Into The Belly of a Retail Beast
Urban explorer documents darkened remains of former retail giant’s headquarters
Amid the sound of crunching leaves in the near pitch black, urban explorer Nemf looked like he was walking through a dark, dense forest of ficus trees. In reality, he was deep inside the massive and iconic atrium of Transformco’s former headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Transform is the successor to a much better-known company that used the same building, Sears Holdings, as an operator of Sears and Kmart.
Both of these companies were once dominant in their areas of business, and thus, such a massive campus was needed. I covered the history of the HQ here in a past article. Suffice it to say, it was the nerve center of a massive retail company that had started its long, tortured descent into irrelevance even before the Hoffman Estates, Illinois complex was built.
The first striking thing about Nemf’s clandestine mission is just how much high-quality stuff was left behind. Most Urbex videos and there are literally thousands of them, show time-worn places filled with mold, rotten books, and other detritus. Not so at Transformco HQ; aside from the darkness and leaves, it looks like the staff left yesterday. Things are disordered, like they went quickly, but the condition is remarkable. Nameplates are still on the cubicles, and memos and charts are posted throughout. There is a box filled with Sears-branded water bottles. As my wife pointed out, perhaps nobody was left to clean up the place.
It is fairly well known within the Transform Watcher community (yes, there truly is a community for everything online) that what remains of the staff, about 80 people reportedly, work remotely. This started when the pandemic began and has never stopped. While thousands of people were once devoted to physical retail, there is now only a handful, it is said, and it’s more of a lease-holding side project than anything. There were lots and lots of layoffs. With only nine full-line Sears locations left and even fewer Kmarts, it’s no surprise that such a massive edifice like Hoffman isn’t needed.
And so it is, as documented in the video, the former bustling headquarters sits in the dark, a sad memorial to the founding work of Sears and Roebuck, alone and quiet. It would have been nice to see it in the light, but this will have to do. In a final indignity to the efforts of legions of MBAs who struggled (amid the leadership of what many consider to be one of the most self-serving CEOs in modern history, Eddie Lampert) to save the company, the campus is being torn down to make room for a data center of all things. In other words, more Amazon (perhaps) and less Sears. Transformco is primarily a real estate company now that also operates Sears Home Services, which is doing better than the stores have recently done.
You can view the video . It’s about 50 minutes long and features visits to the on-campus Sears store, the cafeteria, the iconic atrium, IT spaces, and cubicle farms.
Read my full series on Sears and Kmart:
The Good Life Isn’t Here Anymore
Stepping Into A Retail Time Machine
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