10 brands that won't be around in 2012 from MSNBC article

[tomturbomatic]

This is from an MSNBC article about 10 brands that will not survive 2012. Not sure if this goes here, but Sears is Kenmore related and Kenmore is an appliance brand. If it needs to be moved, I am sorry for placing it here, but plead total ignorance. Tom

5. Sears
The parent of Sears and Kmart — Sears Holdings — is in a lot of trouble. Total revenue dropped $341 million to $9.7 billion for the quarter which closed April 30, 2011. The company had a net loss of $170 million. Sears Holdings was created by a merger of the parents of the two chains on March 24, 2005. The operation has been a disaster ever since. The company has tried to run 4,000 stores which operate across the US and Canada. Neither Sears nor Kmart have done well recently, but Sears' domestic locations same store numbers were off 5.2 percent in the first quarter and Kmart’s were down 1.6 percent. Last year domestic comparable store sales declined 1.6 percent in the total, with an increase at Kmart of .7 percent and a decline at Sears Domestic of 3.6 percent. New CEO Lou D'Ambrosio recently said of the last quarter that, “we also fell short on executing with excellence. We cannot control the weather or economy or government spending. But we can control how we execute and leverage the potent set of assets we have.” D'Ambrosio needs to pull a rabbit out of his hat soon. Sharex are down 55 percent during the last five years. D'Ambrosio only reasonable solution to the firm’s financial problems is to stop supporting two brands which compete with one another and larger rivals such as Walmart and Target. The cost to market two brands and maintain stores which overlap one another geographically must be in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Employee and supply chain costs are also gigantic. The path D'Ambrosio is likely to take is to consolidate two brand into one — keeping the better performing Kmart and shuttering Sears.

 

[joeekaitis]

"Lowe's and Kenmore: America's Number One Appliance Brand Has a New Home."

Hey, it's one possibility, given their Whirlpool-heavy appliance selection.

 

[franksdad]

I read this on Yahoo! this morning

I sure would hate to see Sears go.  Already our local K-mart stores are beginning to stock a very limited supply of Kenmore appliances.  Hmmmmm.

 

[dirtybuck]

I need to send some pics from my camera phone to my email that I took when I saw this item. I was walking by washers and dryers on Monday and was totally surprised (if not SHOCKED) to see a new "vintage" brand of washer being displayed.

The brand was...HOTPOINT!

 

[launderess]

K-Sears Is In Big Trouble

Many Sears stores are located in huge shopping malls, and traffic to those areas has been dropping for years.

Their website is a mess which turns online customers off. If it wasn't bad enough now one must create an account and log in just to look around.

As for major appliances that market is no longer what it once was. All brick and mortar dealers of white goods are being squeezed by online sales. At least Lowes and Home Depot tend to have stores where the customers are,and that has helped *some* but with the current housing/construction bust mostly everyone is in the same boat.

Sears Holding does have some bright spots. LandsEnd's website and goods are great. While Sears Parts Direct service is still a good source the webside suffers from the same overall problems as Sears.com in general. Sear's appliance service OTHO has drawn nearly universal scorn these days. How a once great proudct could have been driven into the ground is beyond me, however if just a fraction of the stories posted online and or reported in the media are true....

 

[whirlcool]

And SAAB is another company that may be going away as well as Borders (already on life support), Blockbuster, Dollar/Thrift rent a car, Radio Shack, Readers Digest(!), Zales Jewlers, and Kia.

Readers Digest is still doing very well overseas, as well as their records division does too. They may just drop the brand name here in the U.S. and the magazine as well but continue overseas.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Growing up, I loved Readers Digestion and their condensed books. My brother bought the big Swing Years set of records. Then as I got older and realized who I was and what the publishers of RD stood for, I stopped reading it. It had many educational and amusing features, but I did not want to support another right-wing entity, like Amway, that was using my money to make it rain for people who were against me.

 

[cleanteamofny]

Blockbuster is busted!

But was Dished Out.....

 

[cleanteamofny]

Rereading the article, if we look back and see that Kmart brought Sears out.
So why have they not consolidated the stores and reduce waste?
Wouldn't it make sense to makes Sears specialize only in small and large appliance/Auto stores and Kmart just for clothing and home furnishing?
This should have been done when they aquired each other and the only thing that may save them is to phase out the stores and push to sell online only otherwise they are doomed!

 

[danmantn]

You can now buy select Craftsman tools at Ace hardware. Go figure. I went to our "super kmart" recently...was always a tip top store...always a nicer kmart than the avg one...anyway, its now a glorified,over priced Big Lots.

