Sears/Kmart: Will 2020 be the end?

[pseudo3d]

More and more stores close (the 1950-built N. Shepherd store in Houston is toast), including a number of Hometown stores (Gatesville, Bastrop, and others are gone), and even Sears Outlet (no longer connected) is now American Freight.

[storewanderer]

Went to Kmart at South Lake Tahoe again. I don't think it will be there much longer. I don't think they've received any merchandise in this store in at least a month.

At this point the clothing racks are being spread out more, shoe racks are no longer filled (too few shoes), they did take down the shoe shelves and hang some clothes on some shoe pegboards to make them look not empty (someone in this store seems to be trying... as I've noticed for months now), things like body wash are single faced along a huge wall space in the drug department, various nearly empty aisles in hardlines (sports, auto, etc.). Toys spread out with weird stuff. Summer seasonal is mostly gone (maybe 30% of what they had remains- they had pretty good sell through on this stuff as you'd expect at Lake Tahoe), yet still some Easter and Christmas items at 90% off in places where basic merchandise used to be. They did not do garden center/plants this year.

Grocery area is down to almost no soda (some 12 packs of assorted Shasta products single faced) now. Still some bottled water around in random places. Canned goods still seem stocked pretty well; paper is not there except for some single roll toilet paper, cleaning is very empty, laundry is kind of full, pet is kind of full. No promotion of any kind on grocery or drug category anymore (last time they had any monthly price cuts in those departments was April).

Random promotion (monthly price cuts) on various hardlines items (auto, sports, hardware) still happening.

Going to be an interesting liquidation sale when it actually happens. Not much left anyone will want to buy. Not much left period. No way it will be the usual 90 day cycle; I'm not sure it is worth their while to string it even more than about 3-4 weeks.

[storewanderer]

Sears Hayward, CA closure announced this week.

Looking at the photos online, pretty good looking store. Seems like in general, Sears Northern California Stores were kept up pretty well with carpet/flooring that appears to be from the late 90's/early 00's. Yuba City a definite exception.

[Super S]

Sears Hayward, CA closure announced this week.

Looking at the photos online, pretty good looking store. Seems like in general, Sears Northern California Stores were kept up pretty well with carpet/flooring that appears to be from the late 90's/early 00's. Yuba City a definite exception.

Sears seemed to do a good job keeping the busier mall stores updated with flooring, lighting, etc. And some did get pretty thorough remodels over the years, one that comes to mind is the now-closed Washington Square store in Tigard, Oregon near Portland. They converted a basement area to a third retail floor. Even at the end the store didn't feel as dated as others in the area.

Some of the less busy stores did not receive as much...maybe a coat of paint here and there and minimal replacement of carpeting while main flooring was sometimes original to the store (but usually in ok condition otherwise). Some still even had hanging clocks in areas of the store. There were some stores which still clearly showed that they were built in the 1960s or 1970s, such as Lacey, Chehalis, and Aberdeen, WA.

[storewanderer]

Appears the situation on the Virgin Islands is not good.
https://stjohnsource.com/2020/07/25/att ... s-closing/

[Super S]

Appears the situation on the Virgin Islands is not good.
https://stjohnsource.com/2020/07/25/att ... s-closing/

Wow...the way they blocked off the aisles looks worse than some of the large stores Rite Aid acquired from PayLess where up to a third of the store was sometimes blocked off. Rite Aid at least took the time to arrange shelves in a way where it was not as obvious.

[klkla]

Kmart will continue to survive until a certain someone has managed to leech every possible dime out of it's existence.

[storewanderer]

Went to the Kmart in Grass Valley, CA. There have been some, uh, changes to the store since the last time I was there.

This is a store that never got a "Big Kmart" remodel so the food, cleaning, etc. were spread in different areas around the store.

The following departments in the store are still open and quite fully stocked:
Store hours 8 AM to 8 PM daily
1. Cleaning (no paper products) (supplied by C&S)
2. Pet (supplied by C&S)
3. Canned/packaged food (no DSD items like soda, chips) (supplied by C&S)
4. Drug (supplied by C&S and drug wholesaler)
5. Clothing (which seems to be thinning out)
6. Pharmacy

The following departments in the store are closed with their previous aisle spaces boxed/blocked off:
1. Sports
2. Toys
3. Kitchen
4. Domestics
5. Hardware
6. Baby
7. Paper products
8. Garden center

There were also a few random leftover non food items sitting around like some furniture, ice chests, camp chairs, BBQs, but they boxed off most of the aisles in the store so you can't even go down the aisles anymore. They also had a full aisle of mailing boxes and mailing envelopes with no UPCs on them which appear to be liquidation of order shipment supplies.

The store still had quite a few employees who were just walking around the largely empty space. I saw 15-20 employees. The store had almost no customers so it appears word has gotten out the store has for the most part become pretty useless. It was somewhat difficult to take the photos without being noticed due to this.

I guess at this point the store is being kept open for its high volume pharmacy. Perhaps some drugstore chain will take it over.

Clicking on the photos will bring correct orientation.

[TW-Upstate NY]

I'm kind of surprised at the clothing thinning out because of all of the You Tube videos I've watched on this and the one closing sale I personally attended, that seemed to be the only thing left in ample supply even in the final days of a liquidation sale. Either they had a ton of it in storage and it's finally running out or the clothing vendors finally wised up and said enough is enough. And honestly, let's just end it already and in reference to another comment made a few posts back-how much more could there possibly be left for Fast Eddie to grab? Let this once great retail institution belong to the ages and be done with it.

[storewanderer]

Went to South Lake Tahoe Kmart. Not much changed there. Still open 8 AM to 6 PM. They did box in the 3 aisles around Automotive so those are closed but the rest of the aisles in the store you can still walk down. Not much relevant product anymore in hardlines but still some random stuff scattered around.

I did notice a few things in this place:
They had more Craftsman products than a few weeks ago
They had some patio sets with Kmart Distribution Center shipping labels on them dated July 1, and some other tags on them showing shipment from some vendor to the Kmart Distribution Center dated in late May. This was 1-2 types of patio sets only. I am shocked to see any inventory is moving through their distribution centers at all in July 2020.
They had paper products: many boxes of 3pk Best Yet Paper Towels and Single Roll Bath Tissue.
There were some jugs of Smart Sense Fabric Softener (Product of Canada) that said "NEW" on them and I do not recall seeing these there before.... a few hours later I noticed its companion, Smart Sense Laundry Detergent (from the same supplier in Canada) at a Grocery Outlet (Kmart didn't have any of that).
They had a small assortment of Beer that wasn't there before

Photos should work at the right angle when clicked again.

This is quite sad. I actually did make a purchase in this one. As usual after I paid out popped a $5 off any $15 purchase coupon. The person paying in front of me received 3 coupons, not sure what for.