Beginning of the End for Sears and K-Mart?

[IndyPoolPlayer]

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160526/NEWS07/160529881/sears-to-explore-options-for-kenmore-craftsman-diehard-brands?utm_source=NEWS07&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=chicagobusiness

(Bloomberg)—Sears Holdings Corp., the unprofitable department-store company controlled by hedge fund manager Edward Lampert, plans to consider options for its Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard brands as well as its Sears Home Services repair business.
The retailer reported a wider first-quarter loss after efforts to win back customers failed to boost sales. The net loss expanded to $471 million, or $4.41 a share, from $303 million, or $2.85, a year earlier, the Hoffman Estates-based company said in a statement yesterday. Chief Financial Officer Robert Schriesheim plans to leave the company, Sears said.

The CFO is jumping off the sinking ship. Interesting the Sears home services is mentioned in here as a potential spinoff as Sears acquired A&E Signature Service which was the in-home repair division of Montgomery Ward when MW finally ceased to exist after its bankruptcy and failed turnaround attempt.

 

Kenmore, Craftsman, and DieHard are keeping Sears afloat. Now granted Kenmore is really Whirlpool and LG, Craftsman is really S&K Tools, and DieHard is really (I think...) Exide car batteries. Some other retailer will grab those brand names then Sears will fade into history along with Woolworths and Montgomery Ward.

 

Also explain why Citibank made the changes to the Sears MasterCard they did recently. It's not a huge change going from Sears shopping points to Citi Thank You points - I think Citi knows Sears won't live much past the 2016 holiday shopping season and they're preparing to migrate Sears charge customers to other credit products. The ones who have regular Sears only charge cards will either be upgraded if they are creditworthy or dumped if not.

[cv91915]

The last purchase we made from Sears was a washer and dryer set about a year ago. It was sold as a package (washer, dryer, two pedestals) for a single price. We got a gray washer, two gray pedestals and a white dryer.

 

Upon redelivery, they brought another white dryer.

 

Resolving this took weeks.

 

Sears can FOAD.

Edited May 26, 2016 by cv91915

[david_weaver]

I guess the question Sears/Kmart has been unable to answer for a decade is, "WHO are their customers?"

 

Sears at one time was a mall, or a Main Street, all under one roof. Clothes, furniture, appliances, tools, TVs, toys, and even the house to put it all in could be purchased at Sears. But who buys their clothes anymore? My 80-year old mother and her friends shop at J.C. Penney, and I doubt many Millennials crave the 'Sears look' for their club nights. Everything is so specialized, so many 'category killers' out there. And when those single-purpose stores cannot whip Sears on price and selection, some online store will and can have it there tomorrow.

 

Sears has limited assets left: the real estate it owns and the brands it owns (Kenmore, Craftsman, Die Hard, I think they bought back Land's End?).

 

Time to end it all. Sell off the brands to the highest bidder. I doubt they will bring as much as they would have a decade ago as they are really only names now, with the merchandise not really any different than the competitors. As Indy mentioned. a Kenmore dishwasher is just a Whirlpool dishwasher with a different badge on it. And with Home Depot and Lowe's having their own 'house brands' of tools, how much is the same exact hammer worth just because of the label and the guarantee? And as the older folks who grew up and lived with Craftsman and Kenmore die off, the brands lose value every day. In ten years, even they will be worthless. Their real estate is on the same course. Stores are shrinking. Bricks and mortar is giving way to e-commerce. Sears lost out to Target and a host of others. WalMart wiped out Kmart.

 

The closest mall to me here in KY was built in 1971 with quite a unique feature: Sears was the centerpiece. The mall was shaped like a letter 'J' with Sears in the center, just before the curve, so you had to actually walk through Sears to get from one side of the mall to the other. Talk about generating foot traffic. But in 2014, Sears closed and sold the store back to the mall which carved it up into dozens of smaller stores on the inside and restaurants along the outside. To walk the mall now, one would never even know Sears once existed there. I expect that to happen everywhere very soon.

