I agree. It would only have been improved if it had been a raven, which would have set up a joke: "Will there be Sears and Kmart after next year? Quoth the raven, nevermore!"
@@dahorseyguy1 The one with "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult as the background music. That wouldn't be bad music for Sears and Kmart, except my personal theme for both is "He Is Not Dead Yet" from "Spamalot." No, but I don't think it will be long.
For those that didn’t know, Sears was shorted by hedge funds who put new board members in charge to destroy the company from within. This actually makes the hedge funds billions in profit. Same with Toys R Us etc.
@Sir Clive...you are correct. At one point there were no stocks available to short. The long game: short forever if possible & leave others holding the bag.
The same goes with the mid-west retailer ShopKo. Publicly traded, went private by a hedge fund. They filed bankruptcy and tried to down size to their core locations in the Wisconsin area (and some surrounding states) but were unable to find a buyer for the remaining stores after bankruptcy. The entire chain closed. Now Kohl's is battling with a hedge fund, they have adopted a poison pill defense.
Wait, Toys R Us shut down because the last owners bought it by a loan and put their future buy as collateral. They could have never made back the money to pay it off.
Solus Alternative Asset Management among others killed ToyRUs. Hedge funds made money from the liquidation. The company could have survived but the hedge fund greed of quick return now rather than wait led to its end. ToyRUs died rather quickly compared to the drawn-out execution of Sears/Kmart. Eddie Lamperts, Anne Rand approach, starving stores in need of capital improvements in a twisted survival of the fittest approach doomed Sears/Kmart. We shopped at Sears. Their customer rewards program was among the best in retail. Yet, we could see the stores slowly deteriorate and stock diminish especially in the seasonal yard equipment and tools.
It's what happens when you spin off Discover Bank and Allstate as their own companies, and then call the internet a "fad" in an actual board meeting. The fact that going into 1990, Sears had all these advantages, and had to sell their entire company 12 years later should say everything.
don't update your stores for 40 years, and you'll see it's not hard to screw it up! Seriously, every store from Sears is stuck in the 1980's. When you don't update and modernize for that long, you're not going to keep shoppers, Boomers are no longer the largest shopping demographics, X'ers and Millennials are, and how many of them want to shop in stores that are stuck in the 70's and 80's??
Sears had the pre-internet equivalent of online shopping with its catalog. Had they put it online early, they'd still be a viable company today, probably with fewer stores, converted to pickup centers.
You know, if Sears would just lean into nostalgia, I think they could do really well. There's such a big nostalgia trend. Revamp the existing stores to mimic the glory days, even if it's not the design from the glory days, and it'd honestly got a lot of people coming in just for the vibe of that. Go full into it, including employee apparel going retro too. This was a ritzy chain once upon a time, and workers were in Sunday best tier clothes. It's gimmicky, but why not?
@@Metalthrashingnate Yes, exactly. We're dying for those "simpler time" feels. It'd be a bit more of an undertaking than what Pizza Hut and Burger King have had to do, but I think it could genuinely pay off. Hell, if they made the remaining Sears stores something like a "mall within a mall", they could add food courts with companies that agree to follow the retro themeing for their installation.
Eh. Considering that Sears wasn't so different from Amazon when it came to their anti labor practices, I am glad that they went bankrupt. I will also be just as glad when Amazon's time comes.
I worked at Sears when I was in high school and remember a lot of full time employees still working with their heads high and pride when they were shutting the store down. All these people did everything they were asked, but some idiots up top destroyed the company.
And in Canada the Sears executives gutted the employee’s pension plan and stole every last cent from the workers who had been contributing from their paycheques for years. Criminal!!,
I worked for Sears as a salesman for twelve years. Up until about 2015, Sears' training of sales staff was top notch. Not just how to sell but product knowledge. I've worked at three appliance stores since leaving Sears and I've found that unless a coworker came from Sears, he doesn't know squat about appliances.
Sears was a horrible place to work for. I worked there in 2012 when I was 18 for about 3 months. The managers treated me very poorly and even made me cry once. One of the female managers (whose 15 year old daughter got pregnant by one of the boys working there btw) was jealous of me would make critical remarks on my looks. It was to the point that another female employee told her off and reported her (nothing happened btw). They thought they were better than me because I was a kid and even up talked how long they were there for. Lol Guess what? They all lost their jobs a few years later. 😂 So long Sears! Won’t be missed.
In the 80's. when you went into a JC Penney or a Sears, they were just stuffed to the brim with merchandise of every type imaginable and there were cashiers everywhere to keep up with the volume of shoppers. It's kind of sad to see how little merchandise is actually in the store - it just is one more reason to never bother setting foot into the store.
Exactly. JCPenny can make a comeback if they just update their brands they sell. Other than Levi's they really ain't got much going on. Also bring back the sales they had too.
I stopped shopping at Sears when they went to the new customer service/checkout model. Instead of going to a cashier and paying for an item, you had to answer 50 questions about customer loyalty programs and credit card applications. There was no way around it. The lines moved very slowly and people were visibly angry in the checkout lines because it literally took 10 minutes per customer to ring up a sale with no way to shorten the process. Stupid business model. I just want to pay for my stuff and get out of the store thank you very much.
@@tjsogmc exactly. This is why a lot of stores are failing now and people are shopping online now. They are pushing their rewards and credit cards on each and every purchase. People, well I should say most people want to get in get what they need/want and pay and leave. I stopped shopping in store mostly because of that reason. Everything is delivered to me including groceries through Instacart.
I worked at Sears in the late '80s. At that time, they were the number one retailer in the world! I really liked working there. I remember a Regional Manager saying that getting any changes out of Sears was like getting a Battleship to turn around in a bathtub. It is sad to see how they fell but not surprising.
They completely ignored Walmart and their advanced inventory systems. Then in the 2000s the slow death started when Kmart bought them out and Eddie Lampert got his claws on it.
and the remaining stores all still have that 80's look, so you must love seeing these videos since everything in there is unchanged from when you worked there!
Sad to see Sears go down like this. However, this is what happens when a company that's been around as long as Sears, refuses to change and adapt with the times.
This is what happens when a hedge fund guy leverages a bankrupt company (kmart) to buy Sears and combine them into a truly awful company called Sears Holdings. The game plan was never to change and adapt. Just divide up the assets and cash out, while the company moves along like a zombie.
I was at the Sears in Concord, California on January 15, 2023. It was a massive retail space (bigger than most other mall department stores) but so much of it was abandoned and neglected. I bought a generic t shirt knowing that it would likely be the final time I’d ever purchase anything from Sears. It was marked down by 70%.
We had about three or four Sears in San Antonio for the longest time. I actually remember when the most recent one opened back around 1988 or so. It had a very 80's feel to it with neon signs and new wave music playing over the speakers. It's kind of sad that I had no idea it closed down in 2020. It was such an essential part of family Saturdays for us when I was growing up, and then it was just gone.
That's somewhat depressing to hear. Ingram Park Mall was the one my family always frequented, though we lived about equidistant from Ingram and Northstar (Northstar is/was just such a pain in the ass to get to).
@@HasanibnSabah Windsor Park Mall, which was done in by a combination of two shooting incidents, and Rolling Oaks Mall opening nearby (1604@Nacogdoches).
Former Sears employee here 🙋♀️. Sears was my very first job. I started working at the Sears in my hometown. I worked part time all during high school and college. I worked for Sears from 1999-2006. From when I was 16 until I graduated from college. It was a great first job! It makes me sad to see it end like that. 💔
Thank you for sharing! It's stories like yours that make seeing these stores empty or completely closed so sad. To most people it might be a failing business and an empty building, but there are stories and memories within those places. Stories that will, sadly, mostly be lost to time.
I worked there in 2012 when I was 18 for about 3 months. They treated me terribly and even made me cry once. One of the older female managers was jealous of me and made critical comments about my looks TO WHERE someone reported her for harassment. Nothing happened. That same lady had a 15 year old who was pregnant by one of the boys working there. Figures. The place was toxic and abusive. They up talked about their positions and length of time working there. And guess what? They all lost their jobs a few years later. Sears won’t be missed.
This is so depressing. Where are we going to all physically hang out and magically meet lifelong friends and lovers? I met some of my best friends in record stores, bookstores and malls. I feel so lonely watching this. I am also grateful that I grew up at a time when going to the mall was a big deal and super exciting. Love this channel but sometimes it bums me out.
It's extremely depressing. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. The local wall was THE place to be back then. After school, on weekends, vacations, etc., that's where every teenaged kid was. I remember either my parents or a friend's parents would drop us off at the mall for the day and we would be there for HOURS. We would go to the arcade, blow our money in our favorite stores, and then hang out in the food court until it was time to go home. God, I miss those days!!!!! Kids today are seriously missing out.
Seriously. There are less and less fun places to go to and just explore... hang out... browse. When I was a kid, which wasn't all that long ago, it felt like there was a horizon. Not anymore. I'd be beside myself with depression if not for the fact God warned these sorts of things would happen: a one-world order, economic collapse, etc. It's just sad seeing what was said would happen coming true. Glad the earth is headed back toward pre-Edenic conditions, but the Tribulation has to happen first and it's almost time. Make sure you're saved so you don't have to go through it.
@@jrwheeler81 mostly what killed my malls is stopping kids/teens hanging out. It caused most of our shops to closed bc the kids is what the stores was .making a killing on.
Screw Sears. I worked there when I was 18 in 2012 for about 3 months. They were extremely mean to me and even made me cry once. Condescending people who thought they were above me because they were “managers” and I was an 18 year old cashier. One of the female managers was jealous of me too and would purposely make comments about my looks. When I stopped going altogether, everyone I knew was like “good” because they heard how poorly they treated me. And guess what? All those “managers” who sat on their high horse lost their jobs only a few short years later. The place shut down in 2016. So long Sears. You won’t be missed.
This is my local Sears store. The third floor was used up to last year. It had the housewares and appliances. The first floor looks to be in much better shape than it did before. The escalators were original to Broadway and so was that announcement. I remember it. You also were at a former dead mall. The mall itself was demolished but the anchors remain (Sears former Broadway, JCPenney and Kohls former Mervyns). Only dead mall i know where the anchors thrived but the mall died. This Broadway was one divested to Sears during the Macys takeover of Broadway. They deemed it too close to (now closed) Puente Hills.
store manager decision to make the store feel full. once the warehouse was able to fill with merch the whole fill the first two floors with merch plan fell apart.
but now we in this weird spot where the warehouse can not order certain items. ive had to deal with beds and freezers for the past weeks. where the warehouse pushes the dates for three months. i usually have to inform the customer they might have to cancel because we get no new info
"Only dead mall i know where the anchors thrived but the mall died." Add Sears in Richardson Tx to your list - it was the only dept store that survived the demo'ed dead mall until a few years ago, when it closed. I don't know if it is still standing.
My first “career” position after college was in management with Kmart in 1976. I met my wife working there. Although I’ve retired in 2021, (not from Kmart, I left them in 1978), I still have fond memories of the store and the people. Kmart Grill for lunch and people following the “Flashing Blue Light” around the store. Makes me sad.
Kmart was the bang... it was the only place that sold BB guns and toys. I could not wait to get into that place as a kid. Never in my lifetime did I think it could ever fail that type of business?
The Broadway stores always had very dated and signature vintage looking escalators even in newer stores back in the early 80's in SoCal anyway. I always kind of liked that about them....actually it's what I remember most about them except they skewed towards old people in my mind.
It’s interesting to see the difference in shopping habits from country to country! In New Zealand, Kmart is booming, and most are in malls that are still as busy as ever.
The same happened in Puerto Rico with KMart. They had at least 10 of them all over the island. I was baffled when I went there on vacation. They were all popping too.
Such a tremendous hit of nostalgia--Sears was always part of family trips to the mall and this just looked a little like a museum of what you might have encountered back in the day.
I worked at the Kmart in Forest Park, IL between 2009-2010. Easily the most brutal job I've ever had. The only silver lining is that it motivated me to go back to school and make something of myself.
The corporate structure behind the classic Sears and K-Mart stores will certainly come to end in 2022 - I find it hard to believe there will be enough stores left at the end of the year to "hold it up". When that happens, the remaining stores will have one of two things happen to them - quick (and painful) shutdown (possibly followed by acquisition by a different company) or a forced conversion to a Sears Hometown location. Transformco will retire the mainline Sears and K-Mart labels, and that will be that.
