Milwaukee, WI, February 28, 2006--Four Wisconsin Kmart stores are among 14 in the United States that will be turned into Sears Grand stores.
The Wisconsin stores are in Menomonee Falls, West Bend, Oshkosh and West Baraboo, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"These are the next wave of the off-mall format," said Chris Brathwaite, spokesman for Sears Holdings Inc., which operates both Kmart and Sears stores.
Since Kmart Corp. bought Sears, Roebuck and Co., last year, 50 Kmart locations around the U.S. have been changed to Sears Essentials stores, a sort of hybrid of both formats, but with Sears brands. There are no Sears Essentials stores in Wisconsin.
Last week, Sears said it was dropping the Sears Essentials format in favor of Sears Grand, a large-scale, off-mall format that Sears introduced at just a few locations before the merger.
One of the earliest Sears Grand stores opened in 2004 in 200,000 square feet at Gurnee Mills in Illinois. The Craftsman-meets-cornflakes format aims to compete with big box chains such as Target offering Sears tools, appliances and apparel, plus a small selection of packaged and frozen foods, health and beauty products and lawn and garden supplies, sporting goods, books, magazines and greeting cards.
The Sears Essentials stores were smaller versions of the Sears Grand design, in about 84,000 square feet. They will be upgraded and turned into Sears Grand stores, and all new conversions will be made under the Grand name, the company said last week.
"It's more than just a name change," Brathwaite said Monday, adding that Sears wants to improve the way the stores look.
"We're creating a 'store of shops' feel."
"I assume what it's going to be is a tweak on the Essentials," said Neil Stern, a partner at McMillan Doolittle, a Chicago retail consulting firm. "There were some issues with how much money they spent to do the conversion. There was a sense that, on the first pass, they didn't do enough to make it look better."
George Whalin, head of Retail Management Consulting in San Marcos, Calif., said the Sears Essentials stores were poorly conceived and confusing to shoppers.
"There wasn't much to distinguish them from a Sears or a Kmart," Whalin said. "How does the customer know what's in a Sears Essentials store? Or a Sears Grand?"
Sears expects to keep the stores open during nearly all of the conversion process. Employees at the Kmart stores will need to apply for their jobs if they want to continue to work at the stores after the conversion to Sears Grand, Brathwaite said.
Sears chose the Kmart locations for conversion to Sears Grand looking for areas where the demographics match the Sears customer profile, Brathwaite said. Sears shoppers typically have higher incomes than Kmart customers.
