Aberdeen Sears included in latest closures; liquidation soon

Originally posted 9-1-19

Aberdeen, WA – As Sears Holdings continues closing stores as the company reorganizes, the Aberdeen location has managed to remain off the chopping block, until now.

Since the company, which features both Sears and Kmart stores, began closing locations prior to and following their October 2018 filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the local store has not been included in any lists of potential closures.

Sears was founded in 1893 and had featured multiple locations in Aberdeen, although located in South Aberdeen for decades as an anchor store for the local mall. Representatives had told KXRO in the past that the local store owned their building space and had been profitable, making them low in the risk of closures.

Following rumors of stores closing across the nation, KXRO reached out to Sears Holdings regarding the local store.

Larry Costello, PR Director for Sears/Kmart with the holding company TransformCo, in a statement to KXRO confirmed;

“After careful review, we have made the difficult but necessary decision to close the Sears stores in Aberdeen and Everett, Washington. Liquidation sales are expected to begin in mid-September and the stores are planned to close by mid-December.  We encourage customers to continue shopping on sears.com for all their product needs.”

It’s not known at this time what will be involved in the closure sales, although a number of other Sears closures feature almost identical statements.

On Sears.com, it describes the local store as “a hidden gem in Aberdeen, WA”, although it has not updated the location to reflect the Shoppes at Riverside who took over and renamed the South Shore Mall in 2016.

On August 6, Sears Holdings announced an additional 26 “large-format Sears and Kmart stores” would be closing late October through mid-November. The Aberdeen store was not on that list.

In their statement at that time, the company said that they had “worked hard to strengthen our vendor relationships, return our inventory levels to normal, and improve customer satisfaction and operations” over the past several months, although they “faced a number of challenges returning our stores to sustainable levels of productivity, including differences with Sears Holdings over our purchase agreement and a generally weak retail environment”.

The closures in August were said to be part of a plan “to accelerate the expansion of our smaller store formats which includes opening additional Home & Life stores and adding several hundred Sears Hometown stores after the Sears Hometown and Outlet transaction closes”.

While Sears Holdings has not posted an official news release on the latest closures, numerous news agencies point to a post on TheLayoff disussion board, where an anonymous poster lists an unconfirmed full list of the latest closing stores as;

Jacksonville, FL
Heath, OH
Aurora, CO
Corpus Christi TX
Oviedo FL
Carlsbad CA
Gaithersburg MD
Cincinnati OH
Bayamon PR
Everett WA
Washington PA
Aberdeen WA
Las Cruces, NM
Leesburg, FL

This list coincides with many news stories of regional areas regarding their local stores.

It’s not known how many employees will be impacted by the closure, although prior closure announcements had featured statements similar to “all eligible associates will be offered the same number of weeks of severance as offered to employees of Sears Holdings Corporation prior to that company’s Chapter 11 filing in October 2018”.