Sears has filed for Chapter 11, declaring bankruptcy.
From US Courts.gov, Chapter 11 bankruptcy typically involves a debtor proposing a plan of reorganization to keep its business alive and pay creditors over time.
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Also, in a chapter 11 case, a liquidating plan is permissible.
It is reported that at least 142 more stores will be closed by the end of the year, in addition to previously planned closures.
Retailers filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy often do so with the intention of turning things around to become profitable again. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn’t.
But what does this mean?
Time will tell.
With respect to tools, the Craftsman brand lives on, under Stanley Black & Decker ownership. Several years ago Sears got rid of most if not all of the Craftsman tools I could have recommended, and they also stopped carrying other brands unique to their catalog.
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Their “Shop Your Way” internet marketplace service is somewhat detached, and will likely live on, past any eventuality that affects Sears retail stores. That might even be a way for Sears’ website to be kept alive.
Tens of thousands of jobs are in jeopardy if Sears can’t turn things around.
What brought Sears to this point? In my opinion, stagnancy but also bad choices. The tool department went through changes in recent years, and were far worse off for it. I’d guess that the same could be said about other departments.
It’s a sad day when I think about all of the people who might lose their jobs. But Sears? Unlike the demise of Toys R Us, which still stings every time we drive by, especially when my son says “they took the letters down,” I won’t shed any tears for Sears. They made sure of this, with all of the bad changes they’ve made in recent years, to their former Craftsman brand as well as their “Blue Tool Crew” catalog of other brands.
Sears destroyed themselves.
What remains to be seen is whether or not they can climb out of this and exist in any capacity.
Addison
I loved Sears, but what brought us in to the store in the last years? I don’t have many reasons, I wish I did.
Corbin Dallas
More private equity and fattened-up CEOs pillaging good products, services and paying for it with working people’s wages. I too have not been in there recently, but its devastating for peoples livelihoods, as well as towns that did rely on them.
Ryan
The last time I bought anything from Sears was about two years ago. Their website had a great deal on these nice Craftsman bottle openers and showed that they were in stock locally. I went down to the store and they were three times more expensive in store than online. No problem, they said – they could price match their own website. Except that the cashier couldn’t do it – a manager had to. It took about ten minutes for a manager to make their way down, as apparently there was only one on duty.
Basically it seemed like they were making things difficult at every level. The store also looked run down, with dirty and ripped carpeting and subpar lighting. I’m not surprised that people in general stopped going there.
John
I had the same problem when purchasing a C3 drill/impact driver. It was a colossal waste of time and the clerk was very defensive about it, even after I showed them the price on their website. That was 4 years ago and I haven’t gone back since. Good riddance!
RKA
You did better than I did! Last time I was shopping for an appliance I mentioned that the website had a holiday coupon that would save me an additional $300. The poor person working the floor admitted to me that he was powerless to apply a discount that would match what was available online. I triedas many ways as I could to get him to find any other discounts to get me within $100 of the online price…no go.
So their website undercuts their in store promotions, they know it and they know their customers are cross shopping. Seems unfair to their commission compensated employees. Previous experiences with staff in the tool section suggest they don’t match their online pricing, but that could be lazy staff that don’t want to be bothered hunting for a manager.
Bob
I have a Kmart and a Sears closing and liquidating within a short drive of my house. I usually avoid buying tools for the case of buying tools. Obviously the majority of what they sell is craftsman, but they also sell other stuff. Usually I only buy what I need…
At 40-60% off of regular prices is there anything I should consider picking up?
Sebastien
I can speak from experience with the closure of Sears Canada. They bumped up the prices before the closures so that they could give “discounts”…. In the end the prices weren’t that great. There are multiple articles about it online, like this one https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/sears-canada-liquidation-sale-pricing-under-investigation-1.3690729
Sad to see, hopefully you get fair clearance prices down south.
