Hoffman Has Fallen
The Fall of Retail’s Rome
Hoffman Estates, Illinois used to be a quiet, pastoral kind of place. That changed in 1992, when Sears opened it’s new headquarters which would eventually employ up to 4,000 people. The sprawling complex housed an army of MBAs who would surely build on the Big Store’s success and usher in a modern era of retail dominance. It didn’t turn out that way, and as I’m writing this, the complex is being reduced to rubble, a stunning and crestfallen end to what was once a retail juggernaut.
Of course it wasn’t always this way. I’ve written extensively about the rise and fall of Sears Robuck and Company (http://jeetwincasinos.com/@chrismanam/the-mysterious-side-of-sears-821a05cb6a07). Please give it a read if you haven’t already. Sears HQ was a corporate dream, an edifice of self-contained convenience long before the Googles of the world starting serving Chai tea to their high flying staff.
The 2.3 million square foot complex contained all of the normal departments you would expect in a corporate headquarters. It also had a scale mock-up of a Sears so that planograms could be tested. There was a workshop for ensuring the quality of Craftsman tools. CEO Eddie Lampert had a luxurious office inside that he almost never used, preferring instead to work remotely long before Covid emptied out the building in 2020. Employees could have their cars repaired on site at a Sears Auto Center built into the complex. Hair care was available along with a copy and print center. Staff could get their Orange Chicken on at an on-site Panda Express or eat in the employee cafeteria. Point being, this was a very self-contained locale. There was little reason for employees to leave campus, which was likely the point. One apparent former employee wrote on Facebook that Sears was a “great place to work. Sears provided many opportunities for me to grow. Sears put me through classes to project management from a university. There was also a consistent learning environment through our the areas I worked. The facility was always a learning place...up to the last days before demolition started. I learned there was a secure room in the basement full of all the catalogs from the company history. Sears had its faults, but over my 44 years they were very good to me!,” R.L.
Over time, signs of the iceberg ahead were evident. The cafeteria was perpetually understaffed starting around 2013. The emptying cubicles never were reoccupied. Small repairs were not made. The fortunes of the company shifted until 2020, when the global pandemic nearly emptied the Prairie Stone complex. It would never host large-scale operations again and is today being leveled to make way for a data center of all things, a final ironic blow for a site that hosted a retail behemoth that couldn’t survive the internet age.
Transformco, which bought the remains of Sears Holdings after it’s 2018 bankruptcy, currently operates out of several small offices, one of which is literally across the street from the old digs. Eddie Lampert is still in charge. Sears is down to it’s last nine stores, having reopened a full line store in Union Gap, Washington only to close it again less than a year later. Reports are the company did at one point plan a retail comeback, but Covid put a stop to that, as it did so many other things. As best as anyone can tell, Sears is a real estate company now, selling it’s own land in a type of retail cannibalism worthy of Spaceballs’ Pizza The Hut. The iconic brands have mostly been sold off, and all that remains now is a sad countdown from nine tired stores to zero, until nothing is left except dust and regret. We apologize valued member, the Good Life isn’t here anymore.
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Sources:
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