[IndyPoolPlayer]

http://www.ibj.com/articles/print/58757-sears-to-explore-sales-of-kenmore-craftsman-diehard-brands

 

Another article based on the Bloomberg press release with different editing and spin, basically Sears is still up Schlitz's Creek.

[IndyPoolPlayer]

[W]ith Home Depot and Lowe's having their own 'house brands' of tools, how much is the same exact hammer worth just because of the label and the guarantee?

 

Lowe's carries the same warranty on their hand tools as Sears does with Craftsman. I have a lot of Craftsman tools in my toolbox, but lately I go to Lowe's and buy Kobalt.

[TheVig]

Very little of the craftsman tool line is still made in the USA. Screwdrivers for the most part are still SK/Pratt-Reed USA, but SK hasn't made a wrench for sears in awhile. Its all pretty much gone to china/Taiwan.

 

They could have done what Amazon did before Amazon became huge. Just didn't have the talent 15-20 years ago in upper management to see it coming. They could have turned the Sears catalog/wish book into a online success.

 

Kmart in Pineville, NC is closing. Across the street at Carolina Place Mall, the Sears is staying open.....only one left in the Charlotte market. Every time I walk in there, they have too many low rent lethargic sales people standing around doing nothing.

 

My brother "was" going to get a washing machine from them recently. He let them talk him into app for a sears card. Approved for the Sears MC $8k limit. The sales lady upon his credit approval, yelled out........hot damn. got an approval, and a high roller too. Totally unprofessional. He canceled the sale, she got no commission, but hey 5 days later a shiney new MC showed up. lol.

[TeeSharice]

My Kenmore front loader W/D is over 10'years old. Sears Repair had been great in the past. Last call they gave me hell over minor issue and I have since decided Sears and all of their holdings can KMA & FOAD.

 

I will inevitably need a new W/D and will not be purchasing from Sears If they even survive.

 

My older (over 65) relatives still have faith in the Kenmore name. Their probably the only ones

 

 

 

eta: I live not far from Sears outlet so I amend my statement to say I'd buy from there for the right price

[Quit Screwing Me]

 

Kmart in Pineville, NC is closing. Across the street at Carolina Place Mall, the Sears is staying open.....only one left in the Charlotte market

I thought the one in Statesville was still open, but just checked and it's not. It does look like the rat-hole KMart across the street from it is still open though.

[TheVig]

I stumbled across a rat hole Kmart in Lynchburg VA this week. Nasty tile floors. Haven't had a real cleaning and wax job since probably 1995. Lol.

 

Only reason I went in was because my hotel was close by and I didn't feel like fighting the Walmart crowd down the street.

Edited May 27, 2016 by TheVig

[Quit Screwing Me]

I used to like both KMart & Sears. But KMart fell victim to greed. The merger between the two was a disaster. And supposedly, Eddie Lampert was only interested in the real estate the whole time anyway. Sad.

[cv91915]

Some of my worst memories of my entire career were in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, so I'm writing off the entire city. Not just Sears.

[mendelssohn]

Let's also not forget that Sears was responsible for Discover as well.

[Quit Screwing Me]

I kind of like Discover.

 

Many people don't realize how huge Sears was at one time......not really all that long ago. Discover, Coldwell Banker, Dean Witter, NTB, Allstate. They were massive.

[IndyPoolPlayer]

I kind of like Discover.

 

Many people don't realize how huge Sears was at one time......not really all that long ago. Discover, Coldwell Banker, Dean Witter, NTB, Allstate. They were massive.

and don't forget Western Auto and Prodigy

Edited May 27, 2016 by IndyPoolPlayer

[TheVig]

 

I kind of like Discover.

 

Many people don't realize how huge Sears was at one time......not really all that long ago. Discover, Coldwell Banker, Dean Witter, NTB, Allstate. They were massive.

and don't forget Western Auto and Prodigy

Yeah let's sell off businesses we were probably making money with and switch our focus back to our drab under performing stores.

