The more I watch Sears fall apart, the more it is becoming obvious that either senior leadership doesn't know how to run a retail giant, or senior leadership is running a real estate company rather than a retail company. Here's just one example that should be clear.
Instead of closing the way Sears did, they should have done more of a regional shutdown. Yes, that may mean that a good performing store gets caught in the line of fire, but it serves two purposes:
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It lets the company cut costs by closing regional distribution centers, getting rid of regional managers, etc.
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Gives the remaining stores a shot. If you have 2 stores left in a market, advertising your sales, etc. isn't going to make a lot of sense, because 80% of the market is going to be too far from a Sears to bother (especially when there is nothing unique about Sears/KMart, a 10% savings over the competitor likely isn't worth the gas money to drive an hour to get).
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Given the size of Sears/K-Mart now, they should have had a plan to combine the brands. This helps with advertising, costs, etc. as well
I have seen far too many solid stores close simply because the land they sat on was a quick cash grab. The one near me was at a busy mall and was always full of shoppers, but closed a few years ago simply because they were able to sell the land.
This is an outsider's perspective, I DO NOT work for Sears. Even Circuit City understood that, to get good return on stores, you had to have more than a dozen stores in each "market" to keep advertising costs, distribution costs, overhead, etc. down to acceptable levels. At this point, Sears is too small to remain competitive in the market, they will not be able to repay most debt since 500 stores just don't make enough profit to repay the debt load, and the overhead is too high, even after all the layoffs.
If this doesn't convert to Chapter 7 in the next 30 days, I will be surprised. If Eddie gets the 500 stores he wants, I don't think it'll be for the continuation of Sears, but rather a slower and more painful decline as he continues to sell the real estate as he gets buyers.
I could be completely off base about all of this, and I hate to see people lose their jobs, but I just cannot see how this thing keeps going.