A smaller Sears operation, focused on the core hardline brands, is an interesting proposition.
There are also other strengths in the portfolio. For example, Kmart Pharmacy — believe it or not — has been top-ranked for customer service for several years now.
There’s a fairly solid base of people who buy around $10 billion a year in stuff from the remnants of SHC. If you put together a refurbished operation with more focus on digital sales, and executed on the smaller store footprint plan they unveiled with the proof of concept small store in Suburban Chicago, it could become fairly profitable.
Big old retail brands have value; even Montgomery Ward continues as an online-only store and does several hundred million bucks a year in online sales.
It’s not guaranteed they could pull it off, but the idea they’ve got nothing at all to work with isn’t really true. They’d need to change a lot, but there are still assets worth working with... the big risk is that they’ll be tempted to continue with business as usual.
If Lampert gets the company, the best thing he could do is stay away from day to day operations and let some retail experience gurus steer the ship.
This was well said by @X3VkGWT-1nfr .