re: "Plenty of other stores offer MUCH BETTER experiences."
Yep - like Wal-mart.
You talk like it hardly matters.
In the "cheap" department store market, there's Wal-mart, Sears, K-mart and . . . is there anything else?
Unless I've forgotten some other major chain, Wal-mart is now going to own the market. It will be a literal monopoly instead of just a figurative one.
Your lack of fondness for Sears and K-mart seems to leave you blind to repercussions others will suffer as SHLD stores close. These two chains are the life blood of many communities and are the anchors of thousands of shopping complexes across the country. Per their website, there are 1,382 K-mart stores and 930 Sears. How many Mom and Pop operations count on customers drawn to the area by Sears or K-mart? How many will now fold as the anchors collapse? How many jobs will be lost?
Perhaps I'm reading too much into today's news, but I doubt it. 120 stores have just been selected for closure... about 5 percent. But we've seen how this works many times. Grants... Liberty House... Circuit City... Good Guys... Albertsons... Luckys... Borders... Lumberjack... Montgomery Wards... Gottschalks... Mervyns... Thom McAn... PayLess... Rexall... Computer City... CompuAdd... CompUSA... Ben Franklin... Sprouse-Reitz... Those are just the big chains that *I* remember.
Usually, as they die, they announce waves of store closures. OFTEN, the whole chain folds like a house of cards by the time it gets to that point. We'll probably know in three months whether Sears and K-mart are going to be relegated soon to America's history books.
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