As an ex-Sears employee with inside connections, I can confirm that all store buying teams except Marketplace were laid off at Hoffman.
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They aren't buying anymore?
Members know that Sears is the REAL home of Craftsman.
@6cen - All of the business news articles that I've found state that the "brand" was sold.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-sears-sells-craftsman-stanley-20170105-story.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/sears-sells-craftsman-brand-for-900-million-2017-1?op=1
https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/05/investing/sears-sells-craftsman-stanley-black-decker/index.html
Sorry, but it was the license that was sold. You have to be 18 to post here
No. They sold the brand, not just a license. Sears retains a license to manufacture and sell. Stanley / Black & Decker now “owns” Craftsman.
They sold the license to the Craftsman brand, not the brand itself
Sears Marketplace is basically the same as Amazon’s third party sellers. They get to sell their products on Sears.com and Sears gets a small commission.
Sears hasn’t stocked new Craftsman tools in months, so yes, even the Craftsman buyer.
Eddie sold the Craftsman brand to Stanley/Black & Decker for $900,000,000. The deal was Sears could continue to manufacture and sell Craftsman tools. Most Stanley/B&D Craftsman tools are manufactured at a different Chinese factory than the Sears Craftsman tools, so they are not interchangeable. Stanley/B&D has to pay a royalty to Eddie for every Craftsman product sold for 15 years at which point it flips and Sears then has to pay Stanley/B&D the royalty. Sears won’t be around anymore by then, so it’s a win-win for Stanley/B&D.
According to employees I worked with at Hoffman, Appliances is still intact. All others not laid off, but furloughed. Still a sad situation.
Marketplace is just a glorified eBay affiliate, and not a particularly good one at that. It's a broker that collects a tiny percentage of every sale, probably less than some YouTubers at this point. Too bad the Kardashian family is no longer on the payroll, they'd probably outsell everything Eddie does combined.
this is going to turn into a blood bath.
Sears doesn’t own Craftsman. Hasn’t for years.
Which product lines are considered Marketplace?
What about Kenmore?
Even Craftsman?