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Sears, Kmart to close stores after disappointing sales
Sears has been unable to solve its lackluster sales problem, in part because appliance buying is way down in the last few years.
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Adriene Hill: What holiday cheer there was this shopping season didn't make it to Sears Holdings Corporation. That's the company that owns Sears and Kmarts. Today, after dismal holiday sales at the two chains, the company announced it'll close somewhere between 100 and 120 stores. Talk about a lump of coal...
Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer reports.
Nancy Marshall-Genzer: I can't remember the last time I walked into a Kmart store. I went to Sears for the first time in years last summer. The experience was kind of depressing.
Retail analyst Howard Davidowitz says that's exactly the problem. A lot of Sears and Kmarts are shabby; shoppers don't want to linger.
Howard Davidowitz: How on earth are they going to survive? Their stores are rundown, their service is poor. And their assortments are very weak compared to their competitors.
Davidowitz also says Sears and Kmart can't offer the deep discounts of competitors like Wal-Mart and Target. He does say Sears hasn't been hurt that much by online competition. He thinks it has a pretty good website.
But the holiday sales numbers were grim -- they were down about 5 percent at stores open at least a year. Sears hasn't said yet which stores it will close.
I'm Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace.
vDear Marketplace,
I just heard a report on SEARS and the reasons why the store is failing.
But the report missed a significant point.
I am 42 years old. As a kid I grew up looking through the SEARS catalog for my Christmas list.
I also grew up thinking that my Dad was cool because he bought his tools from SEARS.
But as an adult, that is attempting to survive the tough times of the economy, I would never go near the SEARS store.
WHY?
Because of the SEARS CREDIT CARD and their collection behavior.
My family has paid off or settled over 70% of our debt in the last two years. We have stopped using credit cards and, although many of the creditors used fraudulent means to created an interest well over 30%. Illegal in the state of California. Although those laws are ignored largely by Washington. Even still, most banks offered a settlement or payoff at an interest rate of much less than the illegal 29.94% plus fees.
But the SEARS collection department (owned by Citigroup?) has been relentless in their collection practices. We repeatedly told them we would pay as much as we could, every month, even if it was just a few dollars. Their response was... "No. We can't accept that."
We repeatedly asked them to operate within the State's usury limit of 10%. They said, "No."
After asking them to stop calling and placing a complaint with the State's Attorney's office, they completely ignored our requests and continued to call at the strategic hours of 8am and 8pm. and often times many times in between.. to the tune of 90 to 116 times a month.
So, no. SEARS is no longer the CHRISTMAS time, proud American place to buy ANYTHING, let alone anything for Christmas, a gift giving time.
Didn't CITIGROUP ask our government for a loan? So have I paid for them to operate?
Sincerely,
Joe
Los Angeles
a MARKETPLACE listener.