S
Raoul
It annoys me too but you can’t blame anyone except the uneducated shoppers that buy the stuff. By the time the discounts become significant, everything is picked over and still not worth it.
William Adams
Picked up a Schroeder Yankee style screwdriver a couple of years ago at Sears.
I have a fondness for the 6 point combination wrenches, but you’re not likely to find any U.S.A.-made ones left (and it’d be tedious to look through them0
Stephen
You might be getting a deal but be very wary of the clearance price. Don’t “buy the discount”.
3rd-party companies exist to manage store liquidations. They will come int and buy the store’s inventory, then create their own inflated prices on things. If Sears was selling a tool for $100, the liquidator might price that tool at $200 just so they can mark it down 50% and make you feel like you’re getting a deal.
The last store liquidation sale I went to was total con game. The liquidation prices of many items was no better than the original pre-liquidation prices. This is not the fault of the store but of the 3rd-party liquidation company. I will never go to another store liquidation sale again, not worth my time.
Kent hanson
Yes to this, when Target had it’s very brief tenure in Canada end a couple of years ago I went in to check out the discounts and nothing was really discounted and I ended up buying a wok at 35% off, but that price was within a couple of dollars of the original price before liquidation.
Frank D
Every closeout clearance I have been to, is handled by a third party business that specializes in this, prices go way up, msrp and above, and then the discounts are up to xx % but never on anything you would want to buy or think you need, and then the games begin week after week 10% 20% 30% with the asteriks …
Robin
My issue wasn’t with the tool department. It was appliances.
You won’t stay in business if it takes 32 days to receive a compressor for a refrigerator and every call to customer service was pretty much “deal with it”
That’s when they lost my business. When I told the rep on the phone who called me to schedule the install of said compressor “they lost my business,” he was very apathetic on the phone and just ended with an “oh okay.”
It’s sad, but at the same time not surprising.
Mitchell Smith
Unsurprising.
Low quality products, sold at middle of the road prices, and backed up by absolutely atrocious customer service. Abandoned stores with unstocked shelves. No prices on anything. Computer systems out of the 1990s. Checkout times that top 5 full minutes. O, and an asshat of a CEO.
Did I miss anything?
fred
They have had many years of faltering – seemingly enough time to turn things around. What will be new under chapter 11 protection? They probably just should have gone chapter 7 and started the liquidation process. But I guess if they can make it through Christmas – at least their may be some wages flowing to their employees.
Sad – they were “the” place to shop for home and yard tools when I was a kid in the late 40’s and 50’s – and they helped fuel the DIY wave in the 60′ and 70’s. To Robin’s point – we and lots of the neighbors had Kenmore appliances – and I remember that the Sears service truck was a regular visitor to our neighborhood keeping them running. But I never bought a Kenmore appliance – with the exception of a sewing machine for my wife – and haven’t been in a Sears store to shop for tools in something like 20 years.
A W
My house was purchased full of Kenmore appliances, and they’ve served me well, but are being slowly replaced one by one with brands that I know will be around in a decade.
When I first started as a mechanic 15 years ago, I learned to buy made in the USA hand tools. I was given a set (mostly SK) and filled in what I needed with Craftsman.
For years, Sears was the only brick and mortar store I sourced tools from, and if they had kept their act together, I would have been a customer for life.
And yet, when I saw the news, I had the same thought that it would have been better for them to declare chapter 7 and just die already. I feel horrible saying that when I think about all the lives and pensions that are affected. But as a consumer, I just wish Sears would stop messing around so that SBD could focus on making Craftsman a great brand again.
Sebastien
This is very interesting to me, since Sears went through this whole thing in Canada in recent years. It all started with pulling out the tool line and then the general selection going downhill, to eventually end with closing all their Canadian locations. Shutting down their Canadian stores seems like a move to “turn[ing] things around to become profitable again” as you said, but I guess it wasn’t good enough.
