On 12/28/2011 1:38 PM, bob haller wrote:
On Dec 28, 1:19 pm, Hell wrote:
On 12/28/2011 11:11 AM, Steve B wrote:

wrote in message
...
I'm reading bad news about Sears/KMart. If Sears goes tits up, I hope
they hand off the Craftsman line. I always had good luck with their
hand tools.

Ace currently sells Craftsman.

As mentioned upthread, the CEO of the company that acquired Kmart,
then got Sears in a hostile takeover and created Sears Holdings from
merging the two chains created another subsidiary company and put the
Kenmore, Craftsman, and Diehard brands into that company. In other
words, those brands aren't owned by Sears anymore, so if/when Sears
goes tits up, those assets won't end up on the auction block. Plus, it
allows him to cut deals with other retailers to carry those brands in
their stores, thus generating more income for his company.

This guy isn't a retailer, he's a financier. He's been putting the
income from the chains into hedge fund investments instead of plowing
it back into the stores. That's why the stores look old and rundown.
He's just gradually stripping them of their assets.

yeah thats it sears is a licensee of the craftsman brand. some
craftsman tool packages have said that.

theres talk of craftsman and kenmore being sold at home depot soon.
which creates the question, if you can buy theses brands elsewhere why
go to sears at all? having craftsman tools at ace hardware likely hurt
sears stores sales

this was asked by a online article over a year ago.

eddie lampert who put the sears k mart company together had planned on
selling off sears real estate. but then the real estate market
collapsed

our local kmart is a dump and i quit going there when they had zero
cashier check outs available and tried to force me to use self check
out/

i ranted and walked out.......

k mart has checkout glitches all the time....I prefer to drive futher
and shop at target, unfortunately the nearest wallmart is over a half
hours drive.

i try to buy all my hardware stuff from vaters, the last remaining
store of what was 15.....

they order stuff i need and their employees are hardware people

Similar observations here. I quit Sears years ago but local Kmart is
only 2 miles away and in further past was a decent store but started to
go down hill. Now with Sears take over it is even worse as they moved
in Sears items like washing machines and refrigerators which were not
sold at Kmart and moved out stuff I might be interested in.

Now I go a couple of miles more to Walmart.

Forty years or so, Sears was nations largest retailer. They did not
have the most stores but made up for it in volume sold per square foot
of store space.

My wife was still shopping at Sears until a couple of years ago when a
Sears clerk stole her id which we discovered when she charged about a
thousand dollars to her credit card.

Both stores are in their death throes and might as well close.