Retailers you won't miss

The future of 'Zombie' RadioShack

Excerpt:

Unfortunately for everyone involved, RadioShack has entered a sort of undead ‘zombie’ retailer state. The company is being run for cash flow and liquidity. That means there are unlikely to be many grand remodels completed or revamps in the works. The stores will still be there, at least for now. Some chains such as CompUSA seem to disappear overnight, but at least for now the people calling the shots at RadioShack seem to think it’s more expensive to close the stores and get out of the leases than to let them run as is.

At Sears, 'closing stores is going to be part of our future'

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Speaking at this year's annual shareholders meeting in Hoffman Estates, Sears Holdings Corp. Chairman and CEO Edward Lampert today said the retailer would close stores and look for ways to leverage its real estate while sticking to its focus on integrated retail and its Shop Your Way program. "Closing stores is going to be part of our future," he said. "I'd rather do (fewer closures) rather than more, but the world has shifted." He outlined a vision of Sears' stores five years from now that will be physically smaller and sell both Sears merchandise and goods from third-party retailers, much the way the company's online Marketplace currently sells 120 million products, the vast majority of which are not Sears' own merchandise. "We want to be a partnership company," he said. "Sometimes we're going to be the big dog and sometimes we're going to be a (smaller) piece of a solution." Sears has closed about 500 stores since 2005 — 305 of them since 2010 — but Mr. Lampert said he could not estimate how many more will shutter. He did say that whereas he previously would have kept a marginally performing store open in the hopes of improving it, industry changes and the shift to online means that today "the decision more often than not is to not renew the lease." "We think you don't need 2,000 stores to be relevant in the United States," he said. Currently there are 1,152 Kmart stores and 778 full-line Sears stores.

Is it time to close Kmart?

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Kmart used to fill an important role for budget-conscious shoppers. But those customers have many more places now that can meet their needs. Dollar stores sell groceries and household necessities. Wal-Mart has a bigger selection than Kmart, often at lower prices. In fact, the Journal cited data showing Kmart's prices were higher than Wal-Mart's and Target's in five out of six items it checked at all stores. Granted, that's a pretty small sample. But if that holds true and Kmart isn't necessarily cheaper than competitors, then what is Kmart's reason for existing?

Sears vs. J.C. Penney: which is worse?

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... if you gave me $1,000 in free money with the express condition it be invested in either Sears or J.C. Penney stock, I’d have to come down on the side of J.C. Penney. That’s for one simple reason: Penney is reducing costs and trying to reinvent itself out of necessity, while Sears started the process of bone-deep cuts long ago... with seemingly no intention of ever stopping. Given the choice between a struggling company that is trying to improve and a company that doesn’t care about long-term strategy as long as it makes this quarter’s numbers, I’ll take the former.

My comments (I don't shop so consider that)

• My wife shops at none of the above but did buy some drapes from J C Penney about 4 years ago.
• My young adult children (29, 32, and 34) would not visit any of the above. I sense that the above have lost young people.
• My wife never goes to "the Mall".
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