For the last week or so it seems like there have been lots of closings without a corporate announcement. A Sears in Louisville, two Kmarts in metro Detroit, a Sears in Houston, a Sears in St. Cloud, a Kmart in Allentown and a Kmart in Omaha. That's 7 stores, all announced in a 10 day span. In the past I suspect a corporate announcement would've been made and there would be a single swoop of closures with no individuality. So what's up? It seems to me like Kmart is starting to pull out of markets. According to the news articles there's one left in Omaha and one left in Allentown. Are there any viable regions even left? For a long time metro Detroit had some of Kmart's best stores. Now look at it. Could anyone envision a Kmart survival scenario? On the Sears side it seems like stores are being sold that are part of individual land or lease deals. I think that this reflects that there's a continued need to sell assets for operating cash. Any other ideas?
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There are 21 kmarts in PR and all but 1 or 2 are open. You people need to check your facts.
And what is a QMT?
Louisville and Lexington are the two major cities in KY and neither has a Kmart and only Louisville has 1 Sears store. Where are they getting the QMT's to send to PR? They have been eliminating QMT's across the nation and others have wised up and found others jobs.
Wow, they are actually repairing Kmarts...why do I have the feeling that the only Kmarts that will be left are the ones in PR in 2018.
There are 12 kmarts in PR, 8 are opened but a few of those are forced to close at 3pm each day, the remaining are being repaired as we speak.
Sears and Kmart continue their "stealth" closures.
The company has been doing the secret closings for several years now. They aren't announced nationally and sometimes they may not get much mention even in the local media. Stores close in my area (Denver Colo.) and it hardly gets noticed. After the most recent round of closings, Denver is down to 1 Kmart, and it's doomed by a new Walmart that just opened 2 blocks away. I sure can't envision a survival scenario for this company.
@pkw I know someone that works in PR and he told me that their stores over their are very profitable, but I don't think they have opened but one. I don't know if they will be able to recover (or if they did already in some stores) happened in a pretty bad time with the whole holiday season around the corner.
There are Walmart locations all over Puerto Rico. None were closed in the days after the Hurricane, but Kmart was. Every retailers problem right now is getting freight into their stores.
Of course they are dumping money into the PR stores. It's because people are so desperate for any kind of supplies that they'll probably actually make a profit of those poor souls in PR.
Two more in NJ to close Jan. 20. Not previously publicly or internally announced.
The kmart PR stores we do have actally keep about 100 stores on the mainland with their lights on.
The comment on Puerto Rico is incorrect. The company is dumping a lot of money to get these stores reopened in Puerto Rico and VI. SHC has even called on managers and QMTs to go over to help reopen. A serious amount in $ is made offshore.
They seem to be reasonably updated at removing the closed & closing stores from the retail website - if anyone cares to do the math....
although i suspect some if not most in Puerto Rico will never reopen.
They seem to be reasonably updated at removing the closed & closing stores from the retail website - if anyone cares to do the math....