Slashdot Mirror
Sears, the 125-Year-Old Iconic Retailer, Has 24 Hours To Survive (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Sears, the employer of more than 68,000 filed for bankruptcy in October. Its last shot at survival is a $4.6 billion proposal put forward by its chairman, Eddie Lampert, to buy the company out of bankruptcy through his hedge fund, ESL Investments. ESL is the only party offering to buy Sears as a whole, people familiar with the situation tell CNBC. Without that bid or another like it, liquidators will break the company up into pieces. But as Lampert stares down a deadline of Dec. 28 to submit his offer, he is quickly running out of time. As of Thursday afternoon, Lampert had neither submitted his bid, nor rounded up financing, the people familiar said. Should Lampert submit a bid, Sears' advisors would have until Jan. 4 to decide whether he is a "qualified bidder." Only then, could ESL take part in an auction against liquidation bids on Jan. 14. It is possible Lampert, Sears' largest investor, secures financing in time to meet the deadline, these people said.
It's actually a combination of competition from many faces. Clothing is a major item for Sears, and yes Walmart and Target (and Kohls) are competion for thier price point. But another big item for Sears is appliances (at least in my mind, that is what they are best known for, but I'm not sure if that's the biggest part of their bottom line). In that area they've faced competition from Best Buy, Home Depot/Menards/Lowes, Costco, and others.
Along with clothing and appliances, tools is the one other thing that comes to mind when I think Sears. And again, Home Depot/Menards/Lowes is big competition here, but I really feel like (and I may be way off) Harbor Freight is a huge source of competition for them here. Yes there is a bit of a quality difference (though that is a bit diminished as I don't think craftsman quality is quite what it used to be), but honestly for most people the cheap Harbor Freight tool is sufficient 9 out of 10 times, and for the price of the craftsman tool you can just replace the harbor freight tool 5 times (and that's not even considering most of the HF non-power tools have a lifetime replacement warranty anyway)
Of all the things out there, I really feel like Amazon is one of the smallest contributors to Sears' demise.