{"id":2373,"date":"2025-03-31T14:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/?p=2373"},"modified":"2025-03-31T13:59:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T17:59:18","slug":"us-retail-decades-sears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/us-retail-decades-sears\/","title":{"rendered":"It Dominated US Retail for Decades \u2013 Now It\u2019s Hanging On by a Thread"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the United States’ (U.S) retailers, once a dominant force in the industry, is now down to only 8 stores. This retail chain<\/strong><\/a> is referred to as being iconic because it used to be one of America’s largest retailers. Two essential questions you may ask yourself are, who is this retailer, and what happened to it? Sears<\/strong> used to be one of America’s most prominent names in the retail industry and was founded in the late 1800s. Now, over the years the name has been fading, and other retailers are now on top.<\/p>\n

Powerhouse retailer, now overtaken by others<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Sears used to be a powerhouse retailer in America for decades, but now it only has 8 stores still operating. For decades it was the largest retailer in the United States, and it had 3,500 stores in operation. Now, the chain degraded at such a high rate, that there are only eight stores that fall under its operation. For people at a certain age, these 8 stores might be treasurable because of a time when Sears was one of the fan favourites. Others might not even know that there are only a few stores available. In addition, the cut to the eight stores occurred at the end of last year, 2024.<\/p>\n

U.S: The story behind Sears<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Sears was bought by another company called Kmart in 2005, for $11 billion. However, Kmart could not compete against the current top retailers of the U.S like Walmart and Amazon. It found it difficult to survive and it could not even think about thriving where it was, due to the heavy competition in the retail industry.\u00a0 Therefore, in 2018, Sears filed for bankruptcy and was then bought out of the bankruptcy in 2019. The company continued to struggle since then though, and after the store closures that occurred late last year, the retailer is just hanging on by a thread.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Kmart closed the doors of its last full-sized store in the continental U.S last year, in October 2024. However, there is one store remaining in Miami, but the location is not classified as a full-sized location. It was stated by the USA Today report that this “non full-sized” location also has a limited range of stock and products available in the store. The report also indicated that there was a time when Kmart had more than 2 000 locations situated around America, as it fought with Walmart for the position of the “giant retailer.”<\/p>\n

With all the difficulties and struggles that many businesses in the country, especially retailers are experiencing, there is no surprise that Sears and Kmart are scaling down. Not only is the competition very high, but other aspects like inflations and taxes should also be taken into consideration. Pressure that is placed on the retailers with the requirements from U.S government, also plays an important role.<\/p>\n

Locations where Sears in still operating<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As mentioned, there are only 8 Sears stores available, many may wonder where these remaining stores are located. Below is a list of the locations where the remaining stores can be found:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • There are three remaining Sears stores in California, this is in Burbank, Concord and in Whittier.<\/li>\n
  • Two more stores can be found in Florida in Orlando and Miami.<\/li>\n
  • There is another one in Braintree, Massachusetts.<\/li>\n
  • Another one of Sears stores can be found in El Paso, Texas and<\/li>\n
  • One retail store in San Juan, Puerto Rico.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    If you do find yourself at any of this location, feel welcome to visit the OG of retailers in the U.S. There is always just one feeling that you can experience from something that has been around the block for several years. In this case, Sears may be that thing that has much more experience and exposure in the industry, than the recent top retailers of the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    One of the United States’ (U.S) retailers, once a dominant force in the industry, is now down to only 8 stores. This retail chain is referred to as being iconic because it used to be one of America’s largest retailers. Two essential questions you may ask yourself are, who is this retailer, and what happened […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"hide","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"custom","post_date_format_custom":"m\/d\/Y H:i","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"no-crop","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-715"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}