美国国家公共电台 NPR Its Survival In Doubt, Sears Struggles To Transform Once Again

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

One of the biggest names in retail 1 a century ago was Sears, Roebuck & Company. Sears was the amazon.com of its time, a booming innovator 2 that spread merchandise and dreams across the country by mail order and department stores. Now, even Sears officials say its future could be in doubt, though they say they have plans to make sure the retail icon 3 survives as NPR's Cheryl Corley reports.

CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE 4: Say the name Sears these days and retail giant may not be the first thing that comes to mind. Despite its deep financial troubles though, Sears is still a top retailer 5. Nancy Koehn with the Harvard Business School says in its early days, Sears was like Amazon today, a retailer of great disruption. For Sears, it meant a pathbreaking strategy of offering all sorts of merchandise and catalogs and building department stores in remote places with ample parking.

NANCY KOEHN: It wasn't the Internet but it was the same idea that no matter where you are, you can touch and feel and imagine what these different products could mean in your life by virtue 6 of an outreach - a distribution channel that an imaginative and gutsy retailer, in this case Sears, had created and then invested in and then enlarged.

CORLEY: I'm standing 7 on a porch of a house in Elgin, Ill., about 40 miles northwest of Chicago. And this house is distinctive 8 because...

REBECCA HUNTER: This is a Sears Roebuck mail order kit 9 home.

CORLEY: Dr. Rebecca Hunter, an architectural historian, says this arts-and-crafts-style bungalow 10 was called The Osborne in the Sears catalog. It's one of about 200 Sears homes in Elgin.

HUNTER: Framing boards were cut at the mill and numbered so that your builder would know how to put them together.

CORLEY: Sears sold 60,000 to 70,000 pre-cut kit houses. Fast forward to today as the winds of change blow through the retail industry, bringing the dominance of Amazon, the rise of e-commerce and big box discount retailers 11. It's left brick-and-mortar stores reeling.

Despite its merger 12 with Kmart in 2005, Sears has consistently lost millions of dollars over each quarter. It's closed hundreds of stores, slashed 13 jobs and sold off key assets like the Land's End clothing line and its legendary 14 Craftsman 15 brand, although both will continue to be sold at Sears. Independent retail analyst 16 Sucharita Mulpuru says it hasn't worked.

SUCHARITA MULPURU: There are just so many onerous 17 forces relating to competition. I think that no matter what they do, they're fighting a losing battle.

CORLEY: In a memo 18, Sears CEO Eddie Lampert says Sears is taking decisive action to return to profitability and to become a new kind of retailer. Some analysts 19 accuse Lampard of sucking the value out of the company, selling off its most marketable assets.

Then there's that line in Sears recent annual report to federal regulators which states there's, quote, "substantial doubt related to the company's ability to continue as a going concern." Leena Munjal, a Sears senior vice 20 president in charge of retail operations, says that reports of the company's demise 21 are exaggerated.

LEENA MUNJAL: Do we have challenges? Absolutely, just like many other retailers out there. And we're all trying to figure out what are the changes we need to make to our business models to be able to rise to those challenges.

CORLEY: Sears' transformation 22 plan includes a membership program called Shop Your Way. Customers collect points they can redeem 23 when they shop at Sears. The company's also worked on ways to make it more convenient for customers to shop online or on their phones.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Attention, Sears members...

CORLEY: The Sears at Woodfield Mall, about 30 miles northwest of Chicago, is huge. There's clothes, fitness equipment, aisles 24 of gleaming appliances. Carla and Jeremy Lang, pushing their twin 18-month-old sons in a stroller, were looking at ovens and stoves. Carla says they've heard about the store's financial troubles.

CARLA LANG: Like, we've read stuff online that they're, you know, maybe closing stores and whatnot. And - but, I mean, we still come here. It's close by.

CORLEY: There are others though, loyal past shoppers who haven't been in a Sears for years. Susan Mullen has fond memories of the store but says she's not sure Sears' efforts to transform itself will work.

SUSAN MULLEN: It fits no niche 25. You know, it's not a discount place. It's not high-end. It's just - it has no identity anymore.

CORLEY: Sears Vice President Leena Munjal says as a $20-billion-plus company, Sears is still important to many. And she invites former customers to give the company another chance while it implements 26 changes.

It's all part of the effort to counter the predictions of a slow death for Sears while bolstering 27 the reputation of a company that's been in business for more than a century. Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.

(SOUNDBITE OF ODDISEE SONG, "THE CARTER BARRON")