They got feminized and let K-mart buy them out.. They didn't sell much that a man would be interested in...well, maybe tools, but everyone else does also.. And cheaper..
Backwards. They bought the Kmart holding company. The Sears holding company still owns tons of real estate. Merger more the word. Old Kmart and Sears stores are still leased.
That buyout was financial move more than anything.
Sears had a defined pension plan and had a lot of money invested for the purpose of paying those defined pensions. It may not have been funded at 100% but it was still a substantial amount. By selling themselves to Kmart (which was internally treated as a Sears takeover of Kmart) they could terminate the pension plan and recover the money for themselves. They took the cash and left the employees without the pension money then set up a 401K plan.
Older employees who had been working at Sears for decades had to start from scratch to try to make a retirement for themselves. I have a relative who was one of them and after another sellout the older employees were given a choice of a small amount to leave or face being sent hundreds of miles to another store/location. My relative walked out after 30 years with only $50K. When she started working for Sears her defined pension benefit was for around $2K/month.