Is former retail giant Sears making a comeback? (2024)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- “Welcome back” signs were plastered near the entrances of a once-vacant Sears store in Burbank, California, this past Black Friday and a mix of mattresses, appliances, clothing and accessories filled the selling floor. In a small section of the Town Center Mall, the storied retailer quietly welcomed back shoppers for doorbuster holiday sales without fanfare or a flashy circular. Suddenly, the struggling, bankrupted brick-and-mortar portion of the Sears business was back.

“I’m just really happy they reopened. It feels like the Sears I remember, which is good,” Katherine Sage, a shopper who stopped into Sears to pick up a polo shirt for her son, told a reporter with CNN Business. “I think they have good products; I think their mattresses are awesome.”

The former retail behemoth, which was perhaps most famous for its historic, money-saving catalog, started as a watch company in 1886 before shifting to mail-order goods in the 1890s.

The first retail store opened in Chicago in 1925, SearsArchives.com noted, and by 1927 there were close to 30 stores in operation. The retailer expanded rapidly over the next few decades, operating 600 stores before World War II. At the close of its 2000 fiscal year, Sears was maintaining 863 mall-based retail stores.

But there was a Kmart merger in 2005, followed by a slow pivot to e-commerce and increased competition from other big-box retailers. By 2018, Sears filed for bankruptcy and gradually began closing stores, shuttering the 46-year-old Staten Island location in 2019. According to the company’s website, only 12 stores currently remain.

This Burbank relaunch, however, coupled with another new Sears reopening in Union Gap, Washington, have business experts rethinking the brand’s sustainability.

“Big stores that offer a large variety of products, but do so in a curated way, putting together products that you want ­– those are thriving,” Simeon Siegel, a retail analyst at BMO Capital Markets, told CNN, noting that it is still possible for a store with strong brand-name recognition, like Sears, to make a comeback, even in the internet age.

“Recognizing that there is value in a brand name, even if that brand went out of business, is not something new,” he added. “You watched another company buy Bed Bath and Beyond’s intellectual property immediately after it went out, because a brand is a tough thing to kill.”

Other experts said they are doubtful.

“I don’t think it’s a serious attempt at revival,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData’s retail division, told the publication, hypothesizing that Sears’ holding company, Transformco, hasn’t yet found tenants for many of its retail locations due to challenges facing the overall retail sector, so they’re giving Sears & Roebuck one last go.

“I think there a lot of locations where retailers just don’t want to lease out that space, and so I think the view is ‘if no one is going to lease it out, rather than it sitting there idle, we might as well try and monetize it,’” Saunders said.

Shoppers are sparse in the Burbank Sears, CNN noted, and some are skeptical that Kenmore, Craftsman and other Sears staples will resonate with new generations of buyers.

“I think they need to consult with the younger generation to find out more of what they want,” Sage told CNN Business. “Keep the products that people go in for, but innovate.”