Two Sears stores tell different stories
One shows run-down present, other debuts scaled-down future
The Sears stores in Niles and Oak Brook opened within two years of each other in the early 1960s. Both topped 200,000 square feet and anchored their respective malls, with grand openings attended by company executives.
Today, they bear only a passing resemblance, down to the different logos atop each store’s entrance.
The store at Oakbrook Center, where Sears held a fanfare-filled grand reopening earlier this month, has shrunk to 62,000 square feet, a sliver of its former footprint. Ongoing construction will carve up the rest of the building between a children’s entertainment concept and handful of other retailers.
But the rows of windows feel bright and open. There is a lounge by the entrance, with phone chargers for adult shoppers and a toy kitchen to entertain kids. And while the store packs a startling variety of products onto a single floor — mattresses, artificial Christmas trees and shoes are displayed within feet of each other — all were neatly arrayed on a recent weekday afternoon.
That wasn’t the case 20 miles north at the Sears in the Golf Mill Shopping Center in Niles, where shelves of jeans and handbags were jumbled and some items had slipped to the floor. The paint on the store’s monochrome brick outer walls was weathered, and the carpet and tile looked dated compared with Oakbrook Center’s scuff-free wood-style floor.
The scaled-down Oakbrook Center store may offer a window into the retailer’s plans for the future — if it can finally achieve its long-sought turnaround after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week. Meanwhile, Sears is preparing to relegate the Niles store to the past. The Golf Mill Shopping Center location is among nearly 190 Sears and Kmart stores the company plans to close in the coming months.
Two days after the bankruptcy filing, however, the Niles store appeared to be the busier of the two, drawing in shoppers in search of closeout-sale prices.
The comparison points to a key challenge Hoffman Estates-based
Sears Holdings Corp. faces in its last-ditch bid to reverse a nearly decadelong slide. The plan the company outlined in its bankruptcy filing — closing unprofitable stores, selling off assets and trying to reorganize around a smaller group of successful locations — looks much like the playbook it has been following while racking up $11 billion in losses since 2011.
The bankruptcy process buys Sears more time, with new assistance like the $300 million in financing the company has lined up. But it won’t help the retailer answer the bigger question of how to convince shoppers to come back.
“The fundamental business problems aren’t going away, even as a smaller entity,” said Neil Stern, senior partner at Chicagobased consulting firm McMillanDoolittle.
At Golf Mill Shopping Center on Wednesday morning, lifelong Sears shoppers Shirley and Bob Burkhart said the store felt busier than usual.
When the mall opened in 1960, the store had 54 merchandise and service departments, including an optical department, a beauty salon, a sewing school, a watch repair shop and a first-aid room. There were separate restaurants for customers and the store’s 750 employees.
The optical shop is still there, but other services have fallen by the wayside. On Wednesday, a couple dozen shoppers browsed amid signs advertising store-closing sales. Some second-floor walls looked sparse, but other areas, like the jumbled shelves of jeans, were still wellstocked.
Shirley Burkhart, 74, recalled poring over Sears’ holiday Wish Book toy catalog with friends when she was a child.
“You knew you wouldn’t get 95 percent of what you circled, but you still did it,” she said.
She and her husband said they’d hoped their local Sears would remain open but weren’t shocked by the news that it would close, or by Sears’ bankruptcy, after watching other department stores struggle over the years.
“Especially after Carson’s, there aren’t that many left,” said Bob Burkhart, 79, referring to the longtime Sears competitor that closed all its stores earlier this year.
Sears says it has every intention of emerging from bankruptcy as a stronger, if smaller, retailer. But companies aiming to reorganize in bankruptcy sometimes end up liquidating — Carson’s parent company Bon-Ton Stores and Toys R Us are just two recent examples.
Shoppers at both the Niles and Oak Brook stores said they’d be sad to see Sears go. But for several, the feeling had more to do with nostalgia for its heyday than fear of losing a go-to shopping destination.
Rob Rubel, 48, of Glenview, said he grew up shopping at Sears, but he now visits just two or three times a year. The store in Niles “just felt weathered,” he said.
Chairman Edward Lampert, who stepped down Monday as CEO, has been criticized for failing to invest enough in Sears’ bricks-and-mortar stores. When Sears debuted a new look at Oakbrook Center, shoppers said they were impressed. But the company has to get more of them in the doors to see it.
The Oakbrook Center Sears was buzzing at its Oct. 4 grand reopening event, when a line of shoppers waiting to meet Jaclyn Smith, a star of TV’s original “Charlie’s Angels,” stretched nearly across the store.
A weekday afternoon might not be a peak shopping time, but on Wednesday, employees appeared to outnumber shoppers. Sears spokesman Howard Riefs declined to comment on foot traffic but said in an email that the store “has been received enthusiastically by the community.”
The company also has faced challenges with the vendors supplying the merchandise stocking its shelves, though the Burkharts thought the mens’ apparel section at the Niles store seemed better stocked than usual during the closing sale, and there were no empty shelves at Oakbrook Center on Wednesday.
Sears told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court about 200 vendors had stopped sending merchandise in the two weeks leading up to its filing. Some suppliers have demanded faster payment or cash upfront in recent months, Sears said in a court filing. To shore up suppliers’ confidence, something that will be especially important as the holiday shopping season nears, Sears got the court’s approval to continue paying certain vendors considered crucial to its business.
Sears long staked its reputation on the quality of big-ticket items like appliances and tools and on the dependability of its merchandise.
Lori Nowak, 75, of Elmhurst, said that even when a purchase disappointed — like the shag rug she bought in 1969, which quickly grew worn in hightraffic areas — Sears replaced it at no extra charge.
But appliances and remodeling products aren’t frequent purchases. And when it comes to everyday items like apparel, the retailer’s selection has left something to be desired for many shoppers in recent years.
Maria Wagner, 49, of Downers Grove, checking out the new Oakbrook Center store with her mother, said she prefers the clothing at other stores and wasn’t sure she’d be back. But her mother, Toni Bellamy, 71, of Oak Brook, said she’d missed having a place to buy relatively affordable apparel at the mall during the year the store was closed for renovation.
If Sears is going to survive, the chain still has to figure out how to fend off competition from online retailers and bricks-and-mortar chains that have done a better job keeping up with their customers.
Rob Rubel, the Niles shopper, likes the convenience of having online purchases show up on his doorstep, especially when shipping and returns are free. But even shoppers who like buying in person, like his wife, Dreana, 49, have plenty of options beyond Sears.
The idea of dragging her kids through the Niles store and up the escalators to reach the children’s department was enough of a hassle that she usually bought their clothes elsewhere, she said.
There weren’t always so many options.
When Andy Nowak was growing up, “(Sears) was the only store we went to,” he said. But even Nowak, 79, who was checking out the Oakbrook Center store with his wife, Lori, isn’t as loyal as he used to be. Amazon’s selection is even more comprehensive, and it’s easy to shop, he said.
“How can you beat it?” he said. “It’s a no-brainer.”