Nearly a year after declaring bankruptcy, retail giant Sears has laid off 250 employees from its headquarters and may close more Sears and Kmart stores by the end of the year.
Sears' parent company, Transformco, filed a notice in August with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity saying it was planning to lay off 250 employees from its headquarters in Hoffman Estates.
Also in August, Transformco said it would be closing 26 Sears and Kmart locations in nearly two dozen states by the end of October. At the time, the company declined to comment on media reports that more than 100 Sears and Kmart locations are set for closure by the end of the year. Some of the store closures were reported on message board site, thelayoff.com.
Should the reports be true, there will be fewer than 100 Kmart locations and 200 Sears locations, according to the International Business Times.
"That Sears is closing stores now, before the important holiday trading period, shows that the company's business model still isn't working," Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail told CNN Business. "This isn't surprising, as Sears never really had a credible plan for survival: it has always been about making cuts to help the bottom line, rather than being about how to grow the top line."
Earlier this year, a judge approved Transformco to buy what was left of Sears for $5.4 million, according to CBS News. Transformco founder and former Sears CEO Eddie Lampert said, at the time, that he planned to save as many as 50,000 jobs and was setting aside money for workers' severance.
Transformco reiterated those plans in a statement on the closures last month. "As we promised, all eligible associates will be offered the same number of weeks of severance as offered to employees of Sears Holdings Corporation prior to that company's Chapter 11 filing in October 2018," the statement said.
Cox Media Group