[cv91915]

18 months before the washer and dryer I bought TD a hammock from Sears.com.

 

Damn thing broke in less than a week. Five Sears store employees, including two managers, tried unsuccessfully to process our return, with both the item and the receipt present.

 

Turns out the item couldn't be returned to a Sears store.

 

Called Sears for a pickup. Set the item next to our front door. Left on a trip, came back, giant hammock box was still there.

 

Called again and they had decided to make the broken item UPS' problem (now they believed it was damaged when we received it). They forgot to call UPS to have them pick it up, so they placed a call to UPS.

 

Two days later, I'm back in CA, and the doorbell rings. It's UPS, there to pick up the hammock, which is sitting in Mudland, 2,000 miles away.

 

Sears had given them the billing address on my credit card, not the shipping address for the item.

[Fallon]

 

[W]ith Home Depot and Lowe's having their own 'house brands' of tools, how much is the same exact hammer worth just because of the label and the guarantee?

 

Lowe's carries the same warranty on their hand tools as Sears does with Craftsman. I have a lot of Craftsman tools in my toolbox, but lately I go to Lowe's and buy Kobalt.

 

Haven't found a Kobalt tool worth a damn yet. May as well goto Harbor Freight and get a Crapsburg Steel for half the cost.

[ubercat]

What's next?

 

"The Beginning of the End for the Dodo Bird."

[cv91915]

Before Christmas a few years ago I went to a Kmart to pick up an item I'd purchased online (I needed a small refrigerator with specific dimensions). The only location that stocked it was in a crusty part of town. It had been a long time since I felt vulnerable in a parking lot.

[Burgerwars]

 

 

I kind of like Discover.

 

Many people don't realize how huge Sears was at one time......not really all that long ago. Discover, Coldwell Banker, Dean Witter, NTB, Allstate. They were massive.

and don't forget Western Auto and Prodigy

Yeah let's sell off businesses we were probably making money with and switch our focus back to our drab under performing stores.

 

They probably regret selling off Discover. The one division that was consistently profitable that they could have used for constant tie-ins and promotions to their stores. Prodigy only had a small window of success. No matter who ran that, it would still have died.

[Bad Doctor Frost]

Craftsman tools are no better than Harbor Freight tools. They're all made from Chineseium or Thaitanium.I'm glad I have an old set that's still good. Their batteries used to be good, too, but thelast DieHard I had didn't last a year, and they refused to do anything about it until I went somewhere else, tested it, and shoved the printed off report in their face. I said either you're lying, or you have inferior testing equipment, but either way it's not making you look good so either take the battery back and refund, or I'll do a chargeback and trade it in somewhere else. They took it back and I got a battery at the dealer...which is actually still in the car, 5 years later.

 

Then they have the retail monkeys who push for Sears cards and service plans for every damn little thing. You're a cashier, not a hussler.

[Glacier]

I stepped off the Titanic last year. Good move on my part.

[hegemony]

Sears and K-mart will be just like Montgomery Wards current biz model.

 

For me, Sear's has been dead since I was 12 and they stopped mailing huge catalogs with "lingerie"

[Konrad2012]

The paradox of this is that Sears Roebuck & Co was founded as a catalogue/mail order business that thrived by circumventing the brick and mortar establishments.

 

And this isn't the beginning of the end, this is late stage terminal.

[unleashedfury]

I worked in the Sears auto center years ago. And it was failing then. Some of the older guys said that before you couldn't stop to take a lemonade without customers lining up at the door. Towards the end of my career there it was old school customers who were die hard Sears people. The rest moved on to other retailers. The store I worked in closed in 2015. Everyone lost everything and, only got a few weeks severance pay.

 

Nothing is a bigger kick in the groin then 30 years of loyalty to a company to get 6 weeks severance