Posted on 11/17/2004 3:37:25 AM PST by bikepacker67
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Kmart Holding Corp. on Wednesday said they would merge in an $11 billion deal to form the third-largest U.S. retailer.
The companies said in a joint statement that the new company, Sears Holdings, will have about $55 billion in annual revenues, 2,350 full-line and off-mall stores, and 1,100 specialty retail stores.
Some stores actually are closing in April and reopening as Sears. This was announced in October. There are several in San Diego doing this.
Sears is a client of mine and I knew about this 10 days ago. Sears wants to position their brand name between K-Mart and traditional Dept Stores like Macy's.
They plan to open 50+ non-mall free-standing stores in old K-Mart buildings.
BOOMSTICK!
That's disturbing close to the "Khobar Towers" which was bombed by Hezbollah on June 25, 1996. They used a fuel truck. It was in Dharan, Saudi Arabia and used to house foreign military personnel. Building #131 was the primary target and housed mostly USAF from the 4404th Fighter Wing. 19 US servicemen, and 1 Saudi were killed. 372 wounded.
What a coincidence. I used to live in Hoffman Estates (we used to nickname it "Hoffman Mistakes") back in the early 80's.
Lived at the Barrington Lakes Apts. and lived in dread of the Hoffman Estates Police who made traffic tickets their whole reason for living. (They got the speeders that Arlington Heights P.D. missed.)
It was a nice location for the commute because it was only about a half-mile or so to the NW Tollway entrance/exit. My wife was acquainted with the daughter of the mayor, Hayder, at that time.
You're probably right.
China is an economic black hole, sucking all retail goods to poverty level pricing.
And WalMart = China.
All other Big Box retailers will have to follow suit in the long run.
K-Mart/Sears will gradually morph into a WallyWorld twin.
Craftsman tools will become cheap imported crap.
Dubya will sit on his arse, reigning lord over a tyrranical federal bureacracy that places our productive industries at competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace while cheering for the Chicom/Walmart partnership that's screwing the American Middle Class.
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
--Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119
Spell check wouldn't have helped. His sentence is a grammatical mess, but the words are spelled correctly. ...just saying. ;-)
True. Our local K-Mart will become a Sears.
Dollars to donuts your local store is in a decent area with either little Wal-Mart presence or none?
The dead and the dying. Yippee.
True. Our local K-Mart will become a Sears.
Prediction...the KMart name will eventually disappear
They will call them boomsticks.
Actually I think they'll be going more after Target/ Mervyns than WalMart. This will give them basically the same two layered business model to improve their power buying by getting both low-end and mid-range products from their suppliers. It's worked really well for Target, almost too well (remember when Target was part of Mervyns, now it seems like the other way around).
Ab-so-loodle!
"Shop smart. Shop S-Mart."
See post #61
Mervyn's is a California based division of Target Corp. Mervyn's and Target were at one point part of the Dayton-Hudson Corp (DHC), with Marshall Field's, Hudson's, and Dayton's as the Department Store Division. The DHC changed its name to Target Corp, due to the fact that Target was making the majority of the money for DHC. The Dept Store Division stores were all changed to Marshall Field's. Earlier this year, Target sold Marshall Field's to the parent company of Lord & Taylor.
Mervyn's is a store in the style of Kohl's, while Target competes with Wal-Mart and K-Mart.
I have stock in Target (TGT) through my old 401k, which I still have from when I worked there.
That's why the website changed. Used to be Target.com had tabs for Mervyns and Marshall Fields. I find it interesting how Mervyns created Target to go after the low end market and it's been so successful that it took over. I also find it funny how well they fly under the radar, while everybody focuses on WalMarts market power nobody pays attention to the fact that Target contracts their own "bonus track" version of CDs periodically (I think Bon Jovi's release last year was the first, seen a couple since then). Target is a lot quieter than Wally, but they have some serious market clout (and it's a much more pleasant store to shop in).
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