I can see Transformco shutting down both Sears and Kmart, selling off the IP and other assets related to these brands, and then selling the Hometown stores off to a new owner who will keep them going under a new name. Then Transformco itself will fold and Lampert will put his prime focus on Seritage Growth Properties.
They could shut down the existing stores, and sell the remaining assets. They could also sell off Kenmore, and the internet Sears and Kmart websites. Several years ago when Ames Department Stores went out of business their assets were sold. One asset the Ames name, and intellectual property rights were also sold when they folded in 2002. Someone bought the Ames name, and now it is supposed to be relaunching in the eastern part of the United States this spring. The same could happen for Sears and Knart. In another retail bankruptcy in 2000, Montgomery Wards name and intellectual property rights was sold at a bankruptcy sale, and was relaunched as a internet, and catalog retailer that still operates today under a different ownership.
I remember when Kmart signed its deal with Martha Stewart. I wasn’t a big Kmart fan to begin with, but the Martha tie in got my interest. I stopped at one of the stores in Troy MI. I was very impressed. The merchandise was well designed, attractive, and I wanted to buy right away. When Christmas season began, I couldn’t believe how Martha’s influence had completely changed Kmart. The different collections of ornaments and decorations were hard to choose from. Everything was beautiful. We moved to a new city about 17 years ago. We arrived in January, in the middle of the night. I got up early and found the nearest Kmart, and stocked up on Martha kitchen items, towels, and pillows. A few years later, I read a story that Martha probably wasn’t going to resign her deal. I thought, if she goes, why else would I shop there? I was right, the stores were pitiful without her merchandise. It’s too bad, but most of the towels I bought for our new guest room are still in its bathroom, and with a lot of use. Every once in a while I will see boxes of Martha Christmas ornaments at Goodwill. I buy them even though we don’t need them. I always wished Martha had signed with Target, oh well.
It's still difficult for me to believe that there isn't a single Kmart or Sears left in my state and that I'll never be in one again. I'm not sure why, I've seen so many other department stores disappear. TG&Y, Murphy's Mart, Hills, Maloney's, Hecks...all places my family used to shop at regularly. Kmart was so huge though, every town seemed to have one. The world I knew is disappearing.
The one left in Massachusetts is similar with the entire aisle having one long row of the same bulk item. Also, that escalator announcement has a "Life After People" vibe, where if we all disappeared but that place still had power the announcement would just keep playing to no one.
Which store in Massachusetts still left? I thought Sears Was completely gone? You might recall that I was Sears in Cambridge side Galleria and Cambridge closed a few years ago. I haven’t been to the mall in quite a few months so I’m wondering if they were able to do anything with that space?
@@AnotherTruth Braintree apparently. My nearby Leominster location in the Whitney Field mall has been closed for a few years. I find it kind of sad but it wouldn't stand out so much if they could replace it with something, that and all of the other abandoned spaces at that mall, it just becomes a memory graveyard rather than a reminder that life goes on.
Man I miss Sears. I remember what ended up being my last trip to one, my father and I were tool shopping and looking at tool boxes, I told him, "Let's get out of here before I see something else I have to have" as I carried an armful of tools to checkout.
That recording is reminescent of the message in Airplane... "The White Zone is for loading & unloading." One of the nearby Sears Hometown Stores just recently closed. Our closest Sears store is located in Overland Park, KS.... too far to drive, for a visit. My family shopped at both Sears & Kmart, for many years. Thanks for the memories.
This was my local Sears for years. Around a decade ago, my family actually had their family photos taken at this location on the 3rd floor. To answer the question, yes the third floor was used which is why it was shocking finding out it was closed.
Always love the videos! I just visited the last Kmart in Florida and man oh man was it a sad visit. Half the lights out, 2/3rds of the store walled off not being used, no electronics section or home and garden…it literally looks like it could close any day.
Here's a status update of every location in the states: SEARS CA Burbank: Lots of empty floor space; Rug department Concord: Lots of empty floor space Stockton: Unknown Whittier: Understocked; third floor closed FL Coral Gables: Most of second floor blocked off; water damage on second floor Orlando: 1/2 of second floor blocked off; lots of empty floor space on first floor Palm Beach Gardens: 1/4 of first floor blocked off; 1/4 of second floor blocked off MA Braintree: Best condition of the remaining stores; rug department takes up 1/2 of the lower level MD Frederick: Smaller store; understocked; lots of empty floor space NC Greensboro: Downsized; understocked; lots of empty floor space NJ Jersey City: Water damage on second floor; some of first floor blocked off; lots of empty floor space NY Newburgh: Understocked; lots of empty floor space TX El Paso: Understocked; lots of empty floor space WA Tukwila: Understocked; third floor closed Union Gap: Smaller store; understocked; lots of empty floor space KMART FL Miami (Kendall): 2/3 of store blocked off NJ Westwood: 1/3 of store blocked off NY Bridgehampton: Best condition of the remaining stores; well stocked; no sections blocked off This information was collected from my own visits, photos, videos, and reviews online
If it weren't for Sears's short-sighted, selfish management, they could've been Amazon; they were the original Amazon but they blew it just like Blockbuster.
Their whole existing catalog department could have been turned over to Internet sales. They were already set up to be an Amazon. Short sighted management and fear of any change destroyed the store.
Established retailers were always conflicted. Radio Shack is another good example. They were always afraid that too many online sales would cut into the profitability of their retail locations so they never really committed to it.
@@bryede , RadioShack was perfectly positioned to be the go-to place for maker supplies, Arduinos, 3D printers and all of the accessories, laser cutters, all that crap, and they totally blew it because they wanted to focus on cell phones instead.
@@jefferickson5833 - I agree, but sears got rid of their catalog years before amazon existed as anything but a book store... They just needed to hang in there with catalog a little longer. It would also have helped if they brought it back
@@williamhaynes7089 Sears got rid of Catalog Department finally in 1993. Amazon started in July 1994. So not that far apart. Amazon had a vision of the future, Sears did not.
Absolutely bizarre what's happened to Sears. They're literally just going to coast off the resources they have until there's nothing left. Dying a slow, quiet death.
It's like keeping someone on life support, eventually they will have to pull the plug. Really sad, Sears and Kmart was part of my childhood. One day we will see Target and Walmart go away in the same conditions.
02:02: Update: Sears in Honolulu HI closed a few years ago, replaced by Nordstrom in the main store area and a food court where Sears Auto used to be. Even the food court is now defunct, never reopened after COVID19 lockdown.
Wait what? There are only 3 Kmarts existing now? I didn't realize it was that bad. I was just at the NY one last week! They didnt have a ton of stuff. Definitely less than the Kmarts of old. However, they blocked off a sizeable corner of the store, so there is a lot less spreading out of the shelves. Something i found funny was that they still had Christmas stuff on clearance. 90% off if anyone needs something in May!
The Kmart name didn't start until 1962. Over the '60s-90s, Kmart quickly expanded across the country opening in rural areas where there were no Walmarts and Targets. Both Kmart & Sears started to go into decline in the late '90s and fell to Walmart as the #1 retailer. It's so sad what happened to them. My childhood Kmart closed in 2014 and At Home moved into the building in 2016. Eddie Lambert ruined both retailers.
@@VonChoker I am aware of that Kmart. I visited Australia back in 2015 but didn't get a chance to go to Kmart. That Kmart is a different company then USA Kmart. There also Kmart's in New Zealand
@Davin Peterson True, it was known as S.S. Kresge and we had one of those at the Randhurst Mall in Mount Prospect, IL....it was more on the level of a large five and dime store back in the early 1970s and before.
My nearest mall has an active Sears. I'm not sure whether it really should be considered active though. For the past 5 years, I've used it as a pass through to get to the dumpling house that's next to it in the mall, but when they started reopening the mall, Sears changed their hours of operation and they now close at 6pm, even on Saturdays. Which is completely odd... the mall is active, no where near dead and operates til 9 or 10 (with some restaurants staying open longer). I also noticed their outside door had been broken into but they boarded it for months instead of fixing the door (this would have been mid-2021). I believe it's fixed now. I should stop by and see the inventory now. Last time I was there during the afternoon they had done pretty well moving their inventory around, but then again, I haven't ventured to the second floor in years (this sears' second floor entry from the mall is pretty much never used).
Meanwhile Kmart is still going strong in Australia with the first Kmart that opened on Burwood Highway in Melbourne Australia in 1965 currently being one of the biggest and busiest locations in the whole country which is open 24/7! Also Kmart in Australia is separate to the one in the USA as the Australian and New Zealand divisions of Kmart were sold to a local Australian based retail company known as Westfarmers who also own the Coles supermarket chain in Australia.
Yup 323 stores in Australia & New Zealand. Little known fact: Sears in the 1950's & 60's once had a major shareholding in local department store Waltons which was called Waltons-Sears. They sold their share in the 1960's & it became just Waltons and lasted until the late 1980's.
In both cases, the local business cut ties and separated from their US counterparts decades ago. Neither has anything to do with Lampert / Transformco, and both are better off for it
At one point in the Milwaukee WI Metro area we had four Sears stores, one Sears appliance repair shop, and at least 6 Kmart stores. All of that is gone now :(.
I have a relative who worked in the Southridge Sears. He started as a stocker when he was a teenager & worked his way up to be the manager. He worked there about 30 years. When Sears started going down, upper management made him fire a lot of people. He really felt bad about doing that because so many of the employees were hard workers & didn't deserve it. After he fired the people, upper management then fired him. The store soon closed after that.
Growing up in the area I have great memories in the 80s and 90's of trips to Brookfield Square and Mayfair, and Grand Avenue was a really cool mall at one time many decades ago when it was classy. We didn't go to the other malls like Northridge or Southridge much since those inevitably became the "black malls" and weren't nice anymore.
2:07: I drove by the store in Greensboro NC a few weeks ago and you wouldn't know it was open. There were no cars in the parking lot and until I saw this video, I wondered if indeed it had been closed. The Kmart on the other side of town closed about five years ago. It is now a Gabes.
I went Christmas shopping at the Greensboro Sears a few years ago, and it seemed to be doing okay. I had no idea there were only 25 Sears department stores left in the country!
I remember the Sears in my local mall area to have a department filled with video games and VHS cassettes (and maybe DVDs) for a time. Whereas the last few years before it closed, they had discontinued selling them, probably since there were other stores like Gamestop and FYE reserved for that stuff.
The Concord Sears is in my local mall and there is still merchandise but it feels empty in most places. For a while they were closing early too, for example if closing said 6PM most lights would be off at 5PM and the mall gates would be down
The location for the Concord, Ca Sears is on the market for lease. Once a lease is agreed upon, and a tenant is found that location will also be history. I have not been in the Concord, Ca location for the last 10 years.
Sadly, the Hawaii Sears is a home appliance store and… it too isn’t doing too good. As a former Sears associate from Store #6168-19100 (Auto Center at the Sears)… Eddie Lampert is to Sears as Mike Kohan is to real estate. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to find out they know each other. Also, that escalator is likely original. The store I worked in had the exact same model and weirdly was the FIRST escalator ever installed in the entire state of Hawaii in the 1950’s!
The K-Mart in my hometown was open until the roof collapsed in 2014. I can't help but think it was due to lack of maintenance. Then, it sat there vacant for 6 or 7 years before becoming an indoor storage unit facility. I had moved out of town years prior, and of course a roof collapse is very sudden. So, I didn't even get to make a goodbye trip to my childhood K-Mart. I'm kinda sad about it.
I live near one of those NJ Kmart. Last I was there got some clearance items and it looked like they were adding back appliances. They moved a lot of stuff around. It's also no matter what time you go it takes forever to get out of one since there's only like on register open.
I didn't even realize that there were any Sears or Kmart stores left. I thought they had all closed by now. Our Sears closed back in 2018 and our Kmart closed in 2016, so they've both been gone for several years now. I still do miss Sears. My husband and I used to shop there ALL the time. We bought all of our major appliances, tools, car batteries, etc. there. You couldn't beat those Sears DieHard batteries! They lasted forever! It's so depressing to drive by our local mall and see the old Sears entrance all empty and sad looking. It was like the end of an era when they closed. Times are so different.
I work for Sears. Every day I hear more than one customer say that they didn't know any Sears stores existed. I believe 15 full line Sears stores are still open.
