22 Retailers Closing Stores

Standingstones

Celestial
This has been coming for long time. When they sold the Craftsman line I knew it was almost over. There are/were two Sears stores in our area. One store shut their doors and the other store has been limping along.

Big box stores and department stores are on their way out. K-Mart, H H Gregg, Sears and BonTon are no longer around anymore. You can throw Penneys in the mix as well. Bye-bye!

It’s too bad these places couldn’t get their act together. I hate going to our local Walmart store. The employees and management don’t care about the customers, despite what Walmart may say. I’ve had too many unpleasant experiences there.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Our local Sears has survived reasonably well so far but I can't help but hold my breath to see if it'll survive the next round. I still buy Craftsman tools but am fairly well saturated after 30+ years. Their lawn equipment is basically exactly what they sell at Home Depot and Lowes rebranded as Craftsman - but if you're careful you can still find better deals at Sears. The Kenmore line has declined in quality noticeably and I had to walk away from that. Kohl's ate their lunch with clothing. Been going to Sears Optical for years and it's hard to find anything better around here - they're great. Crap. If they go out it wasn't because I wasn't doing my part.

As for the megamall they're attached to, those can all get bulldozed IMO. When you really look at what populates them there's a whole lot of very little and I wonder how some stores even manage to pay the rent. I avoid Walmart like the Plague but even at that still wind up there occasionally out of necessity.
 

The shadow

The shadow knows!
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the 1993 wish book. it had 300 pages. it was the last true wish book. between 93 and 07 sears did a toys only book. by 2011 all wish book activity was gone. in 2017 they tried to bring it back as an moble app. without a dedicated online ordering system it failed.

searswishbook.jpeg
 

The shadow

The shadow knows!
How Sears could have lived.
1. faced with low prices big box stores they could have reinvented the store as a low price retailer. meet or beat any price.
2. get rid of the old fashioned image. make sears a hip and desirable destination. Give today's teen a reason to go there.
3. create a major online presence. The main reason Amazon flourished is no real competitors. if sears had created an alternative to Amazon early on things my have been different.
4. invest in brands. Craftsman, Kenmore and lands end sank like the Titanc. Maytag made the whole "lonely repairman" out of issues with Kenmore.
Die hard battery vanished. only craftsman seemed untouched.
Sears ignored the winds of change a d paid a price.
 

coubob

Celestial
Hobby Lobby Plans to Buy Shuttered Oklahoma College Campus
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Hobby Lobby plans to purchase the shuttered campus of what was the only Roman Catholic university in Oklahoma.

Documents filed Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Oklahoma City show the arts and crafts chain has agreed to buy the St. Gregory's University campus for $8 million.

St. Gregory's was established in 1875 and closed last year over financial problems. The campus in Shawnee went up for sale April 17. Documents say the sale is expected to close in December, but they don't outline plans for the property.

The Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

St. Gregory's traces its roots to the Sacred Heart Mission,[3] founded in Atoka, Oklahoma on October 12, 1875 by the Benedictine monks Father Isidore Robot, O.S.B., and Brother Dominic Lambert, O.S.B. In 1876, the mission relocated near Konawa, Oklahoma and became an abbey. Sacred Heart College was founded with the permission of the Vatican in 1877 and later gained approval from the territorial government in 1883. After a disastrous fire in 1901 that destroyed the school and the monastery, the monks accepted an offer from the town of Shawnee and began construction of the Catholic University of Oklahoma and St. Gregory's Abbey in 1910. The school opened its doors in 1915, and in 1922 the name was changed to St. Gregory's College. The monks jointly operated a high school for boys at the location until 1965. In 1927, the abbey moved from Konawa to Shawnee. The school was known as St. Gregory's College until 1997, when it changed from a junior college to a baccalaureate-conferring university. In 2005 St. Gregory's was accredited to offer a graduate program in business and began offering classes in March 2006.[4]

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The Abbey

The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art is an independent non-profit art museum.(its where i seen a full apparition ghost and shook his hand) It is located on the campus of St. Greogry's University, but operated separately. Its collection includes ancient Egyptian, medieval, Renaissance, and Hudson River School art. The museum was founded in 1914 by Rev. Gregory Gerrer, OSB. In 1919 the museum was located in Benedictine Hall. The current museum building opened in 1979.[8]
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Went to Sears the other day. Optical Dept was fine and did exactly what I needed.

Wandered over to the tool section and wanted an 18" breaker bar in 1/2" drive. Not in stock but several shorter ones were. Poor casting and worse polish - I don't expect these things to be Snap On but these looked very bad and were made in China. My old 'Made is USA' ones still work fine and look 200% better even after decades of use. All steel too, no plastic bits like the new ones have.

So I tried this morning to order that damned breaker bar on their website. $31, marked down to $27 delivered. I would have picked it up at the store next week. PayPal link wasn't working right, 'internal server error' , blah blah blah. If you give them a credit card they keep it - which I don't like. Gave up after 4 attempts.