S
OhioHead
We knew this was coming, I read this AM that Stanley Black & Decker is in the top 10 for “unsecured” creditors (owed between $5m – $10m).
I feel sorry for the store employees who will be jobless soon @ the expense of Eddie & his cronies.
Ted
Yes, $5.9 million is a lot to be owed but I think they will be okay considering they paid Sears almost $900 million to buy the Craftsman name. I think Stanley Black & Decker will be okay.
Nate
SBD stands to come out on top if Sears folds. The deal with payouts to Sears were contingent on them remaining solvent which looks highly unlikely now.
Toolfreak
Sears can exist in only the barest form for Eddie to keep getting his yearly millions from SBD, which he likely has planned since even before the agreement.
Maikeru
Lambert’s warring divisions model was an absolutely terrible idea. I don’t recall if you had posted a link to an article or did a run-down of the oddness of Lambert’s leadership (warring divisions causing some departments to wholly rely on the staff from other departments for in-store help as well as one division being richer than another and thus able to put an electric scooter aimed at teenaged boys on the front page of the Mother’s Day catalog), but it feels like it hastened the demise of the company.
Redcastle
You can take the boy out of Goldman Sachs but you cannot take Goldman Sachs out of the boy. That management strategy is very common in investment banking.
Sco Deac
Recognizing this was filed as a Chapter 11, my bet is the creditors will force liquidation, believing the liquidated assets may have more value to them.
Today’s filing was triggered because a $134 million loan payment was due and they could not cover the payment. An additional $668 million in loan payments are due over the next 12 months. As of late last week, some public reports were that no lenders were willing to extend debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing. DIP financing is a loan made to bankrupt entities to use to continue operations during the bankruptcy reorganization and to pay for professional services associated with the reorganization. The filing indicates that Bank of America, one of the largest creditors, has lined up $300 million in DIP financing and Lampert’s hedge fund is working on a deal to extend an additional $300 million in DIP financing. If the banks believed in the management’s plan for reorganization under Ch. 11, they would likely have been willing to provide more or all of the DIP financing. That Lampert is having to provide half makes him playing with his money now.
According to the bankruptcy filings, the company has $6.9 billion in assets against more than $11.3 billion in liabilities, though $3.2 billion are inter-company debt.
A big issue for Sears are unfunded pension obligations. It lists an “unknown” amount owed to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. for the 90,000 retirees. The PBGC is the largest unsecured creditor, followed by Whirlpool and Frigidaire.
Some articles I’ve read suggest Lampert is negotiating a bidder-to-beat “stalking horse” offer for “a large portion of the company’s store base,” which includes both Sears and Kmart-branded stores. In a corporate bankruptcy in which the corporation wishes or is required to sell its assets, an initial bid on those assets by a third party chosen by the corporation. This is done to ensure that the bankrupt corporation does not have to settle for unacceptably low prices for its assets.
This means Lampert will get to make his best offer for what assets he wants. If its not a great offer, I would expect the creditors to try to force a liquidation.
Redcastle
The sad truth is that the insiders will generally prefer to cherry pick assets after a liquidation as this ensures both the lowest price and is also cleaner in that there can be no accusations of manipulating the sale price.
This does incentivise insiders once liquidation is on the horizon to drive straight in to a wall and then collect on the other side.
This also assumes that the insiders do not have all their personal wealth tied up in the entity being liquidated however thanks to the ability to short sell this is rarely the case.
RKA
Since you appear to have a pretty good handle on this, can you explain Lampert’s Interest in all this by way of the hedge fund and REIT that he has a large interest in? How does that not create some kind of conflict of interest? My cursory searches seem to suggest he’s making money on both sides of the company remains alive and he also stands to gain significantly if it folds.
Redcastle
For a considerable part of my career I was involved as a banker in corporate restructuring. The tale of how senior management profits no matter which way it breaks must be nearly as old as the concept of limited liability, it is nowhere near as much fun when the business is an old style unlimited partnership and the senior management are personally on the hook for every penny of a firm’s debt.