Years ago, Sears Automotive sold and installed on my car a tire that was actually crooked. Tried returning a Craftsman wrench that had failed and was given a reconditioned one of a different size; finally got a valid replacement. Also, automotive hooked up my car battery to some gizmo, a red light came on and the words ‘Your battery is bad’ flashed. Own worst enemy.
The reason the product assortment is so odd is because it’s all the random stuff Sears had left in their warehouses, plus random stuff from the few brave vendors who will actually do business with them. Even Levi’s pulled out of Sears, and many of their private-label manufacturers have stopped producing their products due to fears that they won’t be paid. Truly sad. At least JCPenney seems to be making a bit of a comeback.
It's actually kind of funny/sad. In this video, I saw the EXACT same Kenmore refrigerator that my husband and I bought back in 2015, LOL. JCPenney actually seems to be doing well! I went there last weekend for a haircut and the store was VERY busy!
@@jrwheeler81 Oh, they still offer hair cutting services? I thought JCPenney was on the brink of extinction along with the rest of them? That’s wonderful
@@AnotherTruth JCPenney has been making a hell of a comeback. Their owners even bid for Kohl’s with a plan to merge the companies behind the scenes (they’ll keep their names)
My local Kmart closed in 2008 and our Sears shuttered in 2016, so I’m always surprised to see locations still open. I have a lot of wonderful memories of hanging out in the cafe at Kmart with my grandparents before they died, so it’s particularly sad to see how far they’ve fallen.
There is only one Sears left in Massachusetts. It is located in Braintree and the inside is just sad. The auto care center is closed, the escalator to the lower floor has been under repair for over two months and displays on the lower level are mainly rugs.
As a daughter of HVAC men, the amount of times I’ve been in Sears as a kid is hundreds. It’s very sad they’re all going extinct. The last Sears I saw was in Westchester and that was over 10 years ago. Two of the last K-Mart’s were in Westchester and the Bronx, both closed in the last year.
It’s very sad to see these stores. In my past I worked for a HVAC company that worked on the chillers, boilers towers and the Kmart’s had mostly roof top ac’s. The memorys of working with the QMT’s (sears holdings techs) covered most of the mid west.
So you actually got to see those huge round air conditioning vents in the ceiling being installed? I know it may sound weird but one thing I always remembered about going to Kmart was those huge round vents in the ceiling.
@@fixman88 Only thing I did was service and repair to the chillers / boilers and package roof top units. Some of them large round grills were fan powered but yea them things were huge. The old stores had them vents. Newer had square concentric ones that had a odd sound. Nicholasville Road K-mart had the large round ones.
I'm an Australian, we have Kmart here, which started off back in the late 60's as being part of the US Kmart, before being bought out by Coles Myer/Wesfarmers in the 90's, and since then its been an entirely seperate company, just with the same name. Funnily enough our Kmart is going stronger than ever, and opening new stores. Sadly its also more or less a glorified $2 shop, thats successful because they sell trendy stuff thats cheap and rubbish lol. It saddens me to see Kmart US going down the gurgler - when I went to the US in 2014 I went to a Kmart over there and actually really liked it - it reminded me a lot of our Kmart back in the 90's when not only did they sell actual name brand stuff (as opposed to our Kmart now that sells nothing but their "anko" store brand), but it was an amazing place that, while it wasn't trendy, you could find anything and everything.
Sears *was* the go to place for tools and hardware in the day, that's totally true! It's where many a lawn mower and weed eater came from, even many a TV and VCR/DVD player came from in my case. It's a shame that a brand that was once great is gone--and in this case, that includes Kmart, the place where I got my Jolly Rancher soda.
my towns kmart closed years ago, but i remember when it was still open i found a folder with kittens and puppies on it that was yellowed over from how old and untouched it was. even as a kid i knew it didn’t have much time left. now the empty building just sits abandoned!
This made me sad because Sears and Kmart are two stores I spent a lot of time in as a kid especially Kmart. I appreciate you doing this though because it brings back so many memories.
There is still a fully active and open Sears store at my local shopping mall. It’s in Tukwila, WA, at Westfield Southcenter Mall, about 25miles south of Seattle. The Sears only has three out of 6 entrances open, one exterior and two in the mall. It’s skybridge doors to a parking garage are closed and locked, and the third floor is blocked off. Majority of its retail is on the first floor, with kids clothes and home goods and mattresses on the second floor. In December of 2020 I bought a dressy overcoat at the Sears for a formal event, it was reduced price 70% off and the two employees appeared to be reducing the prices of all customer purchases. This Sears has been hanging on by a thread since at least 2010, and every year I check out the Sears Closure list online but this one stays open, and is never on the list. It’s very depressing in there, and I wouldn’t doubt it if more than half of the second floor is blocked off with display units and yellow tape due to lack of inventory. It might take another 2 or 3 years until they close off the second floor. You should check it out, along with the rest of the mall. Macys is falling apart and JC Penny is faring off better than Nordstrom on most days.
I always feel wistful about entering the Meijer that replaced my local mall, because its electronics department is nearly right where Sears Brand Central was in its footprint; I always spent so much time in that place browsing the tools and just playing with the demo computers and WebTVs (it's where I signed up for an Amazon account!), looking at the new games in the Funtronics section and being in awe when I first saw HDTV there and where I bought my VCRs, radios and televisions..I have a Kenmore washer/dryer that still runs like a dream 20 years later, along with a big ol' 90s boombox, and they always were 'quality' to me. The way Eddie Lampert ran them and KMart into the ground for the real estate (and they got a ransom from the KMart they closed near Lambeau Field from the Packers which was making a killing just on gameday parking) is a tragedy.
The last time I went shopping with my grandpa he went and bought me a mattress from sears. He was the manager of their Craftsman's department here in Seattle for over 30 years when he got back from world war ii. He made enough money doing that to buy a nice home in a good area that overlooked the Puget sound, he bought an rv, he built a home for my mom, he did a lot for our family. I didn't realize how emotional this video was going to make me. My Grandpa died in 2015.
Growing up my mom worked at the Sears telecatalog center taking orders. Sad they couldn't or wouldn't be able to transition their catalog success over to the web.
Exactly. In 94 when the web was first starting and Amazon first started just selling books they should've made their website and do free shipping to the store for pick up or ship directly to your house. They would've been ahead of everyone and probably still be as big as they were maybe even bigger. Also kept up with the times also. They would've been almost untouchable.
Yes. They were one of the few retail outlets that was already set up for Internet sales because of their long-existing catalog department. Short sightedness and stubbornness destroyed themselves.
@@jefferickson5833 It's what happens when you have a board of directors in their 60s. They really don't understand technology trends, especially something that was so totally new. After a hundred years of in-store retail, it's all they knew.
They turned the abandoned Sears at my local mall into a covid vaccine site. It was strange going in there for the first time in years; felt like an apocalypse world in more ways than one.
Your videos really kind of bummed me out when I first started watching your videos, but the more I watched them the more I grew nostalgic for the topography of my youth has changed. And though I’m sad it changes I know that is the way of things and change is unavoidable. Keep the videos coming man and God bless!!!
To your point..I think the connection is what makes it sad. I rarely go to my teenage years mall ( The Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights CA ) which is definitely a near death mall. It is close by, but there is almost no reason to go there anymore. In the recent past, any trip to it is just an excruciatingly sad emotional experience. It's like literally watching the past die. Trips like mine to my local mall made my wonder how the people behind this channel cope with what must be that feeling x100. I guess it is possibly a different feeling when there is not the personal connection to the location. Otherwise, I dont know how the feeling of sadness doesnt get to be overwhelming.
The Sears where I live in Saginaw Michigan closed in 2019. They had an auto service center in a separate building that closed some time before the main store closed down. The former auto service building became a drive-thru COVID testing site in 2020.
We had a sears in Charlottesville va till i believe 2017. It was full stocked and took me right back to childhood including the auto center. They announced its closing and within a few weeks it looked shuttered. I knew id probably never step in a sears again. For kmart it was my first job in high school and my first year of college. That hurt to see kmart disappear. On a side note I grew up in trenton nj in a sears catalog home.
I miss Sears. I used to find really great deals on clothes for work in their clearance section. tops and pants for like $3-$5. I remember buying bags full of really marked down stuff thinking they have got to be going out of business at this rate. sure enough, they went out of business eventually
I remember when I made a $1000 or more a week selling appliance's part time . I would go in on my days off and close sales too. The business card's were the bread and butter to a retail sales job. I looked at every appliance like $100 bill. Draw pay was $500 and you could sell 2 cheap dryers and a hot water heater and everything after was pure profit. The Kenmore line sold itself. The old heads always wanted the Kenmore like it was an American tradition.... I look at everything new today like its going to break sometime soon tomorrow.....
Some guy I met tried to get me to come work for Sears selling appliances. He told me I could make a 100k a year. I laughed at him and told him the whole store didn't even have 100k in inventory. That location closed less than 2 years later. I'm sure you could make bank bake in it's heyday though.
Oh man, Whittier Sears. Lived near there most my life. Used to be a Broadway before they knocked down the mall. The Kohls nextdoor used to be a Mervyns. Sears used to use all three floor. Second floor was like clothes, and top floor was linen and electronics. I remember that escalator recording ever since I was a kid. I'm in my 40s now, so probably is original.
The end is pretty much here. Since you posted this video, a further 14 stores have closed, leaving only 11 mainline stores (including one in Puerto Rico) , with no Sears Appliance or Grand stores remaining. Sears Hometown filed for bankruptcy in December 2022 and is in the process of closing all remaining stores by the end of 2023. There are now only 2 Kmarts in the mainland U.S. , with a further 5 located in U.S. territories (Guam, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico).
I haven't been to a Sears since Christmas 2012 when the one in Fayette Mall in Lexington, KY was going out of business, and I haven't been to a KMart since Thanksgiving weekend when the one here in Somerset, Ky was closing for the last time. I truly believe this is the final year.
I honestly had no idea that there were even any Sears or Kmart stores left anywhere. Our Sears closed back in 2018 and our Kmart closed in 2016. This is DEFINITELY the final year. There is just no way they can make it out of 2022 alive.
Wow, Fayette Mall. Haven't thought of that place in a dog's age. I lived in Lexington back in the 80s. Used to shop at a K-Mart on New Circle Rd., right around N. Broadway...would walk across the railroad trestle to get there. Do they still have Festival Market mall downtown, or did that go belly-up too? I always liked that place.
@@SMac-bq8sk Festival Market is long gone. It had already shuttered its doors when Fayette Mall expanded back in '93. It was only opened for a few years, and they moved the carousel to the minor league ballpark.
@@melaniepattonraleigh9663: Thanks for the update. Kind of sad how everything is "here today, gone tomorrow" nowadays. Next thing you know they'll be converting Keeneland into an Amazon warehouse. Oh well, I can still reminisce. Cheers!🙂
That mall has been going down hill. Don’t help someone got shot around where the Starbucks was. Lexington has way too many malls. But great memories of working on that Sears. I also still have a working craftsman drill press from 2006. Suprised being it was made in China of lots of cheap plastic.
The Sears catalog, in particular the Christmas Wish Book, was a fixture of my childhood. And my grandma had a dozen or so Sears catalog from about the 20s and 30s including four huge old leather bound books from the turn of the century. Strange to think that it's just fading away like that.
I can't find it anymore, but a few years ago I read an article about how the CEO of Sears was intentionally running it into the ground, selling off properties to himself via a real estate company he owned and charging Sears rent, and generally putting Sears in a position where it was in debt to him so that he could pretty much pick the bones clean. That being said I haven't stepped foot in a Sears in many, many years. The last time I went in there I was buying some button-up shirts for work, and I was third in line, but it took twenty minutes before I got to the front of the line. Why did it take twenty minutes? Because the cashier was pestering everyone in line to sign up for the Sears card. I told her "no thank you" four or five times, but she wouldn't stop, so I finally had to yell "I DON'T WANT IT!" just to make her stop asking and ring up my shirts.
Eddie set up Seritage with other investors, like Warren Buffett, to acquire the most valuable locations in Sears Holdings. Oddly enough, he did this while being CEO and majority stockholder of Sears Holdings, somehow in the interest of "transforming" Sears Holdings. You can't really say you're tanking Sears and Kmart, you just say you're "transforming" the stores while operating the slowest liquidation sale of all time. Associates would get reviewed on how well they sold credit and customer service. After the "merger" with Kmart, it seemed the credit sales and Shop Your Way signups were more important than customer service. Associates would get paid $4 for Sears Mastercard signups, $1 for Sears card on top of their hourly rate.
