Was curious to see if the big bear kmart has a liquidator. I had heard that some of the liquidators have complained they were not getting paid. I mean yeah all the stores are on a slow liquidation anyway. But is it being done by the SM or is Eddie paying up?
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When I shopped at Kmart in Somerville, MA, during its liquidation sale in the fall of 2019, employees still asked me if I was a member of Shop Your Way or wanted to enroll in it.
Eddie has used pretty much every major liquidator with a number of fee structures over the years. No one company was able to keep up with the pace at which Eddie was dismantling Sears, an endeavor that lost him billions as he was going to "unlock" the value of the real estate, something that just keeps on burning cash to this day in his majority owned TransformCo and Seritage. A number of liquidators were ready to walk away early last year because TransformCo had no cash flow to pay them. The Innovel sale was rushed at a fire sale price to cover those invoices because liquidation and restructuring specialists know how to extract money from recalcitrant bankrupt buffoons like Eddie. Sears has resorted to these kinds of contracts because there's no cash left anywhere in his crumbling empire, only debt whose collateral is spoken for.
@1zmf It might be an individual decision by the liquidator. Both of my liquidators allowed employee discounts.
Employee discount? I thought that was changed to the syw back in points “discount”. When my store closed in September of 2018, the company was still offering the points “discount” program after getting rid of the real discount a year and a half earlier. Perhaps after the bankruptcy they brought the discount card back?
@1uau I got my employee discount when our Sears store liquidated and closed in February 2020. I also got my employee discount when my previous Sears store liquidated and closed in September 2018. While we couldn't earn SYW points we could redeem points we had already earned. With my employee discount and SYW points I was actually able to get Levi 505's for free.
I had a $50 gift card that my closing store here in California refused to accept. I ended up using it online instead.
I got my employee discount and Sears plus discount during my store liquidation
I also forgot to add that when a store is in liquidation, the reason that one cannot use employee or other discounts is that you are purchasing merchandise from the liquidator and not from Sears. So they do not follow Sears policy or anything like that because it's a different owner at that point. The sign outside will still show Sears during those approximately 8 Weeks, and Sears (or the landlord) still own the actual building, but everything inside is owned by the liquidator, and the employees inside that location work for the liquidator until the closing is complete.
I stand corrected. You are correct, that the actual building doesn't get sold. I should have been more specific about that...... my bad! But what the liquidator buys, is all the merchandise INSIDE those 4 walls.
So yes, the actual concrete structure remains the property of Transformco (or whoever the landlord is). But everything inside the store, from merchandise, to fixtures, to various equipment, belong to the liquidator. When they reach the point of closing, they can choose to sell the sh!t in the store, or transfer it to another one of THEIR closing stores. Everything within those walls belongs to the liquidator (in this case SB360, apparently). But again, you are correct, that the actual physical building does not change hands.
There's so little merchandise. How would a liquidator make money on Sears?
There is not a title transfer of the building to the liquidator. That is why Ed can list the eventual vacant store on his Transformco Properties website to lease/sell it to someone else for money.
Of course liquidators never get Paid. Because they are the ones who buy the stores from Ed then close them. And ya, the answer is posted as per the below guy.
Dude, there are literally about 3 active threads on this subject. Look around a bit. The answer is here:
https://www.sb360.com/select-projects/events/sears/
Moreover, Ed doesn't "Pay" liquidators. They PAY him, because they buy the store from him. At that point, the store is no longer owned by Ed. It is then Sears (or Kmart) in name only. At that point, it is property of the liquidator, not Transformco.