The situation is also complicated because it would appear that the CEO was using funds under his control (OPM is always preferred) to assist the company in surviving while a series of asset disposals and reorganisation took place so with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight there will I am sure be a number of interested parties (It was ultimately the pension fund that did for Philip Green) will be reaching for the only group always guaranteed to profit from this kind of tragedy to whit our learned friends, the lawyers.
Normally corporate failures are overseen by bankers and bondholders as debt has a higher priority than shareholders and unsecured creditors however in this case the moral hazard is increased because of the overlap between management, debt financiers and purchasers of assets in the past who will not want the basis of those purchases questioned, it is undoubtedly a mare’s nest.
If I stood to lose money in whatever capacity with regards to the Chapter 11 and it seems widely expected Chapter 7 liquidation I would be doing my best to ensure that the appointment of any person supervising the disposal of assets was truly arms length.
Redcastle
UK press comment strangely mostly from the left wing side focussing on blaming Amazon (Bezos unlike the social media CEOs has the nasty whiff of capitalism about him as far as they are concerned) ignoring that it is now almost thirty years since it lost its No 1 retailer position to Wal Mart. One of the problems with massively reducing your real estate position is that you are less able to play chicken with banks who by their nature tend to be very apexposed to any falls in commercial and retail property.
With regard to the attempt to survive online every sizeable retail failure in the UK in the last five years and there have been a lot has tried to go this route and they are all just playing me too if they are still around.
It will be interesting to see where the current CEO comes out of this particularly if there is an investigation by the authorities, in the case of Philip Green who as CEO of BHS sold the business to someone else who then put it into bankruptcy he was pursued to disgorge funds that it was claimed he had paid to entities under his control both before and after the sale, however to get to that point there had to be a major hue and cry. It is a matter of fact that what Philip Green did was not illegal but it was just wrong.
If SBD is one of the largest unpaid creditors at USD 5 -10 million than Sears must have been running on a COD basis which if nothing else will kill any retailer with a geographical spread.
As a child growing up I used to spend time reading the Buck & Hickman catalogue which was the size of an old style telephone book and which comprehensively covered the world of tools, hardware and machines as it existed back then, line drawings rather than photographs, years later visiting Chicago someone showed me an old Sears catalogue and it was obvious where Buck & Hickman drew their “inspiration” from. I particularly liked the house kits.
Ton
We can thank eddie lampert for the demise of this once great company.
Redcastle
He was the final straw rather than the sole cause, the fact that he is by all accounts not a pleasant individual does not help but Sears was in trouble well before he arrived.
fred
When a ship goes down, the serving captain is often considered responsible. While there may well be mitigating circumstances – possible extending as far back to the naval architects, the shipyard, acts of God or enemy action – the captain is still likely to take responsibility.
Those at the helm of many failing companies – seem to come out of the failure much better off than many of the other stakeholders . Sadder yet – some of those CEO’s never acknowledge (possibly on advise of their attorneys ) any personal responsibility or regrets for the impact on their employees or pensioners.
Redcastle
Fred
The captain is expected to go down with his ship not profit from its demise so I am not sure it is a fair comparison, I have not heard anything to indicate that the current CEO was ever the right man for the job (a job Warren Buffett said was impossible) but equally he was not wholly to blame.
With regard to the comments about his divide and compete style of management that is pretty much the norm in investment banking and he is if memory serves as Goldman Sachs.
satch
Redcastle, yes it most certainly was in trouble. For years.
An interesting article I read rhis morning seemed to say that the powers to be at Sears(other then Fast Eddie) are mightily resisting his attempt to purchase the Kenmore name. He is one of the biggest lenders to the company so I assume this will make him one of the biggest creditors to be paid off if the liquidation comes.
