Theses Are The Only 26 Sears Stories Left In America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Dec 6, 1:37PM EST · Published Nov 26, 9:43AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Theses Are The Only 26 Sears Stories Left In America — © Caldorwards4 / Wikimedia Commons

Sears was founded in 1892. At that time it was known as Sears, Roebuck which included the names of its two founders. One of its earliest successes was in the mail order catalog business. However, over time it built so many stores that it was the largest retailer in America in the late 1980s.

Sears became part of a larger retailer in 2005 when it was essentially merged with KMart. It began a downhill slide shortly thereafter and filed for bankruptcy in 2018. At that point, only 223 Sears locations were left.

What happened to Sears? One theory is that it did not move into the big box, discount retailer business. That means it was overwhelmed by Walmart, Target, and Costco. It let its stores get old because management refused to invest in upgrades. Perhaps the most important reason was the Sears was battered by the tremendous move to e-commerce led by Amazon, which is now the second-largest company in America based on revenue–just behind Walmart.

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic closed a number of retail outlets temporarily. Retail companies needed strong balance sheets to make it through this storm. Sears did not have one. Sears had also lost the operating efficiencies that come with operating thousands of locations.

As the holidays start, the question has come up about whether Sears will completely disappear by early next year. To make it, holiday sales will have to be unusually brisk.

Brostocks recently ran an analysis of Sears’ propects. Its authors wrote that there were only 27 Sears stores still open as of November 30, and one was slated to be closed soon.

[nativounit]

This is the list of Sears remaining locations:

Alaska:
Anchorage

California:
Burbank
Concord
Stockton
Whittier

Colorado:
Fort Collins

Florida:
Fort Lauderdale
Miami – Coral Gables
Orlando
Palm Beach Gardens

Hawaii:
Honolulu

Kansas:
Overland Park

Louisiana:
Lafayette

Maryland:
Frederick

Massachusetts:
Braintree

New Jersey:
Jersey City

New York:
Newburgh

North Carolina::
Greensboro

Pennsylvania
Camp Hill
Willow Grove

Puerto Rico:
Naranjito
San Juan

Texas:
El Paso
Pharr

Washington:
Tukwila
Union Gap

Click here to read This Retailer Is Adding The Most People For The Holidays

[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.