada, which operates nearly 20% of the company’s stores worldwide. It has quietly closed nearly 100 U.S. stores in the last year. Next week, it’s expected to announce dismal fiscal first quarter results and possibly yet more store closings.
“They have too many stores and they’re losing a lot of money, burning cash,” said John Kernan, an analyst with Cowen.
Kernan expects the company to close 500 of its 1,980 U.S. stores in a few years and, ultimately, to go out of business.
Anyone who visits an area where there’s a Sears and can see the empty parking lot has known this has been coming:
“The lights are going off at Sears and Kmart,” he said. “There are tumbleweeds blowing through the parking lots at Kmart. They’re basically completely irrelevant.”
The company won’t comment on store closings, but CEO Edward Lampert reportedly told shareholders at this month’s annual meeting that “closing stores are going to be part of our future. The world has shifted.” A company spokesman did not dispute that quote.
And what a fall: Sears has been a virtual American institution. For decades, it was known for its big, fat Sears catalog which was a must own. And even the old catalogs were useful: many Americans used the last year’s catalogs for toilet paper.
Sears was once the nation’s largest retailer and biggest employer. The iconic company reshaped shopping in the United States with both its catalogs and its massive department stores. But the Kmart merger has been a disaster from the start. Sears Holdings (SHLD, Fortune 500)’ sales have declined every year since 2006, and it’s been losing money since 2011.
I’m not at all surprised at this.
I went to a Sears Outlet here in Rancho Penasquitos and got a GREAT deal on a crock pot. But this big, wide store wasn’t exactly booming with customers. It’s a great store — great items, great quality — but it’s missing one thing: crowds of people.
I’ve been a lifetime Sears customer. My father the late Richard Gandelman was an owner of City Printing Company of North Haven, CT. He did some major color printing for Sears and he always praised it. When I was living in Spain I bought a new water heater from Sears in Madrid. I went to Sears Automotive in Wichita.
But I stopped going in recent years. Sears has been going down in quality and offerings when compared to the competition. The service on their famous maintenance agreements for appliances seemed to slip. Even today, Sears stores are not bad stores, but they haven’t been able to effectively compete. JC Penny has big problems but you get the sense that that company at least tries, even if it’s outlook isn’t rosy. With Sears, rightfully or wrongfully, you get the sense of a company that’s shell-shocked and standing still.
Sears seems to have given up for some years. It’s sad.
And YES the big plummet began when the venerable Sears brand merged with KMART.
It became Sears Mart.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.