Yes. They just opened their 47th store in Milford, Connecticut at the beginning of October 2018. A few days later they announced plans for their 48th store opening in 2019 in Providence, Rhode Island replacing Nordstrom.
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Sears Files Bankruptcy
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
Yes. They just opened their 47th store in Milford, Connecticut at the beginning of October 2018. A few days later they announced plans for their 48th store opening in 2019 in Providence, Rhode Island replacing Nordstrom.
I can't believe it. My local Sears was not going to close, because they owned the store, while the ones that were closing rented.
And now there are signs all over the store saying it will close.
And now there are signs all over the store saying it will close.
Just saw a commercial for the Diehard Battery (starring Bruce Willis). Somehow I missed that Advance Auto Parts bought the Diehard brand from Sears in 2019.
Sears sells DieHard brand to Advance Auto Parts for $200 million
Advance Auto Parts has acquired the DieHard brand for $200 million from Sears' owner Transformco. DieHard batteries will be sold at both chains.
www.usatoday.com
Wow how 30 years have changed now it's Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target that have now taken their spots.
In case you missed it, they also sold their iconic Craftsman Brand to Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. for $990M a few years back.Just saw a commercial for the Diehard Battery (starring Bruce Willis). Somehow I missed that Advance Auto Parts bought the Diehard brand from Sears in 2019.
Sears sells DieHard brand to Advance Auto Parts for $200 million
Advance Auto Parts has acquired the DieHard brand for $200 million from Sears' owner Transformco. DieHard batteries will be sold at both chains.www.usatoday.com
And they're mainly sold in Lowe's stores, although there are some sold by Ace Hardware as well.
Sears At Arden Fair Mall Closing After 50 Years
After 50 years, the Sears store at the Arden Fair Mall is closing.
sacramento.cbslocal.com
Sears is closing their Arden Fair (Sacramento Area) location after 50 years. But it was not shocking to begin with it was how they were going to handle that was the issue.
One asset that the old Kmart corporation had was a large number of its stores were the 99 year transferable leases. These leases originated in the 1960’s and 1970’s with rates of the that time. When inflation, and the general increases of retail and commercial property costs are factored in the “rent / lease” payment or cost for square foot were ridiculously low in 2003 dollars. Rumor has it that Lampert bought Kmart and shut down a bunch of the original stores sold the leases at the 2003ish rates and essentially recouped his investment. Kind of reminds me of some AM stations that the land was worth a whole lot more than station.
BTW I believe the old Sears mail order houses or are now called “Craftsmen” style which are / were structurally sound enough after all these years to be remodel excellent candidates.
Personal note: during my first battle with throat Polyps and ulcers caused sinus issues I was in Kmart’s management program for 4 years. In the early 1980’s Kmart was the largest retailer in the US but Sears with Allstate insurance was much bigger financially. All of the stores I worked at or helped open are gone.
BTW I believe the old Sears mail order houses or are now called “Craftsmen” style which are / were structurally sound enough after all these years to be remodel excellent candidates.
Personal note: during my first battle with throat Polyps and ulcers caused sinus issues I was in Kmart’s management program for 4 years. In the early 1980’s Kmart was the largest retailer in the US but Sears with Allstate insurance was much bigger financially. All of the stores I worked at or helped open are gone.
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kenglish
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I suspect that people ordering from Sears was the reason for those big RFD mailboxes. Damn, those were so cool!
Doesn't anyone find it just a bit ironic that the company that was KING of the catalogue ordering LONG before the internet failed to stay KING of ordering when the internet came to be? Sears Canada vanished, bankrupt in 2017.
Sears USA doesn't seem to be all that far off. Such a shame.
Sears USA doesn't seem to be all that far off. Such a shame.
The additional irony is that Amazon, currently king of online retail, is investing a lot in brick & mortar.
Yep, back when Sears began selling and marketing via catalogs and mail order, it was revolutionary at the time. As someone else stated, you could even buy a new home from the Sears catalog, and there are still a lot of Craftsman houses around more than 100 years after they were built. You simply picked the home of your liking out of the catalog and it was delivered to your town, usually by rail or barge in more industrial areas. All the parts and pieces were numbered and lettered so local tradesmen could erect it with relative ease.
However revolutionary they may have been back then, Sears was late to the internet sales and marketing game. Also, they tended to try and continue selling on the name of some of their in-house brands like Kenmore which were once innovative and well-built, but in later years were no better than a handful of other brands. Their overhead was relatively high, and competition from newer automotive, hardware, home improvement and big box appliance stores took its toll. While I bought dress shoes from Sears recently, I haven't purchased other clothing from them in years, primarily because they mostly sell styles more befitting my father or someone from his generation.
Sears brick and mortar stores at one time tried to be all things to all people, sort of in the same vane as modern Wal-Mart Supercenters. The Sears where I grew up had a dental center, optometrist, portrait studio, hair/beauty salon and tux/bridal rentals.
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One of my friends who has family in Puerto Rico told me that KMART and SEARS were really popular on the island. Now I've read many stores in both chains have closed in PR during the the latest rounds of closings. KMART also closed their store(s) in the US Virgin Islands. That's going to really going to be a problem because the article about that closing mentioned that neither Target nor Walmart have stores in the US Virgin Islands.
I looked online and found out Lowe's sells Kenmore branded small appliances and freezers but not much else, and mostly online, which is something I didn't realize even when I worked there.
Sears was always the lead department store at Plaza Las Americas, one of the world's largest shopping centers. It had a rather different merchandise array, based both on local climate and tastes and the upscale nature of that center, which opened in 1968 and is one of the Americas largest centers.
When opened, the mall had Sears as its primary anchor store with a three-level, 261,500 square foot location I t was the chain's first location outside the fifty states. It has 2,300,000 square feet, not including the theaters and office space. It's about the 15th largest mall in the US.
KMart was not ever in the premium malls, but had smaller stores in some malls and, in general, the locations were not as big as the US equivalents and the emphasis was on low priced stuff. It was where you went if you wanted some shelves for the laundry room and that sort of thing.
The Virgin Islands is a really small market. It's sort of like Key West: isolated, lower income, no industry, lots of unemployment and underemployment and lots of sun and surf. And it is a market split into several separate islands, so each one is a smaller "market" as far as available consumers. It's probably the worst radio market in the US.
A few friends and I went to that mall to see a few movies in the early 2000s, as the movies there were shown in Engish, with subtitles en Espanol. Nice mall, but the cab ride getting there was always hella scary (people in that city seem to just make up lanes if need be to get through traffic as quickly as possible) and I recall the cinemas always being ice cold and reeking of urine.
There is a sign on the closed Sears near where I live assuring people that there is one nearby. In Raleigh. That's over 100 miles.
By the time you drive there, expect it to be closed too.
Same thing in East Tennessee. Nearest one now is in Nashville. One of the former Sears is now a sprawling Dick's Sporting Goods that just opened; the other entire mall is being torn down for a fulfillment center.
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