Months after Sears and Kmart parent company TransformCo emerged from bankruptcy following thousands of store closures, an additional 26 locations are on the chopping block.
The company announced Tuesday that 21 Sears and five Kmart stores will shut their doors in late October, a "difficult but necessary decision" due to an inability to return stores to sustainable levels of productivity. Sears Auto Centers at many of the stores will close in late August.
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"After careful review of where we are today, we believe the right course for the company is to accelerate the expansion of our smaller store formats which includes opening additional Home & Life stores and adding several hundred Sears Hometown stores after the Sears Hometown and Outlet transaction closes," according to the company statement.
Edward Lampert, Sears Holdings' largest shareholder, stepped down as CEO in October 2018. According to AJC reporter Matt Kempner, "Sears lost focus with attempts to diversify, found itself overextended when suburban malls faltered and lost ground to stores such as Walmart. Like many other traditional retailers, it struggled to compete online against more nimble rivals. And its brand and image became fuzzy."
The company emerged from bankruptcy earlier this year when Lampert secured a roughly $5 billion deal and bought the retailer's assets out of court, renaming the new private entity TransformCo.
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Liquidation sales for 2019 are expected to begin around Aug. 15. Eligible associates “will be offered the same number of weeks of severance as offered to employees of Sears Holdings Corporation prior to that company’s Chapter 11 filing in October 2018,” according to the company.
It’s unclear how many employees will be impacted by this new round of closures—and the company isn’t ruling out the possibility of shutting down even more stores in the near future.
Only one Georgia store, a Sears location in Athens, is affected in the upcoming closures. The majority of Sears and Kmart stores across Georgia (where it once reportedly considered moving its headquarters) closed in 2018.
New store closings:
Alabama
Birmingham: 2500 Riverchase Galleria (Sears)
California
Antioch: Somersville Road (Sears)
Redlands: 1625 W Redlands (Kmart)
Desert Hot Springs: 14011 Palm Drive (Kmart)
Colorado
Littleton: 8501 W Bowles Ave. (Sears)
Florida
Vero Beach: 6200 20th St. (Sears)
Sebring: 901 US 27 N (Sears)
Georgia
Athens: 3700 Atlanta Hwy Ste 270 (Sears)
Illinois
Bloomingdale: 5 Stratford Square (Sears)
Indiana
Merrillville: 2300 Southlake Mall(Sears)
Mishawaka: 6501 Grape Rd Us 23 (Sears)
Maryland
Baltimore: 6901 Security Sq Blvd. (Sears)
Massachusetts
Palmer: 159 Wilbraham Road (Kmart)
Michigan
Portage: 6780 S Westnedge Ave. (Sears)
Saginaw: 4900 Fashion Square Mall (Sears)
Missouri
Independence: 18777 E 39th St. (Sears)
St. Peters: 3 Mid Rivers Mall Drive (Sears)
Cape Girardeau: 330 Siemers Drive (Sears)
New York
Jamestown: 975 Fairmount Ave. (Kmart)
Ohio
Mansfield: 600 Richland Mall (Sears)
Puerto Rico
Guayama: Puerto Rico Hwy 3 Plaza Guayama (Kmart)
Cape Girardeau: 330 Siemers Drive
Texas
Hurst: 1101 Melbourne Rd. (Sears)
Texas City:10000 Emmett F Lowry Expressway (Sears)
Virginia
Roanoke: 4812 Valley View Blvd. NE (Sears)
Washington
Spokane: 4700 N Division St. (Sears)
West Virginia
Barboursville: 100 Huntington Mall Road (Sears)
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