Posted on 01/09/2014 2:09:59 PM PST by Hojczyk
Sears, once America's golden retailer, is a company in crisis.
The company has shuttered hundreds of stores in recent years. The embattled company has been selling some its most profitable stores to raise money.
And now, shares are tumbling after Sears lowered guidance for the quarter and announced that comparable sales in the fourth quarter have slid more than 7%.
Brian Sozzi, chief equities strategist at Belus Capital Advisors, took poignant photos inside of New Jersey and New York Sears locations in October.
"To understand why Sears is in a 'sell stores mode' one must look no further than the stores themselves, where the truth is to be found," Sozzi writes.
His photos show the sad reality of what Sears is today.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Our local K-Mart is a zombie store.
You go in there, and no employees OR customers.
I have no idea how they even pay the lease and utilities, let alone make a profit.
I went to sears to purchase a Kenmore side by side. It broke recently and I was told that it was just a rebranded LG.
They deserve to go under. They refused to honor the warranty on a failed DieHard (not!) battery a few months ago. I will never set foot in a Sears again. No one, not even numerous Sears phone reps gave a damn when I said if they didn’t honor my warranty, we’d never set foot in a Sears again. Some of the phone reps, “customer service” people, were very rude. I had to hang up on one of them. It was disgraceful. Sears was a decent place to shop when I was a kid.
Their catalog and on line is at Lands End.
I seldom buy new clothes but when I do I buy them from Lands End.
One of the things I actually liked about Sears was that utilitarian thing. I know that most people want an ‘expreience’ or other buzzword when they shop. I’m among the minority that wants to get in, get out and only if needed, ask for help doing it. And I’m good with going to find a floor person to ask.
That said, Sears has indeed gone to hell. Back in the 80s they were a good solid company if memory serves. But once the catalog became a buggy whip, they clung to the old models, and refused to really adapt. Or actually adapt half way.
Horrible, drab, depressing pictures at the link.
What I heard from former ex-Sears workers of mine is that Lampbert was only interested in Sears for its real estate.
I worked for Sears for 9 years in the 1990s - that was sort of the last gasp; before internet shopping took off.
Photo 1 - who chopped off Rick Santorum’s head?
All I ever notice in stores is whether they have what I want or not, and whether it’s reasonably priced so I don’t feel the need to look elsewhere. I’m FAR more critical of stores like Best Buy who seem to utilize a random-access organizational scheme than whether the mannequins are modern or whatever. How do you modernize a mannequin, anyway? Give it an ear-ring and put manboobs on the male ones?
It may bite him in the @ss, because all these malls are dying and may wind up as Section 8 housing.
They lost me when they started posting signs in Spanish.
Sears’s partner store, K-Mart, is the same, and seems to be closing stores at an even faster pace.
The employees must all be at your store, then. For the past year or so, the three Sears locations in my area have been absurdly under-staffed. Like one guy covering the automotive, lawn & garden and hardware areas. In the past, there would be two or three associates in each of those areas. The car-care center no longer offers the same range of services as before, it's mostly an oil change, tire and battery shop - and just as under-staffed as the retail floor.
They're trying to run a bare-bones operation, but it's fading fast.
OTOH, I've been very happy with the performance of their online ordering system. Just last week, I needed some small appliance parts - delivery was very fast. Perhaps that's where the company is putting all its effort now. Hope so, because otherwise Sears is gone forever.
The way we sold Sears was that any product that was labeled “Sears Best”, “Roadhandler”, “Diehard”, or “Craftsman”, etc. was because they were the best products in the store, and that Sears had contracted with the to make them better than their own product line and that manufacturer could not sell that product under their own name.
It was so easy to sell up because they had better warranties, lasted longer, and there was pride in the product line as opposed to just a bunch of different brands lined up to see which one caught the buyers eye.
My K-Mart is now a Ghost store - they closed it last year.
I still remember from my childhood the stand-alone stores; before they became shopping mall “anchor stores”.
I remember the old Sears store on, I believe, Grand Ave. in Portland, OR. That’s long gone, but I still recall it from the very early 1980s.
Yup. The basics. Sporting goods, flannel shirts, and Craftsman tools. Never meant to compete with Macy’s or Lord and Taylor. Completely different league. Sears started its circling of the drain when it dropped guns and ammo, and its “Ted Williams” line from its inventory. “Sporting goods” department grew anemic in the extreme. After Craftsman tools began reducing its footprint, there simply wasn’t much reason to shop there.
Boy, that was depressing. Like Soviet Union, no?
Which reminds me - I received a Sears gift card at Christmas. Better spend it soon.
Heh. I took a course in retail management in 1980. The primary focus was the decline of Sears. It's been going on forever.
It was some credit card bank in Georgia...I remember because my zero balance Sears card with a 8.99% interest rate suddenly jumped to 25% for no good reason. Needless to say,I cut the card up and mailed it back to them.
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