Funny how it works that the guy trying to buy up all the prime assets(a lot of the real estate was already sold to a company he had big stakes in I think) would also be the one to gain from the sale, 2then ownership later. Almost like it could have been planned? Just guessing on my part.
I knew Sears was on the losing side of history when they seemingly took the stance years ago that internet sales were ‘not the way we do business’. It always amazes me how myopic these companies are when it comes to this stuff. We all need to remember what Amazon was when it started. An online seller of books. And they were roundly mocked for it. At least by those who supposedly knew business. Walmart was dangerously close to this situation themselves a few years ago. Now you can order what you want and they will have in front of store an hour later or ship to home for next to nothing. Web site is clunky compared to Amazon but they are at least making the effort. Sears was dead and didn’t know it til the oxygen ran low in the bloodstream. I feel for the empoyees.
fred
@Satch
Your observation about Sears having denigrated the Internet as a sales conduit is kind of ironic. We probably all realize that paradigm shifts are usually difficult to see coming or when you are in their early stages. Bur Mr. Sears is likely rolling over in his grave. He was the “father” of one such shift in the buying proclivities of what was a then mostly rural and agrarian nation. The Sears catalog was the Amazon of its day – with goods shipped via the railroads and the US Mail. Amazon now uses airplanes and than trucks to ship goods – still via mail – but adding FedEx , UPS and Amazon contractors into the mix. Mr. Sears fulfilled the needs of rural America – that could not be met by the small bricks and mortar emporiums and smaller stores of their day. Amazon is apparently meeting the needs today of a much more urbanized country – that is turning away from many bricks and mortar stores.
Redcastle
Fred
Amazon is in the process of building a bricks and mortar business ironically beginning with bookshops. Argos a catalogue company which grew to have a store in every town is the second largest non food retailer in the UK (after Amazon) by providing same day delivery and as importantly providing a secure delivery service for many eBay retailers and others. They did not have a portfolio of beautifully designed and elegant shops but a door, order points and a collection counter, they are now moving into their parent company’s supermarkets, bricks and mortar needs to evolve too.
satch
Fred, indeed. I have said that more than once. It often struck me the bricks and mortar places lodged many of the complaints against internet retailers that old time companies lodged against the Sears catalogue. ‘We cannot compete with their volume and delivery rates!’ Irony has taken a beating(or has it delivered it?) the last two decades in retail.
Redcastle
Sears in junction with CBS and another developed an early electronic retail portal which predated Amazon and the more generally available ecommerce type sites which the sold out of in the early 1990s. There is an expression if it was not for bad luck you would have no luck at all.
Mark S.
When my local Sears was closing I went there looking for discounts on their tools. The only tool I could find there was Eddie Lampert.
Kidding aside, Sears self destructed long ago and Lampert may have been fooling himself into believing he could turn it around. Wal-Mart and Home Depot have been besting Sears for decades now and rather than follow their successful business model Lampert chose to create his own which boiled down to “my way or the highway”.
satch
Mark, you make an astute point. Everyone complains about Walmart, Amazon, etc harming Sears. The fact is, Sears hurt themselves with the short sighted way they ran things. They should have been first at this, not playing catch up.
And your point about HD is spot on. Everyone likes to talk about the big DIY movement starting in the late 1980s forward. Sears WAS that market for 60 years. When I was a little kid in the 1960s/70s no one replaced sinks, faucets, toilets, breakers, etc themselves. You hired Louie the plumber or Bill the electrician. Anything you did at home likely started with a trip to Sears.
When HD, Lowes, and later Menard’s come on the scene with a whole schtick that catered to this market, Sears was on the decline with shoddily made imports that really hurt them, staff that was cluesless(no monopoly there), etc. Again, they should have been partnering with or mimicking Amazon with a complete online storefront for Craftsman. This would have been the easiest division to start off with. Kind of sad really.
JoeM
I was hoping this declaration would mean we get to stop talking about it and move on, so it doesn’t pour salt into the wounds of those who are still clinging to the love of Craftsman tools of 40 years ago.
