https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-law/sears-hometown-seeks-to-liquidate-after-losing-cash-access
11 replies (most recent on top)
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And what, Pray Tell, does ANY of this have to do with layoffs (the point of this site)? The stores ARE liquidated. Whether some empty shell corporation, with no operating stores (and therefore jobs/layoffs) to discuss, is in chapter 7-11 (Slurpee), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, who freaking cares? In a layoff site, out discussions are limited to things related to layoffs, such as store closings. Whether some company is in chapter 7,11, or 8, 9, or 10, or 100, has no effect on layoffs. Move this to a stockholder forum, not a layoff forum.
For our purposes (in terms of jobs and layoffs), Sears Hometowns are liquidating and done, as in, there are no more stores for people to work in anymore, nor are there any online jobs related to Sears Hometowns, because their website literally does not exist any more.
As for the inventory, the stores were purchased by SB360, so SB sold all of it through liquidations, which wrapped up earlier this Year.
The main point here is that Ch 7 liquidates the significant value in NOLs, which can be preserved in Ch 11. Therefore its financial assets are NOT liquidated. Lampert seems content to throw them away as if anticipating no income to offset those losses.
To the poster below, those stores were purchased by SB360 prior to liquidation. SB360 listed Hometowns on their site and they only liquidate stores they own. So any merchandise not sold (not sure why there would be any) would belong to SB360 anyway, not the Hometown franchisees who all collectively sold their stores TO SB360.
That's true only if all of the inventory of every single store got sold before they closed.
Sears Hometown Inc LITERALLY MEANT the "stores". They started liquidating in 2022 and are completely gone now. There is nothing left there. Discussing Sears Holdings now, is like discussing what the Bar did with my empty Bottles after they closed last Night. There is nothing left to Sears Holdings. What their "entire corp" does now is as significant as what the Bar did with my empty Bottles after I went home. The "corporate entity" is like empty Bottles. There is no "there", there, so who cares?
None of the last few replies address how the remaining assets (presumably inventory that remained unsold when the stores closed) will be liquidated. Through the few still-open Sears and Kmart stores, or via close-out retailers such as Big Lots and TJ Maxx?
How will the remaining liquidation be carried out? Send any merchandise still unsold by the closed Hometown stores to the open Sears and Kmart stores?
Spot on. Sears Hometown Inc consists of more than just stores. Sure, maybe all of their stores have ceased operations but the entire corp has not. Sad that the person keeps spreading misinformation that they have completed their liquidation. I suggest they take some business classes at their local community college to educate themselves.
Sears Hometowns liquidated is not the same as the company being liquidated as it's converted into Ch 7 from Ch 11. The dissolution of a corporate entity is distinct from the stores. If you consider just the stores, Sears Holdings would have been considered liquidated in 2019.
Sears Hometowns literally HAVE BEEN liquidated. That's why they recently dropped off from the SB360 page, because the liquidations have wrapped up. No Sears hometown stores currently remain.
This does not surprise me. What made Sears Dealer/Hometown such an ingenious concept--a truly asset-light business model--led to its demise. There would never be much collateral for a business process that ran without much in the way of physical assets. The model of Sears Hometown thrived, albeit off of Sears' invested capital, on minimal physical infrastructure of its own. Talk about a virtual company, Sears Hometown was it. The chain had upwards of 900 locations at one point. The chain had a devoted home office team and even more devoted owner-operators. There was no reason that this chain should have not continued to survive and prosper, perhaps to a greater extent than Ace or True Value. Sears Hometown filled niches that Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, even Amazon, have not filled. It brought major appliances, lawn tractors, large tool chests, and other large hardlines products to hundreds of small US communities. Black Friday lines in front of Sears Hometown stores were not unheard of over the years. The cause of all of this, it's another notch on the belt. At least we can resign ourselves to the sad fact that there's not much "unlocked value" left to destroy.