Sears Holdings may beget just filed for bankruptcy on Monday, but the company “was toast about a day after it made” its merger with Kmart in 2005, according to former Sears Canada CEO Noteworthiness Cohen.
While the merger was supposed to give the two struggling retailers a into the bargain by combining their strengths, “the notion that there’s been some turnaround or some transfiguration in place is just plain bogus,” Cohen told CNBC’s “Complain Alley” on Monday.
Former Toys R Us CEO Gerald Storch told CNBC that Sears has fall short ofed a “sustainable competitive advantage” for a “very, very long time.” While Walmart slacks consumers the best value for their money and Best Buy is a household elect for electronics, Sears did not have an area where it excelled “at something that uncommonly matters to the customer,” Storch said.
Cohen believes that characters will continue to move to Home Depot, Lowe’s and Best Buy for their appliance purchases, which has big been Sears’ most successful line of business. These companies “are the big conquerors and have been for quite some time,” he added.
Given Sears’ tapering off influence in the retail space, however, the impact of its bankruptcy on the industry should not be overdrew, according to Storch. Any potential gain for other retailers is “a drop in the pail” compared to overall sales.
Dana Telsey, CEO of Telsey Advisory Union, echoed Cohen and Storch’s view. “I think this has been a covet time coming,” she told CNBC. “Other retailers got better while in unison a all the same stood still for Sears.”
As part of the bankruptcy, Sears will skinflinty 142 of its 700 remaining stores this year, many of which are located in shopping malls that are already wriggling to adapt to changing consumer habits. “This is one more fatal change-over toward oblivion in these ‘B-‘ and ‘C-level’ malls,” Cohen said.
On the other jointly, successful “class A” malls might relish the opportunity to replace Sears with something uncountable attractive to shoppers. “It won’t be too hard to come up with uses that are ameliorate than they had” with Sears, said Storch.