Sears Holdings Announces More Store Closures

Sears Holdings Corp. announced late last week that it will be closing an additional 63 stores early in 2018. The parent company of Sears and Kmart has already closed more than 350 stores this year. An additional 45 Kmart stores and 18 Sears stores will be closing in late January 2018, the company said. The 63 stores will remain open during the holiday season and employees at the stores targeted for closure will get severance pay and an opportunity to apply for other jobs within the retail chains.

Total Retail's Take: The viability of Sears Holdings going forward may well depend on the retailer's ability to sell off a large chunk of its extensive real estate portfolio (a strong holiday season wouldn't hurt its cause, either, but that may be too little too late). Sears Holdings has taken the first step of identifying its most unprofitable store locations and targeting them for closure. Next is seeing if they can sell those large commercial buildings in exchange for a much-needed cash infusion. Without doing so, one has to question how long the iconic retail brand can continue to operate. At some point CEO Eddie Lampert is going to stop throwing good money at a bad situation, isn't he?