“There’s room for one legacy fuddy duddy in retail. By the way, if people “love” Craftsman and Kenmore, and you can only get them from Sears and partner K-Mart, isn’t that enough reason to exist?
Fuddy duddy might not be bad with an aging population.”
Except you don’t need the “Sears” store to get Kenmore and Craftsman now. Since Sears picked up Orchard Supply Hardware, they carry those items, also. I think the smaller places like OSH are what is keeping the Sears holding co. alive. They could probably eventually shut down their large stores and survive it. If they went back to their original mail-order model, updated for the Internet, they could prosper. Their stores are somewhat old and outdated, and not kept up well, which looks bad for them. A lot of the Sears retail stores are also in not-so-great neighborhoods now, too.