Sears, once America’s largest and most significant retailer, might face its final holiday shopping season.
The Sears chain boasted 2,000 stores just two decades ago and over 200 when it emerged from bankruptcy in 2019. Now, only five remain, following three more closures last year.
One standalone store in Coral Gables, Florida, could be demolished and redeveloped into 1,000 residential units. The other four operate from malls—in Braintree, Massachusetts; Concord, California; El Paso, Texas; and Orlando, Florida. All of these shopping centers are owned by Simon Property Group, the nation’s biggest mall operator.
The company, once the Walmart and Amazon of its era, helped transform America—from how people shopped to where they lived, and much more. Now, the once-proud chain finds itself in a precarious position; by next holiday season, it might finally be gone.
A dismantled sign stands before the Sears store in Nanuet, New York, the day after it closed in 2019.
In photos: The rise and fall of Sears
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A dismantled sign stands before the Sears store in Nanuet, New York, the day after its closure in 2019. Mike Segar/Reuters
Neither Simon nor the Sears owner responded to a request for comment, and the Florida property owner declined to speak.
The five remaining locations are unlikely to resurrect Sears, CNN experts noted.
“They are ghosts in the night now,” stated Mark Cohen, a former Sears Canada executive who previously headed retail studies at Columbia University. “Someone opens the door in the morning and locks it at night, but there’s really nothing substantial to offer in the stores.”
Sears’ downward spiral
There is no chance the remaining stores will be profitable, observed Neil Saunders, the managing director for retail at research firm GlobalData.
“Sears wasn’t profitable when it was a much grander enterprise with purchasing power,” he said. “The notion that it’s viable with so few locations is for the birds.”
Saunders and Cohen both suggested it’s also possible that Sears owner Eddie Lampert is merely keeping the leftover shops open for tax loss accounting purposes.
The Sears department store at the Sunvalley Mall in Concord, California, in September 2017.
The Sears department store at the Sunvalley Mall in Concord, California, in September 2017. Gado Images/Alamy Stock Photo
Alternatively, the store leases might be arduous (and costly) to terminate, or perhaps another real estate complication is arising, said Saunders.
Neither Saunders nor Cohen see a future for the store.
“If you’re in retail and you’re trying to sell something nobody wants to buy anymore, like electric typewriters or video tapes, you’re in a world of hurt,” said Cohen, who blames Lampert for the store’s current state. “But customers didn’t stop buying circular saws or screwdrivers and hammers or appliances. If you’re in retail and you sell things people want to buy, your success or failure is entirely based upon what kind of skill you bring to the table. He had none.”
Lampert, a hedge fund operator, bought the company in 2005 and merged it with Kmart, only to oversee its spiral into bankruptcy in 2018. He then bought the remains of the company once more out of bankruptcy early the following year with promises to turn it around.
How Sears changed America
Sears was created when founder Richard Sears, a railroad station agent, started selling watches as a side business in 1886. He and watchmaker partner Alvah Roebuck incorporated the company as Sears Roebuck in 1893. It grew to be not only the country’s largest retailer but also its biggest employer.
A view of the parking lot of the Sears and Roebuck department store in the late 1930s on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles.
A view of the parking lot of the Sears and Roebuck department store in the late 1930s on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. Camerica/Archive Photos/Getty Images
Its groundbreaking catalog brought manufactured goods into the homes of predominantly rural America in the early 20th century, ending the need for many to sew their own clothing, furniture, and other household items, while also fueling demand for goods produced in America’s burgeoning factories and cities. The first store opened in 1925 and soon became such a dominant retailer that many traditional “mom-and-pop” businesses in town centers nationwide were forced to shut down.
It helped introduce items like home appliances and other labor-saving devices into American households, which aided women in seeking employment outside the home. As suburbs blossomed after World War II, Sears became a primary anchor tenant for shopping malls that helped form many communities.
By the 1990s, the firm claimed that one in seven Americans had either worked at Sears or had worked there at some point—many of those jobs featured medical and pension benefits.
A woman talks on a mobile phone while shopping at a Simon Property Group Sears store at Great Lakes Mall in Mentor, Ohio, on Black Friday, November 26, 2010.
A woman talks on a mobile phone while shopping at a Simon Property Group Sears store at Great Lakes Mall in Mentor, Ohio, on Black Friday, November 26, 2010. Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images
A pedestrian walks past a Craftsman tool display in a Sears store window on November 29, 2007, in Chicago, Illinois.
A pedestrian walks past a Craftsman tool display in a Sears store window on November 29, 2007, in Chicago, Illinois. Scott Olson/Getty Images
The company forged high-quality brands like Kenmore appliances, Craftsman tools, and Die-Hard batteries. In the early 1970s, it erected what was then the world’s tallest skyscraper in Chicago to serve as its headquarters. Furthermore, the company branched into other sectors, creating Allstate Insurance in 1931, and acquiring brokerage Dean Witter and real estate firm Coldwell Banker in 1981. In 1984, the firm partnered with IBM to form Prodigy, one of the first online services, and created the Discover credit card in 1985.
The rise of discounters like Walmart (WMT) and big-box outlets like Home Depot (HD) inflicted harm, as did the advent of online shopping. Sears’ management also failed to keep their remaining merchandise as popular as their appliances and power tools. In 1999, it lost its 75-year spot on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a benchmark among the nation’s largest firms, to Home Depot.
The Final End of Sears
In 2005, Lampert, who had already acquired Kmart after its bankruptcy, purchased Sears and combined them into one entity—Sears Holdings—with 3,500 total stores in the U.S. and over 300,000 staff. But both brands were already in a downward trajectory.
A shopping cart sits tipped over in the parking lot in front of a Sears store at Concord Mall in Wilmington, Delaware, in April 2022.
A shopping cart sits tipped over in the parking lot in front of a Sears store at Concord Mall in Wilmington, Delaware, in April 2022. Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
After the merger, the corporation focused on selling off more valuable properties and executing share buybacks to prop up the falling stock price, rather than investing in upgrading stores to improve competitiveness.
But losses mounted, and by 2018, the company declared bankruptcy.
The firm that emerged from insolvency in early 2019 held 223 Sears stores and 202 Kmart stores nationwide. But less than seven years later, it’s barely on life support.
The last full-scale Kmart in the continental U.S. closed in Bridgehampton, New York, just over a year ago.
Sears could be next, Cohen suggested. “There is no tomorrow.”
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