Sears, once the retailer that shaped how Americans lived, worked and bought their first refrigerators, is now facing what may be its final holiday season. From our perspective at YourDailyAnalysis, the chain no longer resembles a functioning business – only the outline of a once-mighty empire, reduced to just five surviving stores that feel more like relics than operating retail locations.
Two decades ago, Sears had 2,000 stores. Even after emerging from bankruptcy in 2019, it still controlled over 200. Today only five remain: four inside malls owned by Simon Property Group and one freestanding store in Coral Gables, Florida, which may soon be bulldozed to make way for a 1,000-unit residential complex. Neither Simon nor the current owners of Sears have offered any comment, and industry insiders suggest that the remaining stores function on “life support,” providing little more than the illusion of activity.
As we note at YourDailyAnalysis, these locations are no longer part of a turnaround plan – they are a technical remnant. Former Sears Canada CEO Mark Cohen describes them bluntly: “ghosts in the night,” with bare shelves and minimal traffic. The structural math also doesn’t work. Neil Saunders of GlobalData says Sears could not turn a profit even when it had scale; the idea that five scattered stores could operate profitably borders on fantasy.
Some analysts believe Sears’ owner Eddie Lampert may simply be keeping the final stores open for tax purposes, or to avoid costly lease disputes. But no one in the retail world sees a viable future. The collapse is the end point of a long downward spiral, accelerated by underinvestment, mismanagement and the rise of better-run competitors.
Yet the irony is sharp: few companies have had a deeper cultural impact on the United States. Sears started in 1886 as a mail-order watch business before launching the iconic catalog that revolutionized consumer life in rural America. It brought mass-manufactured clothing, appliances and household goods into homes that had never had access to them. By mid-century, the retailer helped define the American suburb, anchored shopping malls, and introduced millions of households to brands like Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard. At its peak, one in every seven Americans had worked at Sears.
The company built the world’s tallest building at the time – the Sears Tower – expanded into insurance (Allstate), brokerage (Dean Witter), real estate (Coldwell Banker), and even co-created one of the first online services (Prodigy). But as we emphasize at YourDailyAnalysis, breadth is not a substitute for strategic clarity. Sears failed to modernize its stores, ignored the digital shift, and was eclipsed by Walmart, Home Depot and eventually Amazon.
Lampert’s 2005 merger of Sears and Kmart only hastened the decline. Rather than reinvesting in stores, leadership focused on selling real estate and buying back shares. The retail core withered as losses mounted. By 2018, the inevitable happened: bankruptcy.
When Sears reemerged in 2019, it still operated more than 400 Sears and Kmart locations. Less than seven years later, both brands are nearly extinct. The last full-line Kmart in the continental U.S. closed in 2023. Sears appears poised to follow.
From the vantage point of Your Daily Analysis, this is not merely a story of corporate missteps – it is an illustration of what happens when a retailer loses its operational discipline and falls behind the technological frontier. The remaining stores exist more as a legal artifact than a commercial venture. The brand’s legacy will likely outlive its physical presence, but its role in American retail has already ended.
Sears changed the country. But the era it once defined has passed, and nothing in its current structure suggests a path forward. For the five remaining stores, the end now seems inevitable – and close.