This topic hurts a lot of people’s feelings. I’m Canadian, and Sears died up hear over two years ago now. If you want to know what happens, I can tell you. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There is no “Next” for Sears. They messed up in this modern world of Business, and now they’re going away. And what made them fail is the exact thing we’ve all been doing to bury them. We are buying from other companies online, or in-store, at our own rate. Without Sears, those companies will get exactly the same business from us they were getting before Sears declared bankruptcy, online stores will get the exact same volume of orders as they always did, and Sears will continue to not make money. It doesn’t matter how many years you shopped there, or what the story you have involving them making you happy. Chapter 11, after so very many failures to deliver.
So, don’t dwell on it. It’ll only hurt more. Just find a way through it, to move on.
Mike
It’s ironic that Sears used to be what Amazon is now – only before the Internet. They were THE mail order company. Their catalogs are near mythical in that you could order anything from tools, to car parts to enough materials to build a house.
They really could have cornered the market, and basically recreated the past with a totally online catalog, selling vast arrays of things not available in stores. Amazon is the new Sears.
Ordering a fridge online, and have it delivered/installed from the nearest store? Have something shipped to the store for free? These are things multiple other companies offer today, but back on the early 2000’s this could have been a game changer.
At the the same time, they offer no real reason to go to the store. Lowe’s and Home Depot have the advantage of being home improvement stores, where you can go to pick up supplies/materials/tools, or even just get ideas. Sears was just there. Their advertising didn’t compel me to check out their stores, and they relied too much on gimmicky Christmas and Father’s day gadgets – not on things people need on a consistent basis. Lately, their stores have been half empty, and there is a general feeling of apathy. It’s downright depressing.
CT
Nothing Amazon is doing is new other than access point to their company being electronic rather than a paper catalog, physical store or shopping channel. Amazon just focuses on hassle free customer service while everyone else chases the bottom line. That’s the reason why they’ve been able to surpass so many established retailers. It was nothing to do with being a tech company. Amazon started selling with books and look what they’ve done. Every major retailer had more resources and suppliers to work with for years and did nothing with it. Instead they focused on complaining about sales taxes which was never as big a deal as they made it out to be.
Redcastle
Widely reported story in the UK recently where an Amazon delivery driver swiped the client’s dog. The client then contacted Jeff Bezos by email asking for her dog to be returned, she received a response and her dog was returned within twenty four hours. Urban myth or not about Bezos personally being involved the mainstream press went all out with lots of pictures of a cute puppy and Amazon’s name in lights. You cannot buy that kind of publicity.
While Amazon’s execution particularly in regard to delivery is moving backwards possibly a victim of their own success their customer service department really are excellent and it pays.
Jim Felt
In simplest terms both Toys R Us and Sears were destroyed by Wall Street financier’s predatory hedge fund “managers”.
Saddle the company’s with unsustainable debt after extracting their “fees”, leaseback deals, etc. and let the corporate carcass rot. Oh. And screw the employees. The vendors. The landlords. The world.
Nice. Eh?
Redcastle
Hedge funds as “activist” investors is relatively new and not an appropriate term in this case. The CEO had access to a pool of money which just happens to be legally structured as a hedge fund.
Corporate raiders, leveraged buyout funds, trusts (such as Standard Oil), conglomerates, asset strippers in the UK, call it what you will the sport of buying assets and piling on debt and then heading for the door has a long history and is partly justified at least as the culling of the weak so the strong survive so often seen in nature. It is necessary in capitalism, under a socialist system the government would decide, I know which I prefer however the process must be seen to be honest otherwise it falls into disrepute.
Flotsam
All that hand wringing a few weeks ago about new Craftsman (the Sears version) is all for nought. We will never see those tools. and SBD is obviously the winner
Stuart
That’s not true or certain – this could very well be a drawn out process.