When I worked at a retail store (my first job from age 16-19), we would be "judged" by how many people we could get to sign up for the store credit card each month. I absolutely hated asking people and thus almost never did despite it being a "requirement." I didn't care about the extra $3-4 per card signup I could get on my paycheck. I got called into the store manager's office at least a few times to be lightly reprimanded for my low credit card signup numbers, but I knew they weren't going to fire me or anything, the managers were just doing their jobs as I'm sure corporate had some sort of store quotas they wanted met. Nowadays, virtually every retail chain "requires" their cashiers to push store cards. It really takes away from the cashier-customer relationship when neither of you want to make that awkward eye contact while they say their little script while scanning your items knowing there's a 99% chance you're just going to say "no." Best way to get past it is to politely decline and then ask the cashier a normal, small-talk question to quickly change the subject.
There was a Kmart near my house that closed down about 2 yrs ago, and I think the last couple of sears in Las Vegas converted to only offering appliance repairs. It feels weird seeing brands like these disappear so quickly
So sad about Kmart, had a lot of memories when shopping with my parents, used to like their calorie free clear soda drinks, the cherry lime flavor was my favorite, not overly sad about Sears since mom use to spend way too much time there lol
My Sears was a 3 story one when it was open. Third floor was plus sizes, kids, luggage and lingerie. It was also windowless and dark up there. The most depressing lingerie department ever. Also no one knew the plus sizes were up there so they just got rid of the whole department. Considering that their main customers were middle aged and up that was not the smartest move but neither was hiding it in a dimly lit dungeon like space behind some suitcases.
The 3 Sears hometown stores that I know of have all closed. The grocery store here in town used to be an old Kmart built in the 60's but closed in the late 80s and turned into an HEB I believe in 1992 or 93.
Where I used to live (in Western Canada), there were two Sears Home locations and three mainline Sears stores. Sadly, all of them are now gone. Most of my furniture came from Sears -- the quality was very high and the sales staff were great. In contrast, the clothing selection was pathetic even when the store was a going concern; there was (almost) never anything in my size.
I bought my grandma a microwave from Sears in the late 1990s or maybe early 2000s and what I remember is I had to get a ticket, take it to the cashier and then go wait in a room until the warehouse guys brought it out for me. Even back then that was ridiculously outdated, you could walk into a Walmart and just grab microwave and go pay for it. Sears just didn't seem to be able to move with the times. The last thing I ever bought from Sears was my washer and dryer. I bought them in early 2015. And I went with Sears because they price matched and were the cheapest. But while I was there two salespeople "helped" me and when I went up to pay they actually started fighting right in front of me at the cash register over who was going to get the commission. It really was pathetic and between that and the "going out of business" vibe the Sears had I never went back. It closed a year or two later anyway.
@@Vichedges My best friend worked in Sears sales briefly. The company policy was to literally pit the departments against one another as competition, within the same store, so it doesn't surprise me two people fought over the commission like a scrap of meat between two dogs.
@@LeoMidori it was really pathetic. I mean they were literally arguing with each other at the cash register in front of me while I was trying to pay. It went on for several minutes. I actually got angry about it and told them I didn’t care who did it I just wanted to be rang up so I could leave. Putting a customer in that situation is just unacceptable.
I used to work at a Sears store in the early-to-mid 1990s, and that particular store closed in late 2018. Sears and Kmart were once iconic stores; that there's only four Kmart stores left in the entire US is just surreal. But much like Montgomery Wards (another former icon of American middle-class suburban consumerism) looks like both Sears and Kmart will very soon be relegated to the history books.
As of last year when the Sears at The Mall Of Louisiana in Baton Rouge closed, it was the very last one in my state. And they've also closed all of the South Mississippi locations over the last decade, as well as all of their Mobile/Pensacola (Alabama/Florida Gulf Coast) area stores.
@@madmanmike1980 Hey friend, I've seen your posts about Sears and "Fast Eddie" Lampert before. Too bad you don't fart carbon monoxide so he'd just die.
That’s funny, learning that Sears is doing well at selling mattresses. We actually ate at a Sears back in December, and afterward, drove to a mattress store nearby (within the mall parking lot, but not connected to the mall) to buy a mattress. That Sears went out of business years ago, but in 2019, a Korean marketplace opened up in its former location, called Zion Mart, but due to its history as always being a Sears since day one, we call it the Korean Sears. My daughter loves the Korean Sears, and only knows of the Sears name from that alone. But knowing what it used to be, it’s weird seeing it within the 4th dimension. The food court is where the appliances and electronics departments were. There’s a grocery store where the stockroom once was, with its checkouts where the tool department was. There is a bakery where the tire department once was, and a super expensive, super nice restaurant INSIDE where people got their oil changed!!! Can you imagine fine dinning at a mechanics garage?
That’s so wild! I just checked out Zion Mart and I love the set up of it. But I’m not sure if it’s a chain or if this one I saw is the same location but it’s so wild to know that there’s a fine dining restaurant where they changed oil and stuff and cars. Definitely is a Korean seers in many respects hahha
The palm beach location is probably the most depressing one out of these. The power was out for like 3 weeks in the store, and they were using construction lights to light the place.
They just fixed it last week, I even have a video when the lights were out. While the store is in very rough shape compared to a few months ago, it's not the worst one in the country.
@@walmartsucks1995 It makes no sense! More of the store is blocked off compared to three months ago and it looks even more empty! Where did the merchandise from Fort Lauderdale go to when it abruptly closed? It sure didn't come here!
@@tricountyretail992 probably sent it back to the vendors. Would probably cost them more to ship it to another open store and transfer inventory on the computer than it does to ship it back to the vendor. Just my guess.
Wow, that sucked. Either way, it's amazing that the Palm Beach Gardens Sears survived all of those countless waves of store closures, the 2018 bankruptcy, and even the COVID 19 pandemic. I kinda knew that particular store would end up being among the last of Sears department stores to close. By the way, does anyone know if both floors are still open to the public? I don't know if there's really enough stock for both floors now. I mean, I haven't been in there lately as the last time or two I've been to the Gardens Mall about five months ago, the Sears is already closed for the night.
Never really cared about sears, but man I grew up with a kmart being the main general purpose store my family went to. I remember buying Nintendo NES games there which they would resell, buying creepy crawler molds, and getting icee drinks at the food stand by the registers.
I just happened to be watching this on the day the K-Mart is supposed to be closing, April 17th. I can always appreciate videos like these. It's like archiving the final days of these stores for future generations so they can see what the final days of these massive brands looked like.
It breaks my heart to see a Sears like this. It was the first job I ever had and even though I didn’t really like working there, Im still friends with some of the people I used to work with and have bittersweet memories from working there.
Great that the Vultures were sounded (in dishonor of Vulture Eddie Lampert, who disgraced both chains with his way of doing business) at the start of the video. Actually Sears didn't start as a full-line department store, as they did not open their first brick and mortar store (before that it was mail order only) was opened in 1925 (first store in PR was opened in 1937 and the building was demolished in 2021). And what was opened in 1899 was SS Kresge, the 5&10 predecessor to Kmart (first one opened under the name and format was in 1962 in MI). There are 6 more Kmarts outside of the 50 US (besides the 3-4 left in US): 4 in VI and one each in GU and PR. The only town / city with both a Sears and a Kmart is San Juan, PR, which has their stores in front of each other in the Plaza Las Américas mall. (will someone in the YT Creator community film [with the proper sneakiness] the last ones in PR when they're still open?)
How is it even feasible to run a retailer with so few locations spread across such wildly non-contiguous regions? The merchandise isn't even coming on the same barges!
There were two Sears appliance stores near (enough) to our town. They popped up and shut down quickly. The owners/managers tended to try and wiggle out of warranties and had the customer service personas of drug addicted used car salesmen. The one in main street became a kind of joke. One was "the owner took the parts out of new working machines and sold the parts to the scrap yard, then sold the shells to customers". He was that kind of guy.
This is why you NEVER rest on your laurels and assume you're gonna flourish tomorrow like you did today. You always have to know the industry, trends and MOST IMPORTANT what the public perception of you is. 25 years ago, they should have changed the name and revamped everything. Rainman single handedly hurt Kmart bad and Adventures in Babysitting didn't help Sears( points if you get that reference). By the 80s, Sears was considered a place for old people. They needed to change that perception asafp. They plodded along continuing down the same path and finally running out of path
I didn't realize that my town still has a Sears store. I think I know which one it is. I loved shopping there growing up in the 1960,s and 1970,s. Definitely looks like a dead mall store to me.
The opening shot with the crow perched atop the Sears sign cawing was a perfect visual metaphor!
I agree. It would only have been improved if it had been a raven, which would have set up a joke: "Will there be Sears and Kmart after next year? Quoth the raven, nevermore!"
That reminds me of the opening scene from the original The Stand by Stephen King, from the 90's
1
💯 Truth!
@@dahorseyguy1 The one with "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult as the background music. That wouldn't be bad music for Sears and Kmart, except my personal theme for both is "He Is Not Dead Yet" from "Spamalot." No, but I don't think it will be long.
If only it had been a vulture tho….
For those that didn’t know, Sears was shorted by hedge funds who put new board members in charge to destroy the company from within. This actually makes the hedge funds billions in profit. Same with Toys R Us etc.
@Sir Clive...you are correct. At one point there were no stocks available to short. The long game: short forever if possible & leave others holding the bag.
The same goes with the mid-west retailer ShopKo. Publicly traded, went private by a hedge fund. They filed bankruptcy and tried to down size to their core locations in the Wisconsin area (and some surrounding states) but were unable to find a buyer for the remaining stores after bankruptcy. The entire chain closed.
Now Kohl's is battling with a hedge fund, they have adopted a poison pill defense.
So with that in mind, I can only imagine what that jack ass is about to do to bed bath and beyond
Wait, Toys R Us shut down because the last owners bought it by a loan and put their future buy as collateral. They could have never made back the money to pay it off.
Solus Alternative Asset Management among others killed ToyRUs. Hedge funds made money from the liquidation. The company could have survived but the hedge fund greed of quick return now rather than wait led to its end. ToyRUs died rather quickly compared to the drawn-out execution of Sears/Kmart. Eddie Lamperts, Anne Rand approach, starving stores in need of capital improvements in a twisted survival of the fittest approach doomed Sears/Kmart. We shopped at Sears. Their customer rewards program was among the best in retail. Yet, we could see the stores slowly deteriorate and stock diminish especially in the seasonal yard equipment and tools.
It still boggles my mind how the company that literally invented shopping from home a hundred years before the Internet could screw it so badly.
It's what happens when you spin off Discover Bank and Allstate as their own companies, and then call the internet a "fad" in an actual board meeting.
The fact that going into 1990, Sears had all these advantages, and had to sell their entire company 12 years later should say everything.
don't update your stores for 40 years, and you'll see it's not hard to screw it up! Seriously, every store from Sears is stuck in the 1980's. When you don't update and modernize for that long, you're not going to keep shoppers, Boomers are no longer the largest shopping demographics, X'ers and Millennials are, and how many of them want to shop in stores that are stuck in the 70's and 80's??
complacency seems to be the main cause when it comes to the failure of large and well established companies
It was purposely destroyed by the hedge fund managers that bought it out in the mid 2000’s
Sears had the pre-internet equivalent of online shopping with its catalog. Had they put it online early, they'd still be a viable company today, probably with fewer stores, converted to pickup centers.
shoppers tend to go to lowest priced. sears don't have that.
@@hom2fu
If they converted some of the huge stores into smaller pick up / essentials locations they sure could have survived
JCPenney had the same thing, except I always liked their catalog better.
Sears during the catalog years could have become the Amazon of retail because they already had the infrastructure in place.
Almost sounds like the service merchandise model?
You know, if Sears would just lean into nostalgia, I think they could do really well. There's such a big nostalgia trend. Revamp the existing stores to mimic the glory days, even if it's not the design from the glory days, and it'd honestly got a lot of people coming in just for the vibe of that. Go full into it, including employee apparel going retro too. This was a ritzy chain once upon a time, and workers were in Sunday best tier clothes. It's gimmicky, but why not?
Just like Pizza Hut is doing.
They never evolved from the "glory days" That's why they are failing
@@Metalthrashingnate Pizza Hut and Burger King both reverted back to their old logos.
