A Tale of Three Houston-area Sears Stores

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
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wnetmacman
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A Tale of Three Houston-area Sears Stores

Post by wnetmacman »

My family and I just got back from Houston. While we were there, we went into three area Sears stores. I'm going to apologize in advance; my phone was near death at each store so I couldn't get any good pictures of anything.

On Saturday, the 10th, we were at Memorial City. One of the city's busiest malls, and Saturday was no exception. The mall was packed with thousands of folks. JCPenney was busy. Macy's was busy. Dillard's was busy. Target was beyond busy. Sears was moderate. We walked the whole downstairs, which included a trip back to the tool section. Much like what many folks have written both on this site and other places, the Craftsman tool selection was sparse at best, and it looked like it had been picked through like a store closing sale. This was the busiest mall in town, and the tool section looked like this. It's a sad testament. The store looked old and dated, as they all do. (I won't repeat that statement, as it applies to all three stores we visited.)

On Monday night, the 12th, we were driving on N. Shepard looking for relatively safe restrooms and came across the Sears store with the art deco sign that has been chronicled all over the internet. It's still fully functional, by the way. Some interesting observations about this store: the restrooms are in separate locations. The Men's room is next to tools, which appeared to be fully stocked in this store. This is a 50's Sears, so it still has the fluorescent/spotlight combo lights (none of the spotlights were functional). The ladies room is in the ladies clothing section. There are two doors coming from the parking lot. At 8PM, like clockwork, they closed the gate on one of the doors. This did not appear to be a very safe area, and the store appeared to be reflecting this. Staff was pretty nice there, however.

Last night, the 13th, we stopped at San Jacinto Mall in Baytown. I won't go into the condition of the mall here; if you want to look at it more, you can go here or here. This mall has been dying for around 17 years, since Wards, Service Merchandise and Bealls all closed at the same time. Sears here was fully stocked, including a pair of shoes I've been searching for. The problem was staffing. The main part of the store facing the mall and an exterior entrance, covering the entire women's section and shoes, with checkouts, was entirely unstaffed. There was a single checkout in the men's section, where three employees were standing. It was way in the back of the store. If that isn't an invitation to steal, I don't know what is. You could have set a bomb off in that place, and nobody would have been hurt.

My point is this: each of these stores has issues that are all pointing to the end of Sears. The symptoms and conditions of the stores are just pieces of the puzzle of neglect. I don't think any of these stores are long for the world.
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Re: A Tale of Three Houston-area Sears Stores

Post by storewanderer »

In the Reno Sears tonight around 7 PM, the only staffed cashwrap was the one near the mall entrance and the one in tools (both on the first floor but tools one is deep into the store). Their plainclothes security guy was busy with two employees at the mall cash wrap not doing anything work related. This leaves two parking lot doors completely unmonitored.

Upstairs was even more interesting (that has men's, kids, appliances, home, and mattresses). The only staffing up there was a couple people in appliances. The cashwrap at mens/kids and the one at home had signs saying to take your purchases down to the 1st floor for assistance. I've never seen that before; in the past there was always at least one employee up at the mens/kids one. The home one had a second sign that said if you need help with mattresses to see appliances.

I will be interested to see how much money they spend on the upcoming downsizing of the store.
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Re: A Tale of Three Houston-area Sears Stores

Post by architect »

I noticed a similar cashwrap situation about six months ago at the Sears in Tyler, TX (a smaller one-level store). This store is attached to a decent-sized, well trafficked mall with Dillards and JCPenney anchors that pull good business. Sears on the other hand is almost always a ghost town, and has been for several years. However, even a few years ago, Sears was still staffing this store well, and most of the store floor area was stocked. Now during my most recent visit, only two cashwraps were left remaining in the appliance and automotive sections of the store (which are both located near north side exterior entrances). Cashwraps which had been formerly located near the mall entrance and on the south side of the store near clothing had both been removed, leaving those entrances as essentially an open invitation for theft. In addition, the appliance section was the only area of the store well stocked. Clothing and mattresses had many holes throughout the sales floor, while electronics had been consolidated down to just two aisles (formerly an entire corner of the store, at least 10-12 aisles along with a full TV wall).

The end is definitely near.
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Re: A Tale of Three Houston-area Sears Stores

Post by Super S »

A couple days ago I visited the Sears stores at The Commons in Federal Way (which is closing) and the store in Tacoma Mall (not closing). Within the past month I have also visited the Sears and Kmart in Chehalis (both also closing)

Federal Way and Tacoma are two story, however, the malls are both one story, and because of this all entrances are on the bottom level.

The Federal Way store had a similar situation. The upstairs had a couple registers near the top of the escalator which were closed and had a sign directing you to go downstairs. The upstairs registers also had a lot of random merchandise piled on them and there were no employees anywhere in sight, even when I walked through the appliance department. Downstairs, there was a register open at the bottom of the escalators as well as at the jewelry area, and the north entrance. But that was it for open registers. The mall entrance had nobody nearby, and nobody was checking receipts as you left (which I have seen at closing Kmart and Sears stores in the past). The whole store looked really tired and disorganized, and I got the impression that the few remaining employees really didn't seem to care since they are losing their jobs soon.

Tacoma Mall as a whole looked a little better, but I noticed that there was a LOT of space between clothing displays, a general lack of customers, and the same issues upstairs, although they did at least have an employee in appliances.
However, the store at least looked organized.

Chehalis Sears is a small store in the mostly dead Lewis County Mall (which is more offices than retail) and doesn't get much traffic from inside the mall, but there is no register even close to the mall entrance. But the store still seemed relatively well stocked.

It sure seemed like it would be relatively easy to shoplift at those Sears locations. A moot point at an already closing store such as Chehalis or Federal Way, but it made me wonder if Sears is deliberately short staffing these stores to make it easy to shoplift, and use that "lack of profitability" as a reason to close stores. I have noticed at the last several mall locations I have visited that there were no open registers anywhere near the mall entrances, and often that applies to the exterior entrances as well.

And I also have noticed that they have become less pushy about the whole Shop Your Way thing, but when buying just one item you still have three foot long receipts that have a bunch of useless coupons that are no good unless you are a Shop Your Way member.

As for the Chehalis Kmart, I visited a few weeks ago, after the closing announcement was made but before signs were up. You honestly couldn't tell the store was closing as it was relatively well stocked (electronics was an exception) and had a typical amount of employees. And it looked very clean and organized, partly owing to the fact they remodeled after the store was flooded several years back. I might add that this store also has unique features for a 1970s Kmart such as a drive thru pharmacy, conveyor belt registers, and a still-open Little Caesars at the front of the store.

Sometimes I get the feeling though that they are throwing darts to choose which stores to close as the really bad ones such as the Beaverton, Oregon Kmart somehow keep escaping the closing lists....
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