Sears Holdings Corporation - Fashion Company Profile
Sears Holdings Corporation was the holding company formed by the 2005 merger of Kmart and Sears - briefly the nation's third-largest retailer, with some 3,900 stores in its 2009 record - before its October 2018 bankruptcy and the 2019 sale of its surviving business to Transformco.
Company Snapshot
- Status
- Defunct - Sears Holdings filed Chapter 11 on October 15, 2018; its surviving stores and brands were sold to Transformco in February 2019 and the company was wound down
- Type
- Was public - Sears Holdings Corporation, Nasdaq: SHLD (delisted at the bankruptcy)
- Headquarters
- Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States (Kmart headquarters: Troy, Michigan)
- Founded
- March 24, 2005, by the merger of Kmart Holding Corporation and Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Company Profile
Sears Holdings no longer operates: the successor link below leads to Transformco, the ESL Investments company that bought the remaining Sears and Kmart stores and the Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard brands out of the bankruptcy for approximately $5.2 billion. Only a handful of Sears stores remain open under Transformco. This profile is kept as a historical record - the full 2009-era description of the merged company, its store formats and its brands is on the linked history page - because the scale it documents, two of America's defining retailers under one roof, is itself a piece of fashion and retail history.
The record this profile keeps of the company at its height is a 2009 summary, and it is worth reading as a measure of what was lost. Sears Holdings then operated approximately 3,900 full-line and specialty retail stores in the United States and Canada. Its proprietary brands - Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard - sat alongside licensed lines including Jaclyn Smith, Joe Boxer and Martha Stewart Everyday. The filing also preserves the Kmart formats in detail: the standard Kmart discount store of roughly 80,000 to 110,000 selling square feet, the Big Kmart format that debuted in Chicago on April 23, 1997, the still larger Super Kmart Centers open around the clock, and a Kmart store count of 1,327 discount stores and 52 Super Kmart Centers as of January 31, 2009.
Sears Holdings Corporation History
The earlier record for this company - its history, past brand line-ups, figures and photographs from the periods described - is kept on a separate page for historical reference.
Sears Holdings Corporation History & Historical Profile →Common Questions
When was Sears Holdings Corporation formed?
By the merger of Kmart Holding Corporation and Sears, Roebuck and Co., which closed on March 24, 2005. The combined company, headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, was then the nation's third largest retailer with about $55 billion in annual revenues.
When did Sears Holdings file for bankruptcy?
On October 15, 2018, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, after years of store closures and losses.
What happened to Sears Holdings' stores and brands?
Transformco (Transform SR Brands LLC), an affiliate of ESL Investments formed in February 2019, bought the surviving stores and brands - including Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard - for approximately $5.2 billion. Sears Holdings itself was wound down; only a handful of Sears stores remain under Transformco.
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References & Further Reading
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