If A Retail Giant Falls, Does It Make a Sound?
Sears was once a part of the fabric of America and is now basically dead. Almost nobody cares.
By Alex Chrisman
It is hard to overstate just how big of a deal Sears, Roebuck and Company was in its heyday. There was the massive catalog, from which customers could order everything from dresses, to firearms to a literal house. Sears created the Discover card, Allstate Insurance and owned Dean Witter. The company built the tallest building in the world, Sears Tower. If you include Kmart locations (the companies merged in 2003), Sears had approximately 3,500 stores. They were the number one retail company in the United States, the most powerful country in the world, until 1990. Sears WAS the middle class. Salespersons with the firm could make up to 70,000 dollars a year in 1980’s money. It was a path for those who decided that college was not for them.
I say all this to make the point that Sears was a REALLY big deal. Losing Sears would be like losing Walmart or Ford. Today, in 2025, Sears still exists in a severely diminished form under the management of Transformco, the private real estate firm headed by once-hedge fund wiz Eddie Lampert. There are eight full line stores (the only stores left, where Sears once had Sears Grand (Walmart), Sears Essentials (Kmart with higher prices), Sears Auto Centers, Sears Hometown Stores (ACE Hardware) and Sears Outlet) still operational, despite the fact that the corporate office has been gutted and merchandise is hard to source, owing to the burning of bridges with vendors during the 2018 bankruptcy of Transformco’s predecessor, Sears Holdings Corporation. As I wrote about here, the stores are very likely just being run to satisfy real estate obligations.
If you ask around however (I have), the surprising thing is that almost nobody cares that Sears is disappearing. The company that once was a part of the very fabric of America, is dying a slow, painful death with almost nobody there to see it.
As written in in 2014, four years before bankruptcy, “As a retailer or a restaurant chain, if you’re not at the really high level or the low level, that’s a tough place to be,” John G. Maxwell, head of the global retail and consumer practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers told The New York Times in February. “You don’t want to be stuck in the middle.”
Sears famously positioned itself squarely in the middle, with internal documents noting that the company is not trying to be hip, it is not trying to be Avant-guard, it is a representation of the middle class. It lacks the chaos and drama of Walmart and the trend-setting of Target. Nobody will mistake Sears for Forever 21 (which in and of itself has gone under).
wrote in 2020, during the depths of the pandemic which likely killed the last chances that Sears had to reinvent itself, that, “With no viable exit-strategy, both Sears and Kmart are slowly, quietly dying. They’re closing stores where possible and listing virtually all of other locations with commercial real estate brokers.”
The former entrance of Sears at center in the Westminster Mall in Westminster, California shown in 2023. Sears’ Homart division built the mall along with at least 24 others.
On a more personal note, since falling down the Sears rabbit hole in 2023, which started when I tried to find out why they are still operating stores (it remains an official mystery since Transformco will not comment), I have noted that many people I talk to wonder why I would choose to write about Sears. They find the store old, stale, and even haunting. Even as they remember the good times, they don’t have strong opinions about the place, other than it was bland and the styles were behind the times. This speaks to the internal culture of Sears. I know if Target went away (and many are angry with them right now) there would be some emotion attached to that loss. We certainly see that with Toys R’ Us. But Sears? Yawn. I read comments from a former employee once who said Sears had a chip on their shoulder in the corporate office, that vendors should be happy they get in the building, that customers should appreciate the company with it’s history and reach and be grateful for Sears. That might have been the case at one point, but it also shows a lack of hunger and appreciation for business. Jeff Bezos famously obsesses over the customer experience, managing every aspect of Amazon’s customer-facing interactions. Ultimately, the leaders of Sears, from Alan Lacy to Edward Lampert, failed the brand, it’s employees and it’s legacy by committing the most significant of retail sins — they forgot the customer and now the customer is all too happy to forget Sears.
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