We got all the paint department back about 2 years ago
It’s sad they don’t advertise it
Nobody is trained to mix paint
If it’s on sale there’s no signage
I remember years ago Weatherbeater paint could not be beaten... I use to paint my house until I put siding up
The indoor paint was great too
You wd think that they would advertise it instead of letting all that inventory just sit there
^Because people are already plenty comfortable buying paint from Lowe's or Home Depot or a local paint store. The only people who will care about Sears paint are people in their 40's or 50's age range, and they probably aren't going to bother making a trip to Sears just for paint. Sears is DEAD folks...they are not making any investments in the business or bringing things back. We are just witnessing the strangest liquidation sale in retail history.
Lowes and Home Depot took most of Sears paint business......Our store used to do a half million dollars a year in the 1980's........When they took paint out of our store several years ago, it was doing about 40,000 per year but not turning inventory fast enough....the majority of the paint in stock was over a year or two old.....Custs would bring paint back saying it was hard to stir.....PAINT was all separated from sitting so long on shelves.......They shipped all the PAINT out of the store when they closed the dept.
Back when I was in the Paint Department we would usually have 3 or 4 people working at once. Now its 3 or 4 for the whole store... As Donald Trump would tweet. Sad!
@eob - The major problem with a paint department is that it is labor intensive. You always need people who are paint specialist scheduled and they can be tied up for long periods of time when color matching and mixing paint. One person area coverage just doesn't work. Whenever we got someone trained to handle paint they would soon be out the door. It got so bad that we were telling paint customers to come back days later when there would be someone scheduled that could assist them. Also, at this point in time, good luck finding vendors who would work with SHLD in setting up paint departments. There is not only the inventory issue, but the paint mixing equipment as well. The paint mixing equipment is high maintenance, always in need of filling, cleaning and calibration. None of this would fit with the Simple Store or One Touch concepts now being touted by SHLD.
So many Sears initiatives go this way. Everyone is enthusiastic. It's going to be the next big thing. Then it gets forgotten about but -- it's not cleaned up and taken away. It just sort of sits there. The paint is a tangible example but so many policies go this way too.
I used Weatherbeater Ultra on the trim work on my house about 14 years ago and it still looks like new. I couldn't be more pleased on how well it has held up!
Weatherbeater was sh-- by 2000. I'm sure the latest incarnation is even worse.
It was brought back as a test in select stores with plans to expand it company-wide. The executive that started that test is no longer with us.
This is another area where we could and still can do well. People won't but paint online. Why not invest in it? Why not invest more in the home repair and home services too. Again, it's immune to online shopping.