The thing is, K-Mart was competing on price, not service. K-Mart was a discount department store, and Sears was a traditional department store, supposedly with knowledgeable clerks to help you find your selection. I would call Sears no better than middle end, it’s definitely not high end. My grandparents shopped at Sears, for casual clothes, when they were grandparents. And apparently they were Sears’ target, as Sears didn’t seem to carry anything particularly stylish back when I was a teen. But if a store can offer grandparents clothes, at a reasonable price, with decent service, then that store can make it. Sears had too many management changes, and it had too many target changes. Sears tried to go a bit downscale, and it bit them on the ass, they still had a reputation as being too expensive for some people.
K-Mart’s mistake was in trying to go upscale. Its customers didn’t want or need a place that had higher quality and prices. They wanted a place where they could get necessities and some small luxuries. But K-Mart raised their prices without offering much in the way of additional quality, and nothing more in the way of service.
There was a K-Mart “Big K” here that was converted into a “Sears Grand” (which I guess is just a freestanding, one-story Sears) about four years ago. We like Kenmore appliances, have bought a couple there, and go there for parts and filters. Then last week they had a MUST SELL EVERYTHING sale, stating the location was to be converted back into a K-Mart. This is obviously a chain with some management issues.
In terms of discount marts, I’ve never had good experiences with Kmarts. I prefer Target, particularly the Super Targets where I can get groceries as well as other items. The local Targets in my area however have minimal food. I try to avoid Walmart as much as possible but when I visit my family it is the only place in town to get groceries and most staples.
It may be a regional discount chain but Fred’s is the absolute worst. There is one near my gym that I will run in if I’m desperate to get one or two specific items (soft drinks, toothpaste) and don’t want to bother with driving to one of the other ones. Fred’s does carry Faygo though.
I gave up on Sears completely when Craftsman tools started to suck. IMHO, Craftsman are now of the same quality as Harbor Freight tools, but for more money.
I gave up on Craftsman tools a long time ago, after The Home Depot came to the area with their selection of Husky tools. It wasn’t that I found Craftsman quality lacking, but that I just really hated stepping into a Sears (which was in a mall with all that mall traffic).
We now have both Lowe’s and The Home Depot and I have purchased many tools from both and they have held up just as well as anything purchased at Sears. Frankly, I have no reason to ever step foot into a Sears (I’d rather get home appliances at the previous building stores or at Best Buy).
It is sad, though, to see such an old chain squandered by bad management.
I was sorry to see the Sears catalog die. I looked forward to every new issue. After they abandoned mail order the only things we bought there were appliances and tools, so if their retail stores fold we’ll hardly notice. The only Sears facility within reach of us isn’t a real store anyway; it only sells power tools, appliances and lawn mowers/snowblowers, and I’m sure they’re getting killed on those items by the home improvement behemoths.
We had to go to the nearest Kmart recently to get something Target was out of, and it was filthy, poorly lit, and nearly deserted, just like every Kmart I’ve been in since the '70s. I always assumed it was because they just couldn’t compete in Target’s sphere of origin, but it sounds like it’s not just a Minnesota thing.
That was back in the days where Kenmore = quality. Our Kenmore washer and dryer are still going strong, and both of them are nearing 30 years old. Ditto our oven, cooktop, and fridge. All three are slightly younger.
Clothing-wise, Sears – and KMart to an extent – was the place to go if you wanted good, basic stuff without the frills. Sears tried to gussy it up by introducing Land’s End into the fold. It obviously hasn’t made a difference.
There is one KMart within my geographical area. It’s fairly busy most of the time. Ditto the nearest Sears, which also happens to be an anchor store for the regional mall.
Another thing I noticed with Kmarts is that they aren’t just depressing on the inside. The remaining one near me has the old style parking lot without any green space (basically a sea of asphalt). The entire lot is also heavily cracked and frost heaved.
The Sears in our area is part of the mall. It seems as clean and well-trafficked as anything else.
The Kmart is dim, filthy, and disorganized. The last time I went in, I couldn’t determine which clothing department was which…there were just racks and racks of different items and sizes all mingled together like in a thrift shop. Also like a thrift shop, they were packed so tightly on the rack it was hard to slide the hangers. The dressing room was strewn with trash and half-eaten food. The cashiers were scary. Man, I don’t need nothin’ that bad.
Is Sears dying simply because there is so much competition?
I think so-in the past 16 years, my area has seen several new chains come into the market:
-Kohl’s
-Target
-Home Depot
-Lowes
JC Penny
All of these stores compete with Sears/KMart, and most are nicer and better run operations. Frankly, Sear offers nothing that these stores don’t have, and usually better quality, nicer surroundings.
