Sears Roebuck and Company grew up together with Chicago. Its central rail hub made the windy city a natural for a company built on mail order. Once safely ensconced in the largest building in the world (The Sears Tower that loomed over Lake Michigan), now Sears Holding is holed-up in Chicago suburb, Hoffman Estates and is closing its last retail store in Chi-town.
The once mighty retailer will still operate a K-mart in the city proper and a few surviving Sears stores in the suburbs. More
Our small town K-Mart closed down three years ago thanks to Walmart. The Sears appliance store (& lawnmowers, snow plows, etc.) will probably be next.
Sears Holding……any company with “Holding” in its name, is on the ropes and doomed to closure.
Don’t Panic!
Lowes is picking up the Craftsman line of hand tools.
The rumor is they will honor the Craftsman hand tool lifetime warranty.
https://www.lowes.com/b/craftsman.html
.
Whether it was the old downtown store or one of many the stops at the modern(by seventies standard)shopping mall, Sears was iconic and I will miss it.
Sears’ competitor, Montgomery Wards has been gone forever. Does Simpson Sears still operate in Canada?
Screw ’em. They refused me credit long ago when I had perfect credit.
I was in a DECA club in high school. Anyone else know of them?
When I was a junior, our national conference was in Chicago. Over a four day period we toured many of Chicago’s biggest attractions for enterprising young people: the Commodities Exchange, Hancock building, McDonald’s corporate H.Q., and the original Sears warehouse. I was fascinated with all the pneumatic tubes, chutes, gear-driven conveyors and what not used to transport every kind of consumer good around the warehouse as it came off the manufacturers’ trucks into storage and back out to another set of trucks and rail cars for store and mail box delivery. And the place was the biggest warehouse I’ve ever seen — before or since. So sad to see them diminished to this point. Sears is a wholly American phenomenon and did for retail what Ford did for automobiles. I still love to look at the descriptions, floor plans and contemporary pictures of Sears mail order houses. Now we have Amazon. I wonder if you can buy a DIY house from Amazon?
AA,
Maybe.
Step 1
Order Now. NYW.
Amazon.com: The New Yankee Workshop Doll House: Norm Abram h.t.t.p.s://www.amazon.com/New-Yankee-Workshop/B000M4WVW4/440
Norm Abram: Movies & TV. . . . Buy New
GOOD RIDDANCE!
K-Mart had THE SHITTIEST products ever made. My feet and back STILL HURT from being forced to wear TRAXX shoes that are some sort of cruel joke from the 9th circle of hell.
SEARS had the worst customer service along with horrible prices. I had an old beater car in college, and I just needed barely enough service to keep the thing going on a shoestring budget, and those dirtbags gave me an estimate about 3x as much as the car was worth. I wound up fixing it myself.
I have refused to shop at either since the 90s, and have repeatedly told others to do the same. FINALLY they are on their deathbed.
I shopped at a K-Mart early last year in Collinsville, IL. The mall and store were decrepit. The stock was old, or out of season, some brought in from other closed stores.I felt like a ghoul.
Sears is done. They sold the family jewels and burned through the cash. They did sell off some very successful brands. Discover card, craftsman, etc. will keep on going.
How I wish I still had the Sears Catalog that pictured the buy in underwear that was a bit too short for his privates. I knew it would become a collector’s item, but DH threw it out. Guess I should have put it on a shelf with the vegies.
Had first hand exposure to “Monkey Wards” suicide and watched with disbelief (saw it coming about five years before the end). Then when Sears decided to merge with K-Mart I thought…
Yeah, let’s lash two sinking ships together and that’ll fix everything. Was a hell-of-a short option if you played it at the right time.
Sears Wish Book – 1975
http://www.wishbookweb.com/FB/1975_Sears_Wishbook/files/assets/basic-html/page-1.html
Page by page…those were fun Christmas’…
There is still a Sears at the Cross County Shopping Center.
Growing up, my Mom shopped at Sears AND the Salvation Army, for an army of ten, and my Dad made sure if anything, living in ‘the projects’, we had a good Christmas and summer vacation.
Known for years as a source of buying Craftsman tools.
Thanks Sears RB & Co!
Btw for all the Sears haters to call out a business to fail is bullshit. Yes, a tired old American Icon dying is not fun to watch.
I don’t know from modern merges, I rely on my memories and the Sears that came into a devastated old mall as part of a master plan for the mall to rescue retail in the area at the time 20 years ago.
KUDOS to them.
MAGA2016
KAG2020
Sears was the original “on-line marketer, 100+ years before Amazon. Poor management failed to see the revolution coming.
The Sears/K-Mart saga is not about retail…
Ít’s all about the vast real estate holdings.
Do a little research and follow the money.
Sears, like K-mart and Monkey Wards committed suicide when they decided that middle America’s money wasn’t good enough for them. Instead of sticking with what made them great, they went after high-profit items like TVs and cosmetics while dropping rifles, bikes, and bunk beds. Sad part is that they destroyed Western Auto on their way down, and I loved those stores.
I spent a lot of money at Sears over the years, and so did my extended family. Heck, I learned to hunt with a JC Higgins shotgun, and learned to play pool on a JC Higgins pool table. My first block plane was a Dunlap (Craftsman’s less expensive sibling, not lifetime guaranteed) and my air compressor is a Craftsman. My hand tools and tool cabinets are Craftsman.
I’m sad to see their decline, their slow motion death. I was in a Sears store at a failing mall located at a failed city in the northeast about a month ago; the tool section was gone, replaced by a small token tool section featuring tools a housewife might have in a kitchen drawer. Surprisingly, the Sears is the last surviving anchor store; they’ve outlasted Penney’s and Macy’s/Filenes/Steigers/Forbes and Wallace.
Sure, things change; these retailers failed to anticipate that change. I find it incredible that Sears, who wrote the book on mail order, didn’t see the Amazon model coming and beat them to the punch. Sad.