 

[limitededition]

Sears K mart

Sears and K mart own a lot of their own buildings that is one of the reasons they have not combined, they would flood the market with all that excess retail space. When Sears and K mart merged the real estate was worth more than the two businesses it was speculated at that time they would sell the stores and abandon the businesses, that is how they made money and the stock rose during the first years of combined operation.

 

[frigilux]

Why couldn't they just contract with dealerships to sell Kenmore appliances in the same way Maytag, Whirlpool, GE, etc., do? I think Kenmore has a lot of great machines on offer, and at least one model of all their major appliances is usually at or near the top of Consumer Reports' ratings. I'd love to be able to purchase Kenmore appliances at the same dealer who sells Maytag and Frigidaire locally.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

K Mart & Sears are still such a habit w/ most shoppers...

Still hard-to-believe that either of these "brands" would ever go, even given the fact they're destined to outlive the majority of their business...!

-- Dave

 

[sudsmaster]

"We also fell short on executing with excellence. "

Sorry, but excellence is the last word I'd use to describe my local K-mart. It is poorly stocked, what it does have is generally crap, and for some reason the checkout lines are always malodorous. Don't know and don't care if it's the checkers or the customers. But the place literally stinks.

However it's been selling Craftsman tools for some time, albeit a limited selection. But I stopped buying Craftsman tools years ago.

OSH also sells Craftsman tools. But Kmart has managed to monkey with their hardware product selection to the point where I often look elsewhere for hardware stuff.

I have mixed feelings about Sears appliances. Some are good, and I like the chest freezer and microwave I got there. But I've heard horror stories about their delivery service. Even when I picked up a discounted dishwasher myself, their staff managed to drop it on its edge, denting it in, but never told me about it. I discovered it after I got it home, too late to do anything about it. I had heard a crash when I was waiting for them to bring it to the loading dock, but couldn't believe they'd be that clumsy. I was wrong! I manage to pound out the dent by hand and it's worked fine every since, but the memory still rankles me.

If I were to buy a major appliance today it would probably be from Costco or a local retailer.

 

[westie2]

Guess we are lucky to have here a Home Town Sears that carries the appliances, yard tools, craftsman tools, bedding and TV's. They have on display about 30 dishwashers and about 40 washers and dryers. Also carry many MW's and ranges. All of the different brands too. Our closest big Sears is 27 miles away and we get there maybe once a month. As for Kmart it is the only one left in our area and was the samllest of the 4 we did have. The nicest Super K was great and had eveything but WalMart built their new Supercenter across from it and it replaced the older WalMart as Store 1. My town has Store 4. My wife works close to the remaining Kart and it has its bad days and good days.

We are long time Kmart/Sears and older stores. We've seen Gaylord, Treasure City, Globe, Zayre all go along with Wards. Sears to me is the last out and out what I call Mainline Department Store that carries everything. If we loose Sears history is gone.

 

[whirlcool]

OMG, I haven't heard anyone bring up Zayre in a long, long time. I did not like their stores. They just seemed like an overgrown rummage sale. I even found their overuse of yellow and red in their store designs nauseating.

Now I was shocked when Venture went under. Here in Houston their stores were opened for less than a year before they folded.

 

[cornutt]

I'll concur with the opinions about Kmart. There used to be four here. About seven years ago they closed all but one of them. The one they kept open was the oldest, smallest, and most run-down. The last time I was in there, they had stuff just piled up everywhere. The parking lot looks like it hasn't been repaved since the Civil War, and only about half of the parking lot lights work. I agree that their competition is no longer Penney's, Target, or even Wal-Mart; it's the likes of Big Lots.

 

[dirtybuck]

I worked for K Mart in El Paso from Nov. of '93 until March of '07. Our store was always busy. Even then, people were coming in and buying merchandise and kept telling us how much lower the price was on the same item at Walmart. Because of this, we did price matching. I don't think K Mart does that anymore.

We have 3 K Mart's here in Springfield, and the best word to describe them is dismal. How they remain open is beyond me. Their prices are jacked up, there's hardly any sales associates to help customers with items or questions and when you can find one, the lot of them are rude and unfriendly.

I also remember (I believe it was either in the late '80's or early '90's) when
Sears told everyone they were going to be on a more competitive level with K Mart and Walmart price wise. I'm still waiting for that day to appear.

(Whirlcool, the K Mart that I go to on occasion used to be a Venture about 10 or so years ago)

 

[petek]

Kmart got out of Canada 15 or so years ago around the time WalMart came in and bought out competing Woolco. Can't say as I miss them, there stores were always messy, same as Woolco. WalMart came in tidied things up and their stores are always spotless, neat and orderly

Sears Canada, I haven't figured out how they've managed to stay in business PLUS keep all those catalogs going. The stores are neat and tidy but there aren't many customers in there. At least none I've been in. And they're expensive in comparison to other stores.

