I concluded Part 1 of Sears, a tale of the retail apocalypse by writing a program note: “I plan on presenting the view on the ground on Monday, when I will share three videos from Retail Archeology. Stay tuned.” I begin with Come See The Deader Side of Sears.
A video tour and mini documentary about the dying retail store Sears. Footage was filmed in Mesa, AZ on 11/30/2016.
While this does not take the same long-range perspective as Sears: The Rise And Fall Of The Massive U.S. Retailer from CNBC, it still gives a sense of history though personal detail as well as serving as an example of the decline of Sears.
The narrator mentioned that the Sears store in this video was in better shape than the one in Fiesta Mall, which he had just recorded.* That store appears in Sears: Open For The Community? | FIESTA MALL LOCATION CLOSING JANUARY 2018 and shows a location in serious decline.
In this episode of Retail Archaeology we take a look at the Sears located at Fiesta Mall. It was announced on 11/2/2017 that this store will be closing in January of 2018. Filming for this video was done on a Saturday afternoon between 12pm & 1pm at Fiesta Mall. What the hell does “open for the community” mean?
All of the efforts to attract customers failed and the store was scheduled to close, as documented in Sears: Not Open For The Community | Retail Archaeology Dead Mall & Retail Documentary.
In this episode of Retail Archaeology we take a look at a Sears in the final stages of its liquidation sale. This is the Sears at the dead mall Fiesta Mall and is the same location I covered 6 months ago that put up the weird “Open For The Community” banner.
That’s every bit as sad as the closing KMart stores in Toys R Us closing down and Kmart may follow on my personal blog. As Sears closes more stores, expect to see more scenes like this.
Retail Archeology has videos on other stores suffering during the retail apocalypse, including Macy’s, Penny’s, Radio Shack, Claire’s, and, of course, Toys R Us and Kmart. I’ve already done a series on Toys R Us and plan on posting entries with videos on the other chains as well. In addition, I have a third part of this series to post and might have a fourth after that. Stay tuned.
*I may post videos of that mall’s decline and closing, too.
Modified from Part 2 of Sears, a tale of the retail apocalypse at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News.
I found a Sears Cutting Edge Gin channel (No connection to the department store chain, apparently) on YouTube with several drink recipes on it. Here is SEARS Drinks – Intense Mule.
CEO wants to turn it into Amazon. Problem is that Amazon already exists and is run far better than Sears.
Sears committed suicide some years back when they decided to fire all their long term employees to save money on salaries by hiring young inexperienced kids at lower wages. Typical CEO thinking – Management are gods and workers are interchangeable cattle.
Sears used to be headquartered in Chicago, now it has no stores in Chicago.
They moved the headquarters to a massive location in Hoffman Estates IL. Illinois’ bankrupt legislature gave them millions in greenmail to stay in the state. They drew a special school district for them to be in, a school district that has no residential area, hence no children, hence no schools, hence no property tax. I’m pretty burned up about that because otherwise that big complex wold be in my school district (U-46, second biggest in the state after Chicago). I’m not sure if Sears has any stores in Illinois any more. I know of only two K-marts. One is in Chicago on the Northwest side near my in-laws and the other is in Des Plaines or somewhere like that.
That’s Eddie Lampert’s (nicknamed Eddie Lamprey) dream. no stores, just go on-line, while even amazon is seeing the value of walk-in locations.
Didn’t he think for a minute that if he did become a serious competitor to Amazon that Amazon would come down on him like a ton of bricks? Of course not. Like (almost) all CEO’s he believes in his godlike powers so far above mere mortals, more powerful than a locomotive, faster than a speeding train…
As many of us and others have pointed out, 25 years ago Sears had a number of assets that theoretically would have allowed it to compete with Amazon. Now, I can’t think of anything Sears has to bring. They shut down the catalog in the 90s IIRC so there’s no institutional memory left of shipping, ordering from ads and not product, etc. They had a lot of money then and now are heavily indebted. The brand is garbage – “bought it at Sears” is a punchline. They don’t even have all that many stores left for a nationwide chain.
The stores could be extremely valuable for redevelopment as modern mixed-use communities but that idea is just beginning to go mainstream and most of the stores are already gone anyway.
And the CEO has been lending Sears money through his own real estate mortgage company. When Sears folds, he will foreclose and own them. Meanwhile, I’m sure the interest rate is high, at least relatively, so that goes into his pocket also.
That sort of self-dealing should be illegal but it seems all too common.
that’s why he’s called Eddie Lamprey.
“Eddie Lamprey” — I like that nickname and hope it sticks.
You got it! That’s what he’s doing. Only the company isn’t getting the profits. The CEO is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/business/sears-seritage-edward-lampert.html