Truly. It's not like it can make anything worse at this point
@@Metalthrashingnate Yes, exactly. We're dying for those "simpler time" feels. It'd be a bit more of an undertaking than what Pizza Hut and Burger King have had to do, but I think it could genuinely pay off. Hell, if they made the remaining Sears stores something like a "mall within a mall", they could add food courts with companies that agree to follow the retro themeing for their installation.
It's so sad for a company that was the Amazon of it's day be on it's last legs.
But hello you!
Agenda 21
Maybe this is how Amazon is going to go too someday
Eh. Considering that Sears wasn't so different from Amazon when it came to their anti labor practices, I am glad that they went bankrupt. I will also be just as glad when Amazon's time comes.
I worked at Sears when I was in high school and remember a lot of full time employees still working with their heads high and pride when they were shutting the store down. All these people did everything they were asked, but some idiots up top destroyed the company.
I worked in Sears as well in high school and I worked with a lady that worked their for over 20 years until they closed.
And in Canada the Sears executives gutted the employee’s pension plan and stole every last cent from the workers who had been contributing from their paycheques for years. Criminal!!,
Hedge funds/LLCs destroyed companies like Sears. Money worshipping reprobates are destroying the planet.
Isn't that normally the case? The idiots always find themselves at the top?
Boomers !!! Destroy it all !!
I worked for Sears as a salesman for twelve years. Up until about 2015, Sears' training of sales staff was top notch. Not just how to sell but product knowledge. I've worked at three appliance stores since leaving Sears and I've found that unless a coworker came from Sears, he doesn't know squat about appliances.
Sears was a horrible place to work for. I worked there in 2012 when I was 18 for about 3 months. The managers treated me very poorly and even made me cry once. One of the female managers (whose 15 year old daughter got pregnant by one of the boys working there btw) was jealous of me would make critical remarks on my looks. It was to the point that another female employee told her off and reported her (nothing happened btw). They thought they were better than me because I was a kid and even up talked how long they were there for. Lol Guess what? They all lost their jobs a few years later. 😂 So long Sears! Won’t be missed.
In the 80's. when you went into a JC Penney or a Sears, they were just stuffed to the brim with merchandise of every type imaginable and there were cashiers everywhere to keep up with the volume of shoppers. It's kind of sad to see how little merchandise is actually in the store - it just is one more reason to never bother setting foot into the store.
Exactly. JCPenny can make a comeback if they just update their brands they sell. Other than Levi's they really ain't got much going on. Also bring back the sales they had too.
I stopped shopping at Sears when they went to the new customer service/checkout model. Instead of going to a cashier and paying for an item, you had to answer 50 questions about customer loyalty programs and credit card applications. There was no way around it. The lines moved very slowly and people were visibly angry in the checkout lines because it literally took 10 minutes per customer to ring up a sale with no way to shorten the process. Stupid business model. I just want to pay for my stuff and get out of the store thank you very much.
@@tjsogmc exactly. This is why a lot of stores are failing now and people are shopping online now. They are pushing their rewards and credit cards on each and every purchase. People, well I should say most people want to get in get what they need/want and pay and leave. I stopped shopping in store mostly because of that reason. Everything is delivered to me including groceries through Instacart.
@@katcheson82 🎶JCPenney, doin' it wrong!🎶
@If a parent was not raised right who's at fault ? haha wtf, put down the pipe buddy.
I worked at Sears in the late '80s. At that time, they were the number one retailer in the world! I really liked working there. I remember a Regional Manager saying that getting any changes out of Sears was like getting a Battleship to turn around in a bathtub. It is sad to see how they fell but not surprising.
They completely ignored Walmart and their advanced inventory systems. Then in the 2000s the slow death started when Kmart bought them out and Eddie Lampert got his claws on it.
and the remaining stores all still have that 80's look, so you must love seeing these videos since everything in there is unchanged from when you worked there!
@@pika62221 True
Wow my mom worked 10 years later
@@RhewinEddie destroyed Sears. 😟
Sad to see Sears go down like this. However, this is what happens when a company that's been around as long as Sears, refuses to change and adapt with the times.
Kind of ironic because they were in the shopping from home game like 120yrs before amazon was a thing
This is what happens when a hedge fund guy leverages a bankrupt company (kmart) to buy Sears and combine them into a truly awful company called Sears Holdings. The game plan was never to change and adapt. Just divide up the assets and cash out, while the company moves along like a zombie.
@@paulwetter3262
Yep
Sears had the locations, products, and infrastructure to be the next Amazon.
@@Mrmidknight-yx9pg
One of the very first, before my time.
I was at the Sears in Concord, California on January 15, 2023. It was a massive retail space (bigger than most other mall department stores) but so much of it was abandoned and neglected. I bought a generic t shirt knowing that it would likely be the final time I’d ever purchase anything from Sears. It was marked down by 70%.
We had about three or four Sears in San Antonio for the longest time. I actually remember when the most recent one opened back around 1988 or so. It had a very 80's feel to it with neon signs and new wave music playing over the speakers. It's kind of sad that I had no idea it closed down in 2020. It was such an essential part of family Saturdays for us when I was growing up, and then it was just gone.
That's somewhat depressing to hear. Ingram Park Mall was the one my family always frequented, though we lived about equidistant from Ingram and Northstar (Northstar is/was just such a pain in the ass to get to).
@@SixofQueens Northstar was / is also the luxury mall, so they wouldn't take Sears. Sears was across San Pedro in the former Central Park Mall.
There's only two in all of Texas now - a full line at Cielo Vista Mall, El Paso, and an appliance / mattress in Pharr (RGV).
What was the mall on the NE side that is a Rack space now?
Anyhow, Northstar will never doe that ks to the boots!
@@HasanibnSabah Windsor Park Mall, which was done in by a combination of two shooting incidents, and Rolling Oaks Mall opening nearby (1604@Nacogdoches).
Former Sears employee here 🙋♀️. Sears was my very first job. I started working at the Sears in my hometown. I worked part time all during high school and college. I worked for Sears from 1999-2006. From when I was 16 until I graduated from college. It was a great first job! It makes me sad to see it end like that. 💔
Thank you for sharing! It's stories like yours that make seeing these stores empty or completely closed so sad. To most people it might be a failing business and an empty building, but there are stories and memories within those places. Stories that will, sadly, mostly be lost to time.
I worked there in 2012 when I was 18 for about 3 months. They treated me terribly and even made me cry once. One of the older female managers was jealous of me and made critical comments about my looks TO WHERE someone reported her for harassment. Nothing happened. That same lady had a 15 year old who was pregnant by one of the boys working there. Figures. The place was toxic and abusive. They up talked about their positions and length of time working there. And guess what? They all lost their jobs a few years later. Sears won’t be missed.
This is so depressing. Where are we going to all physically hang out and magically meet lifelong friends and lovers? I met some of my best friends in record stores, bookstores and malls.
I feel so lonely watching this. I am also grateful that I grew up at a time when going to the mall was a big deal and super exciting. Love this channel but sometimes it bums me out.
It's extremely depressing. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. The local wall was THE place to be back then. After school, on weekends, vacations, etc., that's where every teenaged kid was. I remember either my parents or a friend's parents would drop us off at the mall for the day and we would be there for HOURS. We would go to the arcade, blow our money in our favorite stores, and then hang out in the food court until it was time to go home. God, I miss those days!!!!! Kids today are seriously missing out.
Seriously. There are less and less fun places to go to and just explore... hang out... browse.
When I was a kid, which wasn't all that long ago, it felt like there was a horizon.
Not anymore.
I'd be beside myself with depression if not for the fact God warned these sorts of things would happen: a one-world order, economic collapse, etc.
It's just sad seeing what was said would happen coming true. Glad the earth is headed back toward pre-Edenic conditions, but the Tribulation has to happen first and it's almost time.
Make sure you're saved so you don't have to go through it.
@@jrwheeler81 mostly what killed my malls is stopping kids/teens hanging out. It caused most of our shops to closed bc the kids is what the stores was .making a killing on.
@@yunoyukki7344 LOL it wasn't all teens it was mostly the dark variety that caused the problems.
Fucking nostalgia, hits me like no other.
Brings me sadness, longing, utter fucking heartbreak. Abeloth has nothing on me.
Screw Sears. I worked there when I was 18 in 2012 for about 3 months. They were extremely mean to me and even made me cry once. Condescending people who thought they were above me because they were “managers” and I was an 18 year old cashier. One of the female managers was jealous of me too and would purposely make comments about my looks. When I stopped going altogether, everyone I knew was like “good” because they heard how poorly they treated me. And guess what? All those “managers” who sat on their high horse lost their jobs only a few short years later. The place shut down in 2016. So long Sears. You won’t be missed.
This is my local Sears store. The third floor was used up to last year. It had the housewares and appliances. The first floor looks to be in much better shape than it did before. The escalators were original to Broadway and so was that announcement. I remember it. You also were at a former dead mall. The mall itself was demolished but the anchors remain (Sears former Broadway, JCPenney and Kohls former Mervyns). Only dead mall i know where the anchors thrived but the mall died. This Broadway was one divested to Sears during the Macys takeover of Broadway. They deemed it too close to (now closed) Puente Hills.
Beat me to it. I used to frequent this Sears and the one at Cerritos mall. The third floor was used and sad to see how it is now.
store manager decision to make the store feel full. once the warehouse was able to fill with merch the whole fill the first two floors with merch plan fell apart.
but now we in this weird spot where the warehouse can not order certain items. ive had to deal with beds and freezers for the past weeks. where the warehouse pushes the dates for three months. i usually have to inform the customer they might have to cancel because we get no new info
"Only dead mall i know where the anchors thrived but the mall died." Add Sears in Richardson Tx to your list - it was the only dept store that survived the demo'ed dead mall until a few years ago, when it closed. I don't know if it is still standing.
Seems like they should condense everything onto one floor.
My first “career” position after college was in management with Kmart in 1976. I met my wife working there.
Although I’ve retired in 2021, (not from Kmart, I left them in 1978), I still have fond memories of the store and the people. Kmart Grill for lunch and people following the “Flashing Blue Light” around the store. Makes me sad.
Kmart was the bang... it was the only place that sold BB guns and toys. I could not wait to get into that place as a kid. Never in my lifetime did I think it could ever fail that type of business?
The Broadway stores always had very dated and signature vintage looking escalators even in newer stores back in the early 80's in SoCal anyway. I always kind of liked that about them....actually it's what I remember most about them except they skewed towards old people in my mind.
It’s interesting to see the difference in shopping habits from country to country! In New Zealand, Kmart is booming, and most are in malls that are still as busy as ever.
The USA kmarts are/were being run by a different management... The NZ ones are run by a company that keeps up with things
The same happened in Puerto Rico with KMart. They had at least 10 of them all over the island. I was baffled when I went there on vacation. They were all popping too.
Such a tremendous hit of nostalgia--Sears was always part of family trips to the mall and this just looked a little like a museum of what you might have encountered back in the day.
I worked at the Kmart in Forest Park, IL between 2009-2010. Easily the most brutal job I've ever had. The only silver lining is that it motivated me to go back to school and make something of myself.
The corporate structure behind the classic Sears and K-Mart stores will certainly come to end in 2022 - I find it hard to believe there will be enough stores left at the end of the year to "hold it up". When that happens, the remaining stores will have one of two things happen to them - quick (and painful) shutdown (possibly followed by acquisition by a different company) or a forced conversion to a Sears Hometown location. Transformco will retire the mainline Sears and K-Mart labels, and that will be that.
They have been saying that for years. This is zombie chain and it figures out a way to keeping stumbling forward like a corpse
I’m surprised that Transformco hasn’t pulled the plug on both stores since there’s only 23 Sears and 10 K-Marts in the US.
I can see Transformco shutting down both Sears and Kmart, selling off the IP and other assets related to these brands, and then selling the Hometown stores off to a new owner who will keep them going under a new name. Then Transformco itself will fold and Lampert will put his prime focus on Seritage Growth Properties.
They could shut down the existing stores, and sell the remaining assets. They could also sell off Kenmore, and the internet Sears and Kmart websites. Several years ago when Ames Department Stores went out of business their assets were sold. One asset the Ames name, and intellectual property rights were also sold when they folded in 2002. Someone bought the Ames name, and now it is supposed to be relaunching in the eastern part of the United States this spring. The same could happen for Sears and Knart. In another retail bankruptcy in 2000, Montgomery Wards name and intellectual property rights was sold at a bankruptcy sale, and was relaunched as a internet, and catalog retailer that still operates today under a different ownership.
