Sears, Kmart closings show priority shift
Sears and Kmart are joining a club with an illustrious membership.
It’s the ranks of businesses that felt like bedrock but are washing away under our feet.
Last week, Sears Holdings Corp. announced another long list of closings across the country.
Of those, 13 are in Pennsylvania, and three are Kmarts in the Greater Pittsburgh area: New Kensington, Pleasant Hills and Shaler.
Sears and Kmart became Sears Holdings in 2004, part of an $11 billion deal with the discount big box store absorbing the legacy catalog and mall anchor store giant.
The company has now filed for bankruptcy.
If this feels familiar, it’s because we have been over this ground before.
We have become accustomed to the giant white elephants of retail dying by inches, leaving behind their bones surrounded by parking spots.
While there are few Sears and Kmart stores left, we stood vigil while others traveled this road, and not just the recent casualties like Toys ‘R Us and Circuit City.
We laid to rest Hills and Ames, Gimbels and Kaufmann’s.
There are plenty of reasons.
Progress and change have consequences.
Is there room for Kmart in a world where Walmart and Target carve up the marketplace and shopping malls become ghost towns?
Sears built the mail-order business, and Amazon has become its next evolution.
But we have to take responsibility for our part in the demise, too.
We have to own that, as consumers, we gravitate toward cheap and convenient on one hand and trendy on the other.
Sears was known for stability, like the Craftsman tools guaranteed for a lifetime and boys’ pants that were sturdy enough to be hand-medowns for a whole generation of roughand-tumble bike riders.
Today, we buy what will do for now, expecting to replace it.
The internet has made convenience as close as the front porch rather than the corner store, and we have embraced two-day shipping with breathless ease. We aren’t wrong for it. We have just made a choice about our priorities, and the price of that choice is a series of long, slow goodbyes to the stores that were cornerstones for communities.
We have to own that, as consumers, we gravitate toward cheap and convenient on one hand and trendy on the other ... we buy what will do for now, expecting to replace it.