 

[goatfarmer]

I worked for KMart in the 80's in the Auto Service. Decent place to work, but you only got 40 hrs if you were fulltime, no more. If it was the middle of your shift, and you reached 40 hrs, you were to punch out, and go home, they did not like overtime of any sort.

 

[arbilab]

Last Kmart I was in (Austin TX), the inventory was incomplete and in constant disarray. Sizes and styles missing or mixed, where it was often impossible to find what you wanted. And chronically so. Virtually zero customer service.

That store, and all but one in Austin, closed in 1995.

I can't even remember the last time I was in a Sears. My first fulltime job was with Montgomery Wards, TV repairman in 1965. You probably know what happened to both that outlet and that 'career'.

Wonder is, that these iconic corporate models can and do fail, and even the last hangers-on don't seem to get it until the lights go out. Like Westinghouse, the company that invented electricity as it's used worldwide, went completely out of business in 1997. You can still license the name but there's no such thing as the brand. Same with RCA, Zenith, Maytag just to name 3. Brave new world.

 

[whirlcool]

K-Mart doesn't have any presence in the Houston area anymore, they closed all the stores. Sears isn't really a major player in the retail game here either. They have 10 locations. Two of those are Sears Hardware, two are Sears Hometown Dealer – Sears Home Appliance Showroom, and one is a very small and very old store. And two of the stores are in bad neighborhoods. Not a very big showing for the nations 4th largest city.

 

[arbilab]

From what a relative told me about Houston, EVERY neighborhood is a bad neighborhood. He lived in a sprawling $M ranch home but would not go outside after dark. Like Detroit with a much higher dewpoint.

 

[philr]

Sears opened a store in my hometown just a few years ago. Kmart closed a few years before in the same shopping mall and the one in my hometown (and many others) was replaced by a Zellers (owned by the Sears competitor here, The Bay).
The Bay has bought Kmart in Canada in the late nineties, closed some Kmart stores and renamed the others. Zellers got many ads on TV back then, there was one (in French) that I really liked because it featured one of my favorite appliances, a 1962 Frigidaire refrigerator!

 

[kqkenmore]

I am done with Kenmore I have a 900.00 dishwasher and it is crap it does not work now. Also because of this recent news I will only put a one year protection agreement on any thing from Sears. The one remaining K-Mart that is here sucks looks like a ghost town and  the staff is rude.I like the detergent I hope that it does not go away.

 

[tomturbomatic]

It seems strange that the Kenmore brand would exist without Sears. It was Sears' national coverage along with their service and credit that made Kenmore such a univeral (and very vanilla) brand. Their service is for shit now. Kenmore is not the only brand they sell now and you no longer see Whirlpool as more expensive than Kenmore like it used to be. So if Kenmore died with Sears, parent manufacturing company & widely known brand Whirlpool would continue, probably much as before. Gone are the days when big department stores held sway over the buying choices in cities and towns. Gone is the day when the local department store backed up their sales with their service fleet who could be depended on to provide good service. Big Box and appliance only stores account for a huge portion of the sales of appliances. Sears pioneered catalog sales, but the internet has replaced the catalog. Department stores where you could find almost anything are mostly gone. Sears owns a lot of real estate, much of it in undesireable locations. They are in their death throes.

 

[launderess]

Whomever Thought Up Sears Credit Out To Have Been Shot

Interest rates that *start* in the low twenties and go up to nearly 30% APR, you can get money from men whose names end in vowels in dark social clubs for less interest! *LOL*

Yet persons who purchase major appliances on Sears credit and or run up a balance seem not to care if only making the required minimum or just above will have paid more in interest than probably what the thing cost.

I only use my Sears card when I know I can pay the bill in full when it comes.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I remember signs for something called a "Revolving Charge" at Sears, but never bothered to find out what it meant. Before the days of credit cards existing and being offered in the mail, the ready availability of credit at Sears helped lots of people afford purchases when they simply did not have large amounts of money.

 

[cornutt]

Revolving charge

Tom, it was basically a credit card without the actual card. You could open an account with Sears and arranged to have certain items that you bought charged to your account. You had a monthly balance and you paid on it like a credit card account. IIRC only certain items in the store were eligible to be charged -- you couldn't charge clothing, for example.

There used to be finance companies that offered lines of credit to homeowners that worked sort of like credit cards. Household Finance Corp. (HFC) was a well known one in the Southeast. As I understood the process, you arranged with them to use your line of credit to purchase, say, an appliance. You went to the store and bought the item, and somehow it got charged to the finance company -- I'm not quite sure how that part worked. Then you made payments on the line of credit.

 

[tomturbomatic]

David, thanks. It made big ticket items affordable.