I remember when Kmart signed its deal with Martha Stewart. I wasn’t a big Kmart fan to begin with, but the Martha tie in got my interest. I stopped at one of the stores in Troy MI. I was very impressed. The merchandise was well designed, attractive, and I wanted to buy right away. When Christmas season began, I couldn’t believe how Martha’s influence had completely changed Kmart. The different collections of ornaments and decorations were hard to choose from. Everything was beautiful. We moved to a new city about 17 years ago. We arrived in January, in the middle of the night. I got up early and found the nearest Kmart, and stocked up on Martha kitchen items, towels, and pillows. A few years later, I read a story that Martha probably wasn’t going to resign her deal. I thought, if she goes, why else would I shop there? I was right, the stores were pitiful without her merchandise. It’s too bad, but most of the towels I bought for our new guest room are still in its bathroom, and with a lot of use. Every once in a while I will see boxes of Martha Christmas ornaments at Goodwill. I buy them even though we don’t need them. I always wished Martha had signed with Target, oh well.
Happy to see the Retail Archaeology boys back at it. Missed you guys!
It's still difficult for me to believe that there isn't a single Kmart or Sears left in my state and that I'll never be in one again. I'm not sure why, I've seen so many other department stores disappear. TG&Y, Murphy's Mart, Hills, Maloney's, Hecks...all places my family used to shop at regularly. Kmart was so huge though, every town seemed to have one. The world I knew is disappearing.
The one left in Massachusetts is similar with the entire aisle having one long row of the same bulk item.
Also, that escalator announcement has a "Life After People" vibe, where if we all disappeared but that place still had power the announcement would just keep playing to no one.
Which store in Massachusetts still left? I thought Sears Was completely gone? You might recall that I was Sears in Cambridge side Galleria and Cambridge closed a few years ago. I haven’t been to the mall in quite a few months so I’m wondering if they were able to do anything with that space?
@@AnotherTruth Braintree apparently. My nearby Leominster location in the Whitney Field mall has been closed for a few years.
I find it kind of sad but it wouldn't stand out so much if they could replace it with something, that and all of the other abandoned spaces at that mall, it just becomes a memory graveyard rather than a reminder that life goes on.
Man I miss Sears. I remember what ended up being my last trip to one, my father and I were tool shopping and looking at tool boxes, I told him, "Let's get out of here before I see something else I have to have" as I carried an armful of tools to checkout.
That recording is reminescent of the message in Airplane... "The White Zone is for loading & unloading."
One of the nearby Sears Hometown Stores just recently closed. Our closest Sears store is located in Overland Park, KS.... too far to drive, for a visit.
My family shopped at both Sears & Kmart, for many years. Thanks for the memories.
This was my local Sears for years. Around a decade ago, my family actually had their family photos taken at this location on the 3rd floor. To answer the question, yes the third floor was used which is why it was shocking finding out it was closed.
We still have a sears in my town. I haven't been there in years but can only assume it's about the same, and about a populated.
Always love the videos!
I just visited the last Kmart in Florida and man oh man was it a sad visit. Half the lights out, 2/3rds of the store walled off not being used, no electronics section or home and garden…it literally looks like it could close any day.
Here's a status update of every location in the states:
SEARS
CA
Burbank: Lots of empty floor space; Rug department
Concord: Lots of empty floor space
Stockton: Unknown
Whittier: Understocked; third floor closed
FL
Coral Gables: Most of second floor blocked off; water damage on second floor
Orlando: 1/2 of second floor blocked off; lots of empty floor space on first floor
Palm Beach Gardens: 1/4 of first floor blocked off; 1/4 of second floor blocked off
MA
Braintree: Best condition of the remaining stores; rug department takes up 1/2 of the lower level
MD
Frederick: Smaller store; understocked; lots of empty floor space
NC
Greensboro: Downsized; understocked; lots of empty floor space
NJ
Jersey City: Water damage on second floor; some of first floor blocked off; lots of empty floor space
NY
Newburgh: Understocked; lots of empty floor space
TX
El Paso: Understocked; lots of empty floor space
WA
Tukwila: Understocked; third floor closed
Union Gap: Smaller store; understocked; lots of empty floor space
KMART
FL
Miami (Kendall): 2/3 of store blocked off
NJ
Westwood: 1/3 of store blocked off
NY
Bridgehampton: Best condition of the remaining stores; well stocked; no sections blocked off
This information was collected from my own visits, photos, videos, and reviews online
Thanks for the update!!
It's sad because you can't have the same shopping experience online even with their virtual shopping fantasy
@@Saint696Anger Almost everything first party is out of stock. I had to buy an air conditioner from a third party seller.
@@tricountyretail992 yes I've been hearing about that. Look at us, it's like we are the former Soviet Union in slow motion collapse
UA-camr Wallieb26 just did a video, yesterday , of the Kmart that is closing in New Jersey, on April 17, 2022.
My mom and dad used to work at the Coral Gables FL. location in the 90s! They told me that there was also a BlockBuster Video!
If it weren't for Sears's short-sighted, selfish management, they could've been Amazon; they were the original Amazon but they blew it just like Blockbuster.
Their whole existing catalog department could have been turned over to Internet sales. They were already set up to be an Amazon. Short sighted management and fear of any change destroyed the store.
Established retailers were always conflicted. Radio Shack is another good example. They were always afraid that too many online sales would cut into the profitability of their retail locations so they never really committed to it.
@@bryede , RadioShack was perfectly positioned to be the go-to place for maker supplies, Arduinos, 3D printers and all of the accessories, laser cutters, all that crap, and they totally blew it because they wanted to focus on cell phones instead.
@@jefferickson5833 - I agree, but sears got rid of their catalog years before amazon existed as anything but a book store... They just needed to hang in there with catalog a little longer. It would also have helped if they brought it back
@@williamhaynes7089 Sears got rid of Catalog Department finally in 1993. Amazon started in July 1994. So not that far apart. Amazon had a vision of the future, Sears did not.
I actually live down the street from that sears in whittier. In the 7 years ive lived here i have never gone into that sears store
Absolutely bizarre what's happened to Sears. They're literally just going to coast off the resources they have until there's nothing left. Dying a slow, quiet death.
It isn't a coincidence. It's very well calculated. They're just liquidating amd winding down operations at this point.
It’s to be expected. Eddie Lampert is a hedge fund guy who gets rich off of companies going under.
It's like keeping someone on life support, eventually they will have to pull the plug. Really sad, Sears and Kmart was part of my childhood. One day we will see Target and Walmart go away in the same conditions.
02:02: Update: Sears in Honolulu HI closed a few years ago, replaced by Nordstrom in the main store area and a food court where Sears Auto used to be. Even the food court is now defunct, never reopened after COVID19 lockdown.
Food court - you mean Shirokiya? I don’t remember the old Sears having its own food court, just a Zippys
Wait what? There are only 3 Kmarts existing now? I didn't realize it was that bad. I was just at the NY one last week! They didnt have a ton of stuff. Definitely less than the Kmarts of old. However, they blocked off a sizeable corner of the store, so there is a lot less spreading out of the shelves. Something i found funny was that they still had Christmas stuff on clearance. 90% off if anyone needs something in May!
The Kmart name didn't start until 1962. Over the '60s-90s, Kmart quickly expanded across the country opening in rural areas where there were no Walmarts and Targets. Both Kmart & Sears started to go into decline in the late '90s and fell to Walmart as the #1 retailer. It's so sad what happened to them. My childhood Kmart closed in 2014 and At Home moved into the building in 2016. Eddie Lambert ruined both retailers.
@@Great-Documentaries Target is basically if Kmart adapted to change of the internet
you should come to Australia. Kmart are doing fine here
@@VonChoker I am aware of that Kmart. I visited Australia back in 2015 but didn't get a chance to go to Kmart. That Kmart is a different company then USA Kmart. There also Kmart's in New Zealand
My childhood Kmart closed the Sunday before Labor Day in 2018. The Sears at my local mall closed in October 2021.
@Davin Peterson
True, it was known as S.S. Kresge and we had one of those at the Randhurst Mall in Mount Prospect, IL....it was more on the level of a large five and dime store back in the early 1970s and before.
My nearest mall has an active Sears. I'm not sure whether it really should be considered active though. For the past 5 years, I've used it as a pass through to get to the dumpling house that's next to it in the mall, but when they started reopening the mall, Sears changed their hours of operation and they now close at 6pm, even on Saturdays. Which is completely odd... the mall is active, no where near dead and operates til 9 or 10 (with some restaurants staying open longer).
I also noticed their outside door had been broken into but they boarded it for months instead of fixing the door (this would have been mid-2021). I believe it's fixed now. I should stop by and see the inventory now. Last time I was there during the afternoon they had done pretty well moving their inventory around, but then again, I haven't ventured to the second floor in years (this sears' second floor entry from the mall is pretty much never used).
It's good to see an update on one of the locations in California. These California locations are not as well documented as the ones on the east coast.
Meanwhile Kmart is still going strong in Australia with the first Kmart that opened on Burwood Highway in Melbourne Australia in 1965 currently being one of the biggest and busiest locations in the whole country which is open 24/7! Also Kmart in Australia is separate to the one in the USA as the Australian and New Zealand divisions of Kmart were sold to a local Australian based retail company known as Westfarmers who also own the Coles supermarket chain in Australia.
And Sears is still going strong in Mexico, under the ownership of Carlos Slim.
Yup 323 stores in Australia & New Zealand. Little known fact: Sears in the 1950's & 60's once had a major shareholding in local department store Waltons which was called Waltons-Sears. They sold their share in the 1960's & it became just Waltons and lasted until the late 1980's.
In both cases, the local business cut ties and separated from their US counterparts decades ago. Neither has anything to do with Lampert / Transformco, and both are better off for it
Once these American stores finally close, Australia’s gonna be the last country with Kmart stores.
I guess the Australian branch of Kmart is basically now the Byzantine Empire.
At one point in the Milwaukee WI Metro area we had four Sears stores, one Sears appliance repair shop, and at least 6 Kmart stores. All of that is gone now :(.
I have a relative who worked in the Southridge Sears. He started as a stocker when he was a teenager & worked his way up to be the manager. He worked there about 30 years. When Sears started going down, upper management made him fire a lot of people. He really felt bad about doing that because so many of the employees were hard workers & didn't deserve it. After he fired the people, upper management then fired him. The store soon closed after that.
Growing up in the area I have great memories in the 80s and 90's of trips to Brookfield Square and Mayfair, and Grand Avenue was a really cool mall at one time many decades ago when it was classy. We didn't go to the other malls like Northridge or Southridge much since those inevitably became the "black malls" and weren't nice anymore.
2:07: I drove by the store in Greensboro NC a few weeks ago and you wouldn't know it was open. There were no cars in the parking lot and until I saw this video, I wondered if indeed it had been closed. The Kmart on the other side of town closed about five years ago. It is now a Gabes.
I went Christmas shopping at the Greensboro Sears a few years ago, and it seemed to be doing okay. I had no idea there were only 25 Sears department stores left in the country!
I remember the Sears in my local mall area to have a department filled with video games and VHS cassettes (and maybe DVDs) for a time. Whereas the last few years before it closed, they had discontinued selling them, probably since there were other stores like Gamestop and FYE reserved for that stuff.
Yes! Our Sears had that back in the 90s and early 2000s, but they eventually got rid of it.
FYE was my number one spot to buy anime bc their used section was so good and not overpriced like their other sections.
Yeah I remember in the 90s them having a electronic department even had a game boy station
My family bought a big screen TV there when I was eight.
The Concord Sears is in my local mall and there is still merchandise but it feels empty in most places. For a while they were closing early too, for example if closing said 6PM most lights would be off at 5PM and the mall gates would be down
The location for the Concord, Ca Sears is on the market for lease. Once a lease is agreed upon, and a tenant is found that location will also be history. I have not been in the Concord, Ca location for the last 10 years.
Sadly, the Hawaii Sears is a home appliance store and… it too isn’t doing too good.
As a former Sears associate from Store #6168-19100 (Auto Center at the Sears)… Eddie Lampert is to Sears as Mike Kohan is to real estate. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to find out they know each other.
Also, that escalator is likely original. The store I worked in had the exact same model and weirdly was the FIRST escalator ever installed in the entire state of Hawaii in the 1950’s!
