Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
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storewanderer
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by storewanderer »

If closure announcements in the coming months mirror what has happened so far this year, there won't be any Kmarts left by this time next year.

Hopefully the oddball high volume stores can be sold as going concerns to Wal Mart or Target...
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by reymann »

looks like there will only be one kmart left in phoenix metro region in tolleson. only a handful of kmarts will be left in arizona.
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by jamcool »

It would not surprise me if WM goes after those Kmarts that are the only big box in town, like Blythe, CA
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by wnetmacman »

jamcool wrote:It would not surprise me if WM goes after those Kmarts that are the only big box in town, like Blythe, CA
Just how many places does that actually happen? It can't be more than 20 or so left. A good number of those are older Group 9 stores, most of which are less than 60,000 square feet. Unless they become a Neighborhood Market, Walmart won't try to stuff a D1 store into them. And the majority of the remaining stores would have to be gutted, which may or may not be allowed, because most of these towns have been actively fighting off Walmart for years.

Blythe would be an exception to this; it's a 91,233 square foot store, opened in 1993. It could be remodeled into a smaller Supercenter, but would Blythe allow it? It's a rural enough town, and I'm not familiar with their rules, but there also seems to be a good deal of other retail there. It could happen, but I wouldn't wait for it. I would watch to see if WMT takes some of the more profitable Sears mall stores, especially some of the larger, 200k stores.
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by jamcool »

There ISN'T much major retail in Blythe, just a soon-closed Kmart, an Albertsons, and a Rite Aid, and a Latino market. It is basically a stop between Phoenix and LA to eat, get a room, or use the bathroom. The closest major retain is in Yuma.
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by storewanderer »

The Sparks, NV Kmart closed for good today at 2:30 PM.

The liquidation sale was interesting. The store was stocked really poorly for months prior to the liquidation sale. The liquidator brought in a lot of other items, primarily boxes and boxes of salvage from Dick's Sporting Goods, and various branded clothes, some from unknown sources, others from failed mall stores like Aeropostale or American Apparel. These were, for most of the liquidation sale, marked "deal flash no further discounts apply." That changed a week ago when they went 60% off lowest marked price, and by yesterday they got to 90% off lowest marked price on these items they had so many left, and finally today 95% off lowest marked price. There were also many cosmetics left, which appeared to be salvage items from other Kmart stores.

About a week ago, pallets and pallets of artificial Christmas Trees showed up, starting at 70% off but quickly escalating to 80% off. These were current year trees, not previous year trees. It was interesting they waited until so late in the sale to send those to the store... and were willing to take that big of a mark down.
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by Super S »

storewanderer wrote:The Sparks, NV Kmart closed for good today at 2:30 PM.

The liquidation sale was interesting. The store was stocked really poorly for months prior to the liquidation sale. The liquidator brought in a lot of other items, primarily boxes and boxes of salvage from Dick's Sporting Goods, and various branded clothes, some from unknown sources, others from failed mall stores like Aeropostale or American Apparel. These were, for most of the liquidation sale, marked "deal flash no further discounts apply." That changed a week ago when they went 60% off lowest marked price, and by yesterday they got to 90% off lowest marked price on these items they had so many left, and finally today 95% off lowest marked price. There were also many cosmetics left, which appeared to be salvage items from other Kmart stores.

About a week ago, pallets and pallets of artificial Christmas Trees showed up, starting at 70% off but quickly escalating to 80% off. These were current year trees, not previous year trees. It was interesting they waited until so late in the sale to send those to the store... and were willing to take that big of a mark down.
I have been to two closing Kmart sales locally over the last few years. I can't say that they were bringing in additional merchandise, especially non-Kmart/Sears merchandise. It was quite the opposite, and one employee commented about how they were not bringing anything in at all after the sale started. Makes me wonder if the private liquidator they hired just used it to unload a bunch of old merchandise they collected from those other stores that nobody really wanted. But the fact that they were bringing in the Christmas trees shows that Kmart maybe was more optimistic on their same store sales and really did not at all factor in that people aren't shopping there and the fact that more and more stores are shutting down. It hints at yet another big wave of closures in the not too distant future.
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by BillyGr »

Super S wrote:
storewanderer wrote:The Sparks, NV Kmart closed for good today at 2:30 PM.
About a week ago, pallets and pallets of artificial Christmas Trees showed up, starting at 70% off but quickly escalating to 80% off. These were current year trees, not previous year trees. It was interesting they waited until so late in the sale to send those to the store... and were willing to take that big of a mark down.
But the fact that they were bringing in the Christmas trees shows that Kmart maybe was more optimistic on their same store sales and really did not at all factor in that people aren't shopping there and the fact that more and more stores are shutting down. It hints at yet another big wave of closures in the not too distant future.
Could also be that the trees were already ordered and couldn't be cancelled and just shipped at that particular time.

That happened with a bunch of Christmas stuff at Ames when they closed up - they had already ordered the items made specifically for their stores (in that case more the houses for a village), so they had them out just to get rid of them even though they closed before the "regular" Christmas season that year...
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by storewanderer »

That is probably what happened. Kmart ordered Christmas 2017 for a chain of, whatever it was, 650 stores. But now it looks like they will go into Christmas as a chain of 500 or so stores, so they needed to unload the excess stuff sooner rather than later.

And this way they can get some cash for that inventory now, vs. unloading it for 80-90% off in January in still operating stores.

This was also the first time I've seen non-Kmart merchandise sold in a Kmart liquidation sale. Had they run this sale with just the Kmart merchandise, the store would have closed weeks ago, because there was so little merchandise.

Some of the Kmart items were also brought in from elsewhere, though, as I saw items with shipping labels with a different store number on the labels. For instance, at one point, they had a ton of Brunswick bowling shoes (a long time KM item, not sure if it is still carried regular now) that all had shipping labels for some other location on them (the labels were 4+ years old).
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Re: Sears/Kmart Death Watch 2017

Post by storewanderer »

I see Kmart now has a few Essential Everyday (Supervalu) grocery items: dry beans, dry rice, can beans, powder sugar, and brown sugar.

They have a good number of "Smart Sense" food items as well such as coffee, nuts, candy, spices, and various other items, most of which I do not remember being present at the Kmart in my area before it closed down, but it was so poorly stocked and behind on resets, that doesn't mean much.

Still there are other packer/filler generic type items elsewhere in grocery such as cereal, white sugar, and some other categories which escape me.

Numerous out of stocks throughout hardlines and health/beauty/cosmetics. I think the end for Kmart is very near.
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