Wow - JUST WOW!

[Willy P]

Gonna be a few pieces of equipment on the market soon. The Sears franchises are bankrupt. 15 or so trucks,rug plant and a whole bunch of stuff. $25 a room just doesn't pay....

 

[Chris A]

I'm Kinda amazed that their still in the game nationally, considering the shape of Sears in general, it's probably one of the few profitable ventures for them (apparently not in this case)

 

[Zee]

I'm Kinda amazed that their still in the game nationally, considering the shape of Sears in general, it's probably one of the few profitable ventures for them (apparently not in this case)

I think Sears' main income is actually from their credit cards. I read somewhere maybe 85% of their revenue is from the credit cards' interest.

 

[What A Difference Ky]

Our Sears closed in Jan of this year after 40 years. I'm in Lexington KY.

 

[NobleCarpetCleaners]

Aside from carpet cleaning Sears is such a chunk of Americana.

 

[dgardner]

According to a news report I read, Sears Home Services Canada was sold to another company but retained the Sears name. It was that company that filed for bankruptcy, leaving many subcontractors unpaid, many of which filed liens on properties they performed work on. Sad.

Sears itself is not in much better shape, though.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...uptcy-leaves-customers-in-the-lurch-1.2574483

 

[Buck1955]

They're so smart they even bought Kmart, now they own 2 loozers. Who remembers the candy counter at Sears?

 

[KevinD]

They're so smart they even bought Kmart, now they own 2 loozers. Who remembers the candy counter at Sears?

Actually it was Kmart that bought Sears back around 2005

 

[Jeremy N]

I had a chance to spend a few days with a large Sears franchise owner. He is an accountant by trade that purchased the biz which was in financial trouble. He's done well with it.

 

[The Great Oz]

Sears just contracts with other firms to do work under the Sears name. Sears funnels jobs to them and they'll need to upsell like crazy to make any money. If a customer complains about the quality of the cleaning Sears just drops the charges and doesn't pay the contractor for the job. Some contractors figure out a way to hang on for years, others turn over regularly.

The Canadian company that went out of business has probably already been replaced by another company.

 

[Jeremy N]

Sears just contracts with other firms to do work under the Sears name. Sears funnels jobs to them and they'll need to upsell like crazy to make any money. If a customer complains about the quality of the cleaning Sears just drops the charges and doesn't pay the contractor for the job. Some contractors figure out a way to hang on for years, others turn over regularly.

The Canadian company that went out of business has probably already been replaced by another company.

I don't know if this is true everywhere. The Sears guys that I know owns his stuff and promotes the Sears badge on all of his stuff.

 

[Johnny]

Where would I get my Craftsman tools? Best quality for the $.

Local Ace Hardware has some Craftsman, but not much variety.

 

[Art Kelley]

Sears Carpet Cleaning is why ChemDry was able to grow their business so effortlessly with their ridiculous bonnet method and say all those horrible things about steam cleaning. A pox on both their houses.

 

[The Great Oz]

I don't know if this is true everywhere. The Sears guys that I know owns his stuff and promotes the Sears badge on all of his stuff.

That's what I meant by contractor. Sears puts the 'contract' to be the local Sears cleaning company out to bid and chooses from the applicants. The last time I talked with the locals the contractor was a company called Keystone. Any Sears work required Sears logoed trucks and Sears uniformed employees, but the employees said they also did subcontract cleaning under other company names using plain white vans.

 

[Brian H]

Sears Carpet cleaning is a leased department and is operated by an independent company. There was a time when a lot of the big department stores had carpet cleaning departments. As far as I know, they were all leased departments. Sears in the Detroit area was leased by 4 different companies in a 10 year period back in the 1980's.

I actually got my start with a company, Adler and Son, that ran leased in home cleaning departments for MANY different stores through the United States and Canada. I think at their peak they were in 35 different cities and represented Macy, Boston Store, JC Penney, Federated Stores, Carson Pirie Scott, G Fox, The Bay, Eatons, etc. There were some cities where they were representing 2 and 3 different stores at the same time. You just had to be careful what you said when you answered the phone.

 

[Mark Saiger]

Our K-Mart is actually closing this week. Doing their big sell off sale now....so they jacked the prices up and then started to take 20 or 30% off regular prices.

They are still higher than Walmart on most things, but people are buying like crazy because of the big word....SALE!

 

[Shane Deubell]

They used to be licenses but switched to a full franchise. I looked at it but the royalty was 9%, would have done it for half that but 9% seemed like trouble.

Sears corporate is owned by a hedge fund manager, nobody really knows what his scheme is but they do own quite a bit of prime real estate. Actually i think the real estate is worth more then the business but that was several years ago.

Canada is completely separate...

 

[Willy P]

Sears Carpet cleaning is a leased department and is operated by an independent company. There was a time when a lot of the big department stores had carpet cleaning departments. As far as I know, they were all leased departments. Sears in the Detroit area was leased by 4 different companies in a 10 year period back in the 1980's.

I actually got my start with a company, Adler and Son, that ran leased in home cleaning departments for MANY different stores through the United States and Canada. I think at their peak they were in 35 different cities and represented Macy, Boston Store, JC Penney, Federated Stores, Carson Pirie Scott, G Fox, The Bay, Eatons, etc. There were some cities where they were representing 2 and 3 different stores at the same time. You just had to be careful what you said when you answered the phone.

Yes Sir Brian- I remember Adler and Son here, doing the boiler room thing. This Sears was owned by a holding company.

 

[Gman48]

Hey All
Sears guy here,, We have been in business for over 23yrs. Unfortunately we are at the far end of all the decision making that the big heads do back in Toronto.
We are a private company or contractor , with the franchise name . been very good for us over the years. But the decision for them to sell to a different company , change our names plus cost of signage business cards advertising etc. was mostly our cost to change .
Then we didn't get paid for some of the work .. All of us guys took a hit , some big some small . depended on how much work you did in the weeks past the time the company decided to file for bankruptcy .
From what I understand we are back under the Sears name and its back to the way it was before the whole Sh*t went down . The good thing is we have a good client base and will pull thru this . Some guys not so lucky .