Additionally, people are already confused about Craftsman V20 vs 20V Max. It’s something that I felt needed to be discussed.
Toolfreak
The “new” Craftsman stuff that Sears came out with is what signals they are going down the toilet even faster – either they had to get new suppliers since the old ones would no longer sell to them on credit, or they had existing suppliers (Apex) make even lower quality new stuff to sell for the same “sale” prices and try to make money.
MichaelHammer
I’m trying to care, but I don’t. Every time I hear the word Sears, I think, “oh, they’re still around?” You all forgot to mention Best Buy. They’ve been siphoning off Sears electronics and appliance sales for years. I won’t miss them when they are gone.
Tyler
Funny you mention Best Buy. A few years ago I was in the market for a new TV. I was ready to spend quite a bit more than I had before and finally get something high-end. I did some looking online to get an idea of what was available. When it game time to shop I drove to Sears first. I spent about a half hour talking with the salesperson there and decided on exactly what I wanted. I said I would buy it. That’s when he responded with “alright, we should have it in by next week.”
Umm, what? They didn’t even have it in stock, and they never mentioned it in 30+ minutes of dealing?
I was furious. I had driven over an hour to the city to buy a TV, not order one. I drove to the Best Buy next to the mall Sears was in and found the exact same TV, same price, and in stock. 10 minutes later it was loaded in the back of my pickup and I was on my way home. I never gave thought to electronics shopping at Sears ever again.
James McGregor
Vulture capitalism at work. Lampert wins; everyone else loses.
Redcastle
Whether the CEO wins or not remains to be seen only guaranteed winners are the lawyers.
NC_Wolverine
When did the lifetime warranty end?
Was in Sears a month ago for an odd socket, when I saw an older gentleman try to get a ‘lifetime replacement’ for his shattered torque wrench, that was prolly older than me (early 40’s).
Cashier said all current torque wrenches had a 1 year warranty, so if his was older than that he was out of luck.
So dang sad
Stuart
That torque wrench should have been grandfathered in.
Some warranty time frames were changed in an attempt to stem abuse.
Toolfreak
The click style torque wrenches only have a 90-day/1-year warranty depending on the model.
The beam-style torque wrenches still have a lifetime warranty.
Though, the ones they have in-store now are just rebadged China-made Apex/Gearwrench models that aren’t really that great. Anyone with a USA-made torque wrench that needs a replacement is better off browsing ebay for an older USA-made replacement. You can get them for a VERY nice price, even still in the box.
Thinman
I just ordered three Craftsman bottle openers for souvenirs. Hope they get here before Sears goes belly up. I’d hate to have to be looking for my order two months from now.
Old as dirt
One word can describe what killed Sears”GREED “
Greg
For as long as I’ve been alive, Sears to me was about Craftsman and the tool department. I always thought that there were far better brands, deals, and retailers of the other stuff Sears sold in store elsewhere. So in that respect I probably never bought anything else at Sears especially anything that would have had higher profit margins for them (appliances etc). In that regard maybe I’m part of the demise? I just never felt like they were competitive enough in either price or service. The deal is I’ll gladly pay more money for the exact same product even if the difference in cost is purely better service. This is why I frequent local hardware stores 9 times out of 10 versus HD and Lowes for most DIY stuff. For clothes that Sears sold I found better retailers.
The last straw for me was when Craftsman hand tool production was sent overseas and the pricing stayed the same or went higher in most cases. I whole heartedly will pay double / triple / quadruple the cost of a cheap import tool if the same tool is made here in the US employing US workers and is actually a good product (there are US made tools that are junk believe it or not). I’m not willing to pay the same price or higher prices for tools that are now imports. If that’s the case I’m just going to go to Harbor Freight and buy the same tool as a “throwaway”. A lot of tools you’ll never see 100% made in the USA ever again, especially ones involving electronics but we are more than capable of making amazing quality hand tools and keeping our own employed.