Thread regarding Sears layoffs

Judge Drain needs to drag Eddie from his Florida mansion to court in New York to explain his statement about saving "45,000 jobs." Did Eddie intended to save jobs, or was there a more sinister plan to go after the valuable assets such as the real estate.

Something is very wrong with this whole picture. Perhaps, the Department of Justice and FBI should get involved.

They owned the Richmond, Indiana Kmart store, yet are closing that, and it's got diminishing property value, so clearly no one wants that land. They'll likely default on the taxes for your empty store like they will the empty Indiana store, and the city, county or whoever will take possession of it, and nothing but deterioration will happen to it.

Funny how it’s “way to far” yet they still ship to The Dalles, OR Kmart, Burlington, WA Kmart and several sears stores in northern Washington....hmmmmm

They can’t even afford to ship to your store. Way to far from Ontario to get goods there at a reasonable rate.

At this point, I think it is safe to assume the following:

If the ROI (return on investment or "is it worth it to me to incur the cost of breaking this lease") to break a lease is present, the the lease will be broken and the store closed.

If the ROI is NOT present, then the store will remain open until such time as the lease expires or the ROI is present.

If the property is owned, the store will likely remain open until the property needs to be vacated for sale OR more cost cutting needs to happen and an empty store doesn't effect its sale value or mall ownership will deal with an empty store without getting litigious.

Keep in mind few will be privy to (and this site generally doesn't track) any negotiations for the sale of property. So Lampert could have closed a store expecting to sell it, and the negotiations fell through, which is why perhaps a particular shore remains empty and unsold.

Folks should realize by now that the remaining stores are only open now to a) contribute to the false narrative that Lampert is actually going to "transform" Sears and b) exist to slowly be sold off so Lampert can milk whatever remaining money exists with the properties. If your store is still open and pretending "to do business", your sole job is to make the store "look good" to any prospective buyer or mollify a sullen mall owner who wants their mall to look active, and it's not worth it for Lampert to break the lease yet.

If folks are coming here hoping to hear "the worst is over, and we're going to bounce back," I have some bad news. There is no bouncing back, no matter what anecdotal evidence may pop onto this board. A single Kmart or Sears "doing well" is either a false claim or an outlier. The trajectory is for every store to close and be sold off to someone, and it's just a matter of time before yours does. Given that we are heading into a major recession, you really need to take this latest RIF and store closings as a sign that it is time to jump. If you don't do it in the next month or so, you may not have anything to jump TO when Lampert's Purge comes for you.

Btw being “owned” or “leased” means NOTHING. My leased Kmart had another year on it with options to renew when we closed our doors forever. Kmart was more than happy to send someone to the store once every few weeks to make sure it was still standing while they paid rent on an empty building. Sometimes it’s cheaper to let it sit then it is to pay the cost of operating a money draining business.

@1lzd They still have to pay property taxes and pay for whatever upkeep, maintenance and repairs are required. I imagine that they'd also have to pay for their subscription to the alarm/remote monitoring company. Many towns don't take too kindly to dilapidated buildings abandoned by large corporations, so Sears Holdings of Transform or whatever they want to call themselves will have to stay on top of making sure their properties don't call into disrepair or else face fines.

I doubt this is a Seritage property...those were the more premium locations. Sears still kept some real estate holdings (the bad ones). In this case, the building is probably paid off. It costs them nothing to hold an empty building vs losing money on operating an unprofitable store.

You were losing more money then it's worth to stay open probably, credit apps can't keep a store open forever

So is this a seritage owned store? Because here’s how those work, Sears pays “rent” to seritage. Paying rent is one of those things that drained Sears of its cash (or funneled it to seritage where “guess who” is a majority owner. Nice scheme if you can get away with and so far, Eddie has.

The decisions around store closing have made little sense in a long, long time.