It reminds me of an old clothing store chain , in the Boston area (now long gone)-it was called Kennedy’s. When I was a kid, Kennedy’s was the place to buy clothes-they carried excellent lines, and were very well kept stores. Then, in the 1980’s, they stopped upgrading their stores-and they simply died. It was sad, but the management didn’t seem to care.
Sears has kind of died a slow death around here. The only thing we’ve bought at Sears is appliances. While buying a water heater, we looked at kid’s clothes and they were the same thing we can get elsewhere a little cheaper. I wanted to buy some caulk to fix something and was surprised to discover that Sears no longer has a paint department. They always look empty when I go there. There was no wait for anything at all.
I used to work for K-Mart, and I can tell you it was no more pleasant on the other end. The whole place had a cold, unhappy culture and the monotony somehow became physically painful. I actually became depressed and waspish and prone to daydreaming, and viewed leaving as a merciful blessing from God.
On the logistical side, Wal-mart to this day eats K-Mart for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Wally World doesn’t need to be the cleanest or the best. They’re incredibly efficient and anyone who wants cheap prices knows where to go. They’re happy doing and being that. K-Mart doesn’t know what it is anymore. Is it a hyper-efficient retailer like Wal-Mart? Is it a bit upscale like Target?
Same problem with Sears. It’s not exactly bad, but positioned poorly, so that they don’t really know what they are.
The Kmart down the street became a Super Kmart with a full grocery section. It took months and months to set up, then before we knew it the grocery section was closing down. They got rid of all the food and expanded their cheap furniture selection. Right before Christmas I ran in for batteries and noticed the furniture section now had limited selections of bulk and canned goods.
In Chicago, the KMarts seem to all be dirty. We only have one Walmart in the city and as cheap as it is, I have learned, you can’t always be sure. I have found a lot of the same identical things at KMart and they were much cheaper.
Sears is OK but there’s nothing outstanding about them. The ones in Chicago city, are clean and the employees are OK, but there’s nothing that would specifically draw them to me.
It seems like in general there are only room at any one time for about 3 discount retailers.
Now we have KMart, Walmart and Target. Before we had Zayer, Venture, WT Grant, Woolco, Korvettes, Value City
All come and go. And if KMart passes another will take it’s place.
There is a Kmart literally three blocks from my house, but I still drive the few miles to Target or Walmart instead. Every so often (once a year or so), I’ll give the Kmart a try-- without fail, every single time it is: weirdly lit, disorganized, smelly, and not having much as far as products.
I recently went back into our mall sears for the first time in a while, figuring I’d take a look at the Kardashian clothing collection. I shit you not, in SEARS, they are trying to sell a $70 tank top and a $170 poorly made coat. While a name like Kardashian MIGHT be able to swing some younger, trendier folks back into Sears, no person in their right damned mind is going to spend $70 at SEARS for a tank top.
I then ambled over to the women’s clothes and found all kinds of things second grade teachers wore in the early 1990s. Talk about a store with an identity crisis.
The local Sears is oddly positioned at the back end of a dead mall. All the other anchor stores and all but a few of the other stores have closed. You can’t tell the Sears is even there unless you KNOW it’s there as it’s not really visible from the street. It really should have been closed years ago, but it’s remained…and no one knows why. Hopefully it will close now.
I haven’t shopped Sears for anything since they tried to cheat me on an appliance repair. They told me a Maytag dryer heating element would cost $250, not including labor, and take weeks to order and we should buy an all new-dryer instead. (From Sears, of course. They’d even give us a whole 5% off!) We went into the Maytag store across the street to comparison shop. When we explained what had happened, they not only offered to sell us the exact same part for $12 on the spot, they also offered to show us how to install it ourselves. We were in their store, ready to buy a new machine, and they told us we really didn’t need one. I know know other folks who had similar problems with Sears. They deserve to go out of business.
CNBC ran a story about the store closings yesterday. They listed some of the things that have been done recently to try to improve performance of Sears, including the Kmart merger, one or more stock buybacks, an attempted purchase of Restoration Hardware with the goal of going upscale, etc. The funny thing was that they didn’t list actually putting some money into the stores, to clean them up and improve the merchandizing.
I particularly dislike that the Kmart stores have pallets of merchandise left in the aisles, as this makes it difficult to get around in the store. Target, on the other hand, seems to leave the wide aisles that circle the store (I think they call this the racetrack) free of merchandise. And the Target stores are clean and well-lit.
I always felt Sears had carved out a niche as THE appliance store. Is that no longer true? I’ve never purchased a major appliance, so I wouldn’t know where to go other than Sears.
If Sears is still king, could the economy be mainly to blame? Either way, Gov. Kasich looks like a buffoon for offering Sears $400 m. in tax incentives to a failing company to move their HQ to Ohio.