The K-Mart in my hometown was open until the roof collapsed in 2014. I can't help but think it was due to lack of maintenance. Then, it sat there vacant for 6 or 7 years before becoming an indoor storage unit facility. I had moved out of town years prior, and of course a roof collapse is very sudden. So, I didn't even get to make a goodbye trip to my childhood K-Mart. I'm kinda sad about it.
I love this channel ever since I found it it reminds me of stores like blockbuster
I live near one of those NJ Kmart. Last I was there got some clearance items and it looked like they were adding back appliances. They moved a lot of stuff around. It's also no matter what time you go it takes forever to get out of one since there's only like on register open.
I didn't even realize that there were any Sears or Kmart stores left. I thought they had all closed by now. Our Sears closed back in 2018 and our Kmart closed in 2016, so they've both been gone for several years now. I still do miss Sears. My husband and I used to shop there ALL the time. We bought all of our major appliances, tools, car batteries, etc. there. You couldn't beat those Sears DieHard batteries! They lasted forever! It's so depressing to drive by our local mall and see the old Sears entrance all empty and sad looking. It was like the end of an era when they closed. Times are so different.
I work for Sears. Every day I hear more than one customer say that they didn't know any Sears stores existed. I believe 15 full line Sears stores are still open.
Years ago, Sears Automotive sold and installed on my car a tire that was actually crooked. Tried returning a Craftsman wrench that had failed and was given a reconditioned one of a different size; finally got a valid replacement. Also, automotive hooked up my car battery to some gizmo, a red light came on and the words ‘Your battery is bad’ flashed. Own worst enemy.
The reason the product assortment is so odd is because it’s all the random stuff Sears had left in their warehouses, plus random stuff from the few brave vendors who will actually do business with them. Even Levi’s pulled out of Sears, and many of their private-label manufacturers have stopped producing their products due to fears that they won’t be paid. Truly sad. At least JCPenney seems to be making a bit of a comeback.
It's actually kind of funny/sad. In this video, I saw the EXACT same Kenmore refrigerator that my husband and I bought back in 2015, LOL. JCPenney actually seems to be doing well! I went there last weekend for a haircut and the store was VERY busy!
JC Penney was literally bought by the mall - Simon Properties.
@@Hammster69official Wait, really?
@@jrwheeler81 Oh, they still offer hair cutting services? I thought JCPenney was on the brink of extinction along with the rest of them? That’s wonderful
@@AnotherTruth JCPenney has been making a hell of a comeback. Their owners even bid for Kohl’s with a plan to merge the companies behind the scenes (they’ll keep their names)
My local Kmart closed in 2008 and our Sears shuttered in 2016, so I’m always surprised to see locations still open.
I have a lot of wonderful memories of hanging out in the cafe at Kmart with my grandparents before they died, so it’s particularly sad to see how far they’ve fallen.
need to bring the store back!
Great video man!!! It’s sad what Sears and Kmart have become now.
There is only one Sears left in Massachusetts. It is located in Braintree and the inside is just sad. The auto care center is closed, the escalator to the lower floor has been under repair for over two months and displays on the lower level are mainly rugs.
As a daughter of HVAC men, the amount of times I’ve been in Sears as a kid is hundreds. It’s very sad they’re all going extinct. The last Sears I saw was in Westchester and that was over 10 years ago.
Two of the last K-Mart’s were in Westchester and the Bronx, both closed in the last year.
It’s very sad to see these stores. In my past I worked for a HVAC company that worked on the chillers, boilers towers and the Kmart’s had mostly roof top ac’s. The memorys of working with the QMT’s (sears holdings techs) covered most of the mid west.
How do HVAC "men" have a daughter?
Sears stuck around my area upstate until 2017 and '18. One just over the state line in Burlington, VT even managed to hang on until 2020.
So you actually got to see those huge round air conditioning vents in the ceiling being installed?
I know it may sound weird but one thing I always remembered about going to Kmart was those huge round vents in the ceiling.
@@fixman88 Only thing I did was service and repair to the chillers / boilers and package roof top units. Some of them large round grills were fan powered but yea them things were huge. The old stores had them vents. Newer had square concentric ones that had a odd sound. Nicholasville Road K-mart had the large round ones.
I'm an Australian, we have Kmart here, which started off back in the late 60's as being part of the US Kmart, before being bought out by Coles Myer/Wesfarmers in the 90's, and since then its been an entirely seperate company, just with the same name. Funnily enough our Kmart is going stronger than ever, and opening new stores. Sadly its also more or less a glorified $2 shop, thats successful because they sell trendy stuff thats cheap and rubbish lol. It saddens me to see Kmart US going down the gurgler - when I went to the US in 2014 I went to a Kmart over there and actually really liked it - it reminded me a lot of our Kmart back in the 90's when not only did they sell actual name brand stuff (as opposed to our Kmart now that sells nothing but their "anko" store brand), but it was an amazing place that, while it wasn't trendy, you could find anything and everything.
Sears *was* the go to place for tools and hardware in the day, that's totally true! It's where many a lawn mower and weed eater came from, even many a TV and VCR/DVD player came from in my case. It's a shame that a brand that was once great is gone--and in this case, that includes Kmart, the place where I got my Jolly Rancher soda.
my towns kmart closed years ago, but i remember when it was still open i found a folder with kittens and puppies on it that was yellowed over from how old and untouched it was. even as a kid i knew it didn’t have much time left. now the empty building just sits abandoned!
This made me sad because Sears and Kmart are two stores I spent a lot of time in as a kid especially Kmart. I appreciate you doing this though because it brings back so many memories.
There is still a fully active and open Sears store at my local shopping mall. It’s in Tukwila, WA, at Westfield Southcenter Mall, about 25miles south of Seattle. The Sears only has three out of 6 entrances open, one exterior and two in the mall. It’s skybridge doors to a parking garage are closed and locked, and the third floor is blocked off. Majority of its retail is on the first floor, with kids clothes and home goods and mattresses on the second floor. In December of 2020 I bought a dressy overcoat at the Sears for a formal event, it was reduced price 70% off and the two employees appeared to be reducing the prices of all customer purchases. This Sears has been hanging on by a thread since at least 2010, and every year I check out the Sears Closure list online but this one stays open, and is never on the list. It’s very depressing in there, and I wouldn’t doubt it if more than half of the second floor is blocked off with display units and yellow tape due to lack of inventory. It might take another 2 or 3 years until they close off the second floor. You should check it out, along with the rest of the mall. Macys is falling apart and JC Penny is faring off better than Nordstrom on most days.
I always feel wistful about entering the Meijer that replaced my local mall, because its electronics department is nearly right where Sears Brand Central was in its footprint; I always spent so much time in that place browsing the tools and just playing with the demo computers and WebTVs (it's where I signed up for an Amazon account!), looking at the new games in the Funtronics section and being in awe when I first saw HDTV there and where I bought my VCRs, radios and televisions..I have a Kenmore washer/dryer that still runs like a dream 20 years later, along with a big ol' 90s boombox, and they always were 'quality' to me.
The way Eddie Lampert ran them and KMart into the ground for the real estate (and they got a ransom from the KMart they closed near Lambeau Field from the Packers which was making a killing just on gameday parking) is a tragedy.
@Nathan Schimpf
The way Fast Eddie ran Sears and K Mart into the ground is criminal.
Fast Eddie has a place reserved in the VIP section in hell.
@@leschatsmusicale Indeed, I call Fast Eddie a "Financial Vampire" as he essentially sucked the life's blood out of the company which killed it.
The last time I went shopping with my grandpa he went and bought me a mattress from sears. He was the manager of their Craftsman's department here in Seattle for over 30 years when he got back from world war ii. He made enough money doing that to buy a nice home in a good area that overlooked the Puget sound, he bought an rv, he built a home for my mom, he did a lot for our family. I didn't realize how emotional this video was going to make me. My Grandpa died in 2015.
Growing up my mom worked at the Sears telecatalog center taking orders. Sad they couldn't or wouldn't be able to transition their catalog success over to the web.
Exactly. In 94 when the web was first starting and Amazon first started just selling books they should've made their website and do free shipping to the store for pick up or ship directly to your house. They would've been ahead of everyone and probably still be as big as they were maybe even bigger. Also kept up with the times also. They would've been almost untouchable.
Yes. They were one of the few retail outlets that was already set up for Internet sales because of their long-existing catalog department. Short sightedness and stubbornness destroyed themselves.
@@jefferickson5833 It's what happens when you have a board of directors in their 60s. They really don't understand technology trends, especially something that was so totally new. After a hundred years of in-store retail, it's all they knew.
They turned the abandoned Sears at my local mall into a covid vaccine site. It was strange going in there for the first time in years; felt like an apocalypse world in more ways than one.
That gives me the creeps a little bit! Thinking of a store as nice as Sears was, to a Covid vaccine site YIKES. 😳
Your videos really kind of bummed me out when I first started watching your videos, but the more I watched them the more I grew nostalgic for the topography of my youth has changed. And though I’m sad it changes I know that is the way of things and change is unavoidable. Keep the videos coming man and God bless!!!
To your point..I think the connection is what makes it sad. I rarely go to my teenage years mall ( The Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights CA ) which is definitely a near death mall. It is close by, but there is almost no reason to go there anymore. In the recent past, any trip to it is just an excruciatingly sad emotional experience. It's like literally watching the past die. Trips like mine to my local mall made my wonder how the people behind this channel cope with what must be that feeling x100. I guess it is possibly a different feeling when there is not the personal connection to the location. Otherwise, I dont know how the feeling of sadness doesnt get to be overwhelming.
The Sears where I live in Saginaw Michigan closed in 2019. They had an auto service center in a separate building that closed some time before the main store closed down. The former auto service building became a drive-thru COVID testing site in 2020.
We had a sears in Charlottesville va till i believe 2017. It was full stocked and took me right back to childhood including the auto center. They announced its closing and within a few weeks it looked shuttered. I knew id probably never step in a sears again. For kmart it was my first job in high school and my first year of college. That hurt to see kmart disappear. On a side note I grew up in trenton nj in a sears catalog home.
I lived in Charlottesville from 2009 to 2014. Made many trips to that Sears store ( and a few to the Kmart there.) Sad to hear both are gone now.
@@douglasw.7864 we moved to Tucson AZ last year. So much is different then when we first moved there in 04. Fashion Square mall is a ghost town now
Our Sears disappeared a few years ago at the Everett Mall. I still got some nice clothes from the sale.
I miss Sears. I used to find really great deals on clothes for work in their clearance section. tops and pants for like $3-$5. I remember buying bags full of really marked down stuff thinking they have got to be going out of business at this rate. sure enough, they went out of business eventually
UA-cam doesn't recommend you to me anymore. What a shame because I'm a big fan. I searched you out, and I'm glad I did! 👍
I remember when I made a $1000 or more a week selling appliance's part time
. I would go in on my days off and close sales too.
The business card's were the bread and butter to a retail sales job. I looked at every appliance like $100 bill. Draw pay was $500 and you could sell 2 cheap dryers and a hot water heater and everything after was pure profit. The Kenmore line sold itself.
The old heads always wanted the Kenmore like it was an American tradition....
I look at everything new today like its going to break sometime soon tomorrow.....
Those kenmores do hold up though.
Some guy I met tried to get me to come work for Sears selling appliances. He told me I could make a 100k a year. I laughed at him and told him the whole store didn't even have 100k in inventory. That location closed less than 2 years later. I'm sure you could make bank bake in it's heyday though.
Great work, I like these types of videos and your style is very good, i’ve subbed.
Oh man, Whittier Sears. Lived near there most my life. Used to be a Broadway before they knocked down the mall. The Kohls nextdoor used to be a Mervyns. Sears used to use all three floor. Second floor was like clothes, and top floor was linen and electronics. I remember that escalator recording ever since I was a kid. I'm in my 40s now, so probably is original.
The end is pretty much here. Since you posted this video, a further 14 stores have closed, leaving only 11 mainline stores (including one in Puerto Rico) , with no Sears Appliance or Grand stores remaining. Sears Hometown filed for bankruptcy in December 2022 and is in the process of closing all remaining stores by the end of 2023. There are now only 2 Kmarts in the mainland U.S. , with a further 5 located in U.S. territories (Guam, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico).
I haven't been to a Sears since Christmas 2012 when the one in Fayette Mall in Lexington, KY was going out of business, and I haven't been to a KMart since Thanksgiving weekend when the one here in Somerset, Ky was closing for the last time. I truly believe this is the final year.
