Over 100 Sears and Kmart stores to close

[Brian Lutz]

http://www.komonews.com/news/business/O ... 67453.html

Sears has announced plans to close somewhere between 100 and 120 Sears and Kmart stores following a weak Holiday season. A list of closings is not available yet, but should be coming soon.

[Super S]

The fact that there is no official list of which stores will close further illustrates how disorganized this company has become.

[Alpha8472]

When Sears and Kmart combined years ago, people thought that it would create a huge and powerful company that could rival Walmart. Sears and Kmart had tons of locations nationwide and a huge amount of buying power.

They could not have gone more wrong. The combined company did everything they could to make themselves go out of business.

Kmart prices are awful. They are vastly higher than Target or Walmart. Their stores are old and dirty. They don't know how to provide any customer service.

Sears stores have nothing to offer. The products are boring and the prices are not impressive. There is nothing to attract people to their stores.

If the company had focused on competing with Walmart, they might have actually been successful. They should have copied Walmart's business plan. Kmart should have matched Walmart's prices and remodeled their stores to keep up with Walmart and Target.

Sears should have gone all out. Forever 21 is opening up stores like crazy and they are very profitable. Why is that? They are focusing on a very profitable segment. They are targeting teens and young women who want fashionable and affordable clothing.

Sears could have started a new advertising campaign and recruited people from Forever 21 to transform Sears into a destination store.

[KingU8ol0Soopers]

Sorry about the repeat posts, again.

[KingU8ol0Soopers]

They have published the list of the stores that are closing: http://searsholdings.com/about/122711_close.pdf

[Super S]

Finally, a list of stores that are closing:

http://searsholdings.com/about/122711_close.pdf

The closest one to me is the store in Lacey, WA. I visited this one a while back, and noticed that it added lottery ticket sales. What is interesting is that this particular location is just across Interstate 5 from the Sears store in the South Sound Center, which is not on the closing list (so far) The Sears store mentioned is perhaps one of the oldest locations in the Northwest, is a small, single story location, and has not had much remodeling over the years, especially the inside lighting which looks like 1960s vintage at the very latest. What is most interesting about this location is that it is right next door to a fairly new Target store which was constructed where the enclosed portion of the mall used to be, and on the other side of the Target is a Kohl's, which was a former Mervyn's. It seems that Target and Kohl's must help draw customers to this fairly old Sears. The Kmart sits on a fairly good size chunk of land that could easily accomodate another big-box retailer. Also worth noting is that Lacey is home to the only ShopKo store in Washington that is located west of the Cascades.
.

[submariner]

(returning from the shadows...)

I noticed the other day that the of the two Sears Essentials stores in the San Diego area (two are closing, two will remain) one (Spring Valley) has already been converted back into a Kmart and the other (Mission Valley) is currently selling off inventory and will be turned back into a Kmart in March 2012.

I'm going to speculate that this is happening at all Sears Essentials sites, and that the experiment was mostly a failure. Though I'm not looking forward to seeing the hideous orange color scheme coming to the Mission Valley store (the one closest to me).

..come to think of it, I don't remember where San Diego had any Kmart stores up until recently...

Mission Valley:

Sears Essentials > Kmart Reversion (San Diego - Mission Valley, CA) by dirtyblueshirt, on Flickr

Sears Essentials > Kmart Reversion (San Diego - Mission Valley, CA) by dirtyblueshirt, on Flickr

Sears Essentials > Kmart Reversion (San Diego - Mission Valley, CA) by dirtyblueshirt, on Flickr

Sears Essentials > Kmart Reversion (San Diego - Mission Valley, CA) by dirtyblueshirt, on Flickr

[Alpha8472]

Kmart decor has recently changed. My local store was remodeled several months ago.

The color scheme has been modified. They no longer paint huge walls with orange. They paint a few areas with accent colors, but for the most part it is white. The accent colors are very light tan and small areas of red. It is much nicer looking that the totally orange and dark brown.

They also did not use any brown and orange signs. The signs are the Big Kmart signs in pastel colors.