Just in time for the holiday season, Sears announced another round of store closures. Two more locations will shutter in Illinois, leaving the state down to just three.
This continues the Chicago-based retailer’s rapid decline. Nearly 100 more Sears or Kmart locations will close by February, with 182 Sears or Kmart stores remaining nationwide. At the start of this year, there were 425.
Just five years ago, Sears had nearly 2,000 stores.
While the majority of the 96 closures just announced are in California — 28 — Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico, the local list includes one in Peoria and another in West Dundee.
In February, Eddie Lampert’s hedge fund ESL Investments bid $5.2 billion to buy Sears out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Transform Holdco, an entity created out of that transaction, is now Sears’ parent company. Transformco blamed a “difficult retail environment and other challenges” for the closings, according to the Chicago Business Journal. [CBJ, WSJ] — Jacqueline Flynn