I honestly had no idea that there were even any Sears or Kmart stores left anywhere. Our Sears closed back in 2018 and our Kmart closed in 2016. This is DEFINITELY the final year. There is just no way they can make it out of 2022 alive.
Wow, Fayette Mall. Haven't thought of that place in a dog's age. I lived in Lexington back in the 80s. Used to shop at a K-Mart on New Circle Rd., right around N. Broadway...would walk across the railroad trestle to get there. Do they still have Festival Market mall downtown, or did that go belly-up too? I always liked that place.
@@SMac-bq8sk Festival Market is long gone. It had already shuttered its doors when Fayette Mall expanded back in '93. It was only opened for a few years, and they moved the carousel to the minor league ballpark.
@@melaniepattonraleigh9663: Thanks for the update. Kind of sad how everything is "here today, gone tomorrow" nowadays. Next thing you know they'll be converting Keeneland into an Amazon warehouse. Oh well, I can still reminisce. Cheers!🙂
That mall has been going down hill. Don’t help someone got shot around where the Starbucks was. Lexington has way too many malls. But great memories of working on that Sears. I also still have a working craftsman drill press from 2006. Suprised being it was made in China of lots of cheap plastic.
I really liked your narration and presentation.
Thank you for one last look down memory lane.
Hope you do more videos.
The building that was the Kmart that my mom worked at until it closed was split into Whole Foods & Hobby Lobby.
Yeah the on near me since it was a super they made four stores out of it. Goodwill, harbor freight, lidl, and ollies
The Sears catalog, in particular the Christmas Wish Book, was a fixture of my childhood. And my grandma had a dozen or so Sears catalog from about the 20s and 30s including four huge old leather bound books from the turn of the century. Strange to think that it's just fading away like that.
i miss ready the bra sections ?
I can't find it anymore, but a few years ago I read an article about how the CEO of Sears was intentionally running it into the ground, selling off properties to himself via a real estate company he owned and charging Sears rent, and generally putting Sears in a position where it was in debt to him so that he could pretty much pick the bones clean.
That being said I haven't stepped foot in a Sears in many, many years. The last time I went in there I was buying some button-up shirts for work, and I was third in line, but it took twenty minutes before I got to the front of the line. Why did it take twenty minutes? Because the cashier was pestering everyone in line to sign up for the Sears card. I told her "no thank you" four or five times, but she wouldn't stop, so I finally had to yell "I DON'T WANT IT!" just to make her stop asking and ring up my shirts.
Eddie set up Seritage with other investors, like Warren Buffett, to acquire the most valuable locations in Sears Holdings. Oddly enough, he did this while being CEO and majority stockholder of Sears Holdings, somehow in the interest of "transforming" Sears Holdings. You can't really say you're tanking Sears and Kmart, you just say you're "transforming" the stores while operating the slowest liquidation sale of all time. Associates would get reviewed on how well they sold credit and customer service. After the "merger" with Kmart, it seemed the credit sales and Shop Your Way signups were more important than customer service. Associates would get paid $4 for Sears Mastercard signups, $1 for Sears card on top of their hourly rate.
@@paulwetter3262 It's absurd that what he did was legal.
Why isn't bribery illegal within a company? This would be considered racketeering, otherwise.
When I worked at a retail store (my first job from age 16-19), we would be "judged" by how many people we could get to sign up for the store credit card each month. I absolutely hated asking people and thus almost never did despite it being a "requirement." I didn't care about the extra $3-4 per card signup I could get on my paycheck. I got called into the store manager's office at least a few times to be lightly reprimanded for my low credit card signup numbers, but I knew they weren't going to fire me or anything, the managers were just doing their jobs as I'm sure corporate had some sort of store quotas they wanted met. Nowadays, virtually every retail chain "requires" their cashiers to push store cards. It really takes away from the cashier-customer relationship when neither of you want to make that awkward eye contact while they say their little script while scanning your items knowing there's a 99% chance you're just going to say "no." Best way to get past it is to politely decline and then ask the cashier a normal, small-talk question to quickly change the subject.
There was a Kmart near my house that closed down about 2 yrs ago, and I think the last couple of sears in Las Vegas converted to only offering appliance repairs. It feels weird seeing brands like these disappear so quickly
Is very nostalgic seeing you do a tour of a Full Line Sears store.
So sad about Kmart, had a lot of memories when shopping with my parents, used to like their calorie free clear soda drinks, the cherry lime flavor was my favorite, not overly sad about Sears since mom use to spend way too much time there lol
My Sears was a 3 story one when it was open. Third floor was plus sizes, kids, luggage and lingerie. It was also windowless and dark up there. The most depressing lingerie department ever. Also no one knew the plus sizes were up there so they just got rid of the whole department. Considering that their main customers were middle aged and up that was not the smartest move but neither was hiding it in a dimly lit dungeon like space behind some suitcases.
Segregating the plus sizes seems odd to begin with. “Well, I have to go upstairs to the fatties department. Catch up with you later!”
The 3 Sears hometown stores that I know of have all closed. The grocery store here in town used to be an old Kmart built in the 60's but closed in the late 80s and turned into an HEB I believe in 1992 or 93.
Where I used to live (in Western Canada), there were two Sears Home locations and three mainline Sears stores. Sadly, all of them are now gone. Most of my furniture came from Sears -- the quality was very high and the sales staff were great. In contrast, the clothing selection was pathetic even when the store was a going concern; there was (almost) never anything in my size.
I bought my grandma a microwave from Sears in the late 1990s or maybe early 2000s and what I remember is I had to get a ticket, take it to the cashier and then go wait in a room until the warehouse guys brought it out for me.
Even back then that was ridiculously outdated, you could walk into a Walmart and just grab microwave and go pay for it. Sears just didn't seem to be able to move with the times.
The last thing I ever bought from Sears was my washer and dryer. I bought them in early 2015. And I went with Sears because they price matched and were the cheapest. But while I was there two salespeople "helped" me and when I went up to pay they actually started fighting right in front of me at the cash register over who was going to get the commission. It really was pathetic and between that and the "going out of business" vibe the Sears had I never went back. It closed a year or two later anyway.
@@Vichedges My best friend worked in Sears sales briefly. The company policy was to literally pit the departments against one another as competition, within the same store, so it doesn't surprise me two people fought over the commission like a scrap of meat between two dogs.
@@LeoMidori it was really pathetic. I mean they were literally arguing with each other at the cash register in front of me while I was trying to pay. It went on for several minutes.
I actually got angry about it and told them I didn’t care who did it I just wanted to be rang up so I could leave.
Putting a customer in that situation is just unacceptable.
I used to work at a Sears store in the early-to-mid 1990s, and that particular store closed in late 2018. Sears and Kmart were once iconic stores; that there's only four Kmart stores left in the entire US is just surreal. But much like Montgomery Wards (another former icon of American middle-class suburban consumerism) looks like both Sears and Kmart will very soon be relegated to the history books.
As of last year when the Sears at The Mall Of Louisiana in Baton Rouge closed, it was the very last one in my state. And they've also closed all of the South Mississippi locations over the last decade, as well as all of their Mobile/Pensacola (Alabama/Florida Gulf Coast) area stores.
And to Eddie Lampert, I fart in his general direction! 🤣
Eyyyyyyy, somebody in the same region. Yep, I don't think there's a single Sears or Kmart left anywhere in South MS or east LA. All gone.
@@madmanmike1980 Hey friend, I've seen your posts about Sears and "Fast Eddie" Lampert before.
Too bad you don't fart carbon monoxide so he'd just die.
That’s funny, learning that Sears is doing well at selling mattresses. We actually ate at a Sears back in December, and afterward, drove to a mattress store nearby (within the mall parking lot, but not connected to the mall) to buy a mattress. That Sears went out of business years ago, but in 2019, a Korean marketplace opened up in its former location, called Zion Mart, but due to its history as always being a Sears since day one, we call it the Korean Sears.
My daughter loves the Korean Sears, and only knows of the Sears name from that alone. But knowing what it used to be, it’s weird seeing it within the 4th dimension. The food court is where the appliances and electronics departments were. There’s a grocery store where the stockroom once was, with its checkouts where the tool department was. There is a bakery where the tire department once was, and a super expensive, super nice restaurant INSIDE where people got their oil changed!!! Can you imagine fine dinning at a mechanics garage?
That’s so wild! I just checked out Zion Mart and I love the set up of it. But I’m not sure if it’s a chain or if this one I saw is the same location but it’s so wild to know that there’s a fine dining restaurant where they changed oil and stuff and cars. Definitely is a Korean seers in many respects hahha
@@AnotherTruth it is a chain, mostly in CA. This location however was in TX. I think there may be one more in GA.
The palm beach location is probably the most depressing one out of these. The power was out for like 3 weeks in the store, and they were using construction lights to light the place.
They just fixed it last week, I even have a video when the lights were out. While the store is in very rough shape compared to a few months ago, it's not the worst one in the country.
i never got in to see that but yesterday it just looked pathetic how barren it was
@@walmartsucks1995 It makes no sense! More of the store is blocked off compared to three months ago and it looks even more empty! Where did the merchandise from Fort Lauderdale go to when it abruptly closed? It sure didn't come here!
@@tricountyretail992 probably sent it back to the vendors. Would probably cost them more to ship it to another open store and transfer inventory on the computer than it does to ship it back to the vendor. Just my guess.
Wow, that sucked. Either way, it's amazing that the Palm Beach Gardens Sears survived all of those countless waves of store closures, the 2018 bankruptcy, and even the COVID 19 pandemic. I kinda knew that particular store would end up being among the last of Sears department stores to close. By the way, does anyone know if both floors are still open to the public? I don't know if there's really enough stock for both floors now. I mean, I haven't been in there lately as the last time or two I've been to the Gardens Mall about five months ago, the Sears is already closed for the night.
Never really cared about sears, but man I grew up with a kmart being the main general purpose store my family went to. I remember buying Nintendo NES games there which they would resell, buying creepy crawler molds, and getting icee drinks at the food stand by the registers.
I just happened to be watching this on the day the K-Mart is supposed to be closing, April 17th.
I can always appreciate videos like these. It's like archiving the final days of these stores for future generations so they can see what the final days of these massive brands looked like.
It breaks my heart to see a Sears like this. It was the first job I ever had and even though I didn’t really like working there, Im still friends with some of the people I used to work with and have bittersweet memories from working there.
Great that the Vultures were sounded (in dishonor of Vulture Eddie Lampert, who disgraced both chains with his way of doing business) at the start of the video.
Actually Sears didn't start as a full-line department store, as they did not open their first brick and mortar store (before that it was mail order only) was opened in 1925 (first store in PR was opened in 1937 and the building was demolished in 2021). And what was opened in 1899 was SS Kresge, the 5&10 predecessor to Kmart (first one opened under the name and format was in 1962 in MI).
There are 6 more Kmarts outside of the 50 US (besides the 3-4 left in US): 4 in VI and one each in GU and PR.
The only town / city with both a Sears and a Kmart is San Juan, PR, which has their stores in front of each other in the Plaza Las Américas mall.
(will someone in the YT Creator community film [with the proper sneakiness] the last ones in PR when they're still open?)
How is it even feasible to run a retailer with so few locations spread across such wildly non-contiguous regions? The merchandise isn't even coming on the same barges!
Lampert only wanted the real estate. His plan all along was to close the stores.
There were two Sears appliance stores near (enough) to our town. They popped up and shut down quickly. The owners/managers tended to try and wiggle out of warranties and had the customer service personas of drug addicted used car salesmen. The one in main street became a kind of joke. One was "the owner took the parts out of new working machines and sold the parts to the scrap yard, then sold the shells to customers". He was that kind of guy.
This is why you NEVER rest on your laurels and assume you're gonna flourish tomorrow like you did today. You always have to know the industry, trends and MOST IMPORTANT what the public perception of you is. 25 years ago, they should have changed the name and revamped everything. Rainman single handedly hurt Kmart bad and Adventures in Babysitting didn't help Sears( points if you get that reference). By the 80s, Sears was considered a place for old people. They needed to change that perception asafp. They plodded along continuing down the same path and finally running out of path
*The Brady Bunch Movie* also established it as being a 1970s store implying it has all been downhill since then.
I didn't realize that my town still has a Sears store. I think I know which one it is. I loved shopping there growing up in the 1960,s and 1970,s. Definitely looks like a dead mall store to me.