Despite the quality concerns I still wanted a Craftsman tool to appease my OCD. Ordered it through Amazon this morning in about two seconds. $20 done deal, delivered tomorrow to my home.

Crap like this is one of the reasons why Sears is tanking. Keep up or you fall behind and are trampled.
 

coubob

Celestial
Went to Sears the other day. Optical Dept was fine and did exactly what I needed.

Wandered over to the tool section and wanted an 18" breaker bar in 1/2" drive. Not in stock but several shorter ones were. Poor casting and worse polish - I don't expect these things to be Snap On but these looked very bad and were made in China. My old 'Made is USA' ones still work fine and look 200% better even after decades of use. All steel too, no plastic bits like the new ones have.

So I tried this morning to order that damned breaker bar on their website. $31, marked down to $27 delivered. I would have picked it up at the store next week. PayPal link wasn't working right, 'internal server error' , blah blah blah. If you give them a credit card they keep it - which I don't like. Gave up after 4 attempts.

Despite the quality concerns I still wanted a Craftsman tool to appease my OCD. Ordered it through Amazon this morning in about two seconds. $20 done deal, delivered tomorrow to my home.

Crap like this is one of the reasons why Sears is tanking. Keep up or you fall behind and are trampled.
30 years ago i had a 66 vw bug that i blew the motor in. so i turned it into a baja and put a type 3 pancake motor in it with a few high performance pieces but during all that i broke 3 of them 18" breaker bars in 1/2" drive that had a KAL 36M socket taken the flywheel of that damn motor, the dude at sears was bewildered and said no more (free exchanges if it breaks) after the 3rd one, luckily it did the job. 250lb`s of torque.
 

The shadow

The shadow knows!
my younger daughter came home with bad news. the KFC she works at will close Jan 15th. they cited slumping sales and competition from popeyes
 

Sheltie

Fratty and out of touch.
I worked at the Circuit City headquarters for almost 8 years. In the 1980's Circuit City was one of the best performing stocks in the market. By the 1990's upper management had lost interest in the core consumer electronics business and become more interested in creating Carmax. They ignored all the signs and were unprepared when Walmart, Best Buy, and the internet arrived.

Retailers have to constantly stay on top of all the trends if they want to survive.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
30 years ago i had a 66 vw bug that i blew the motor in. so i turned it into a baja and put a type 3 pancake motor in it with a few high performance pieces but during all that i broke 3 of them 18" breaker bars in 1/2" drive that had a KAL 36M socket taken the flywheel of that damn motor, the dude at sears was bewildered and said no more (free exchanges if it breaks) after the 3rd one, luckily it did the job. 250lb`s of torque.

Cool but it sounded like you needed a 3/4" drive - or go to Sears during a different shift when that guy wasn't working :)
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I worked at the Circuit City headquarters for almost 8 years. In the 1980's Circuit City was one of the best performing stocks in the market. By the 1990's upper management had lost interest in the core consumer electronics business and become more interested in creating Carmax. They ignored all the signs and were unprepared when Walmart, Best Buy, and the internet arrived.

Retailers have to constantly stay on top of all the trends if they want to survive.

I've been romancing my local Home Depot quite a bit lately and can say they do seem to be on their game. Their app actually floored me. It uses the camera to take a look at whatever you want - not the bar code but the actual object itself. Takes it a bit to mull it over but you can see it in progress and then it tells you what store, what aisle, what bay and how much in a blink. Maybe I'm late to the party but it's impressive and handy as hell sometimes.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Other stores have concerns about Sears going out of business...

Mall owners want to bar Sears from hanging 'going out of business' signs outside closing stores as the industry weathers a crisis
  • A group of Sears' landlords laid out in a court filing a set of requests for the retailer's upcoming store closures, asking the bankruptcy court to limit the size, wording, and style of the stores' liquidation sale signs.
  • "A store closing sale or liquidation detrimentally impacts the Centers, as well as the surrounding individual tenants," the mall owners said in the court document filed on Monday.
  • Sears is closing 142 stores before the end of the year. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on October 15.
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Standingstones

Celestial
I've been romancing my local Home Depot quite a bit lately and can say they do seem to be on their game. Their app actually floored me. It uses the camera to take a look at whatever you want - not the bar code but the actual object itself. Takes it a bit to mull it over but you can see it in progress and then it tells you what store, what aisle, what bay and how much in a blink. Maybe I'm late to the party but it's impressive and handy as hell sometimes.
My wife and I went to Home Depot looking for a Bagster as we were cleaning out our washroom filled with clutter. We asked where the Bagster was located. We were sent to 5 different locations and basically crossed the entire store until we finally blundered across it. My wife was PO’d and vowed not to return to Home Depot again.
 

The shadow

The shadow knows!
So, she's quitting? She's not getting laid off?
She jumping ship The store is closing
no one seemed to care so she bailed on them. she gave her 2 weeks today. But I'm sure she can go work for the popeye's across the street.
 
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