Sears Hometown Store

The story that never ends. The other Sears is now in financial trouble, much Yeah, there'still some Sears out there. Sears Hometown. It's a franchise-owned unit of Sears it's filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Brian Sassi of course has followed Sears for many, many years. I still can't believe I'm still covering the Sears story. It's just this stuff just won't go away, but yet here we are. So here it is. Sears Hometown stores, they were spin off in 2012 from Sears. Back then Sears was very strapped for cash. They spun off this asset, also sold the Craftsman brand a little bit later on, but nonetheless they spun this off. And now Sears Hometown, which was purchased by Transform Co. That was a holding company that also held a lot of these Sears stores post their own bankruptcy. Sears Hometown now declaring bankruptcy. This chain was about at 100 stores currently operating down from 700 stores just three years ago. They were largely owned by franchisees. Now I went back and just re-familiarized myself with the Sears Hometown concept and I recall writing back in 2012, one of the key problems with the brand is that they essentially relied on inventory from Sears. That's where they got all this garbage, then sold to Sears. Got d Well Sears basically now no longer exists. So if you cannot get inventory from Sears stores, you cannot stock these Hometown stores with any form of goods. And the problem with Hometown was that they never solidified or it got relationships with other vendors to get other inventory in these stores. So they were just really just feeding off the carcass that was Sears. So no shocker to see this chain ultimately go under. In the bankruptcy filing, noting 50 million in assets and 50 million in liabilities and another little fun fact here, Eddie Lampert, the longtime CEO. I was waiting, I was waiting. Yeah, well he is almost a 38% holder in Sears Hometown. I'll say it again, I've said this before, really will go down as the worst CEO I've ever seen in my career. I could probably be doing this till I'm 95 and he will still be the worst CEO I've ever seen in my career. But look, this chain will ultimately go away. We are at the Sears Hometown store that is shutting down in Warsaw, New York. I got to film it twice, one time non-closing and then I went back another time when it was closing. Now unfortunately, the company did file for chapter 11 bankruptcy and is closing down as a whole chain. So that wasn'too much of a surprise there. But It's not So it's a shame that they're going away but The brand was Sears, So But I mean, I just wanted to come on here and say a few words. But remember to follow me on social media, especially Instagram. And