What was in the past the first electronics and household appliances retailer in the US, Sears filed for Chapter 11 filing to a New York bankruptcy court, as he had been predicting for months the blog Paola's house. In practice it failed. No surprises, least of all for suppliers, who had reduced deliveries for some time. Sears' competitors, on the other hand, also boast double-digit growth, toasting further fortunes. Ignoring or pretending to ignore that the pace of closures of chains and shopping centers in the US is very rapid and that, once the division of the remains of Sears is over, someone else will begin to stagger.
As for suppliers, Whirlpool, which had a contract with Sears as an OEM for the Kenmore brand, continued to supply maiaps but overall its claims should be worth less than 2 percent, giving the company seventh place as an unsecured creditor.
ELECTROLUX SUFFERS AMONG THE SUPPLIERS
As for the lack of sales by Sears of the group's appliances, for some time Whirlpool he had found alternative and new channels. Electrolux, despite having sought and found other commercial outlets, declared that in reality there was a blow to the accounts since it invoiced Sears for 10 percent of its total turnover in the USA. And he added that he will collaborate as much as possible so that the continuation of the sales of the shops, albeit reduced, can reduce the exposure which, translated into millions of dollars, has risen to 18,6. Daewoo raises $12 million while Samsung has credits of $2 million.
If the creditors, even though they have been on the alert for some time, pretend not to be very worried, the positive reactions of the competitors have been far more striking, almost all of whom obtained significant increases in market shares, dividing the spoils of the bankrupt group.
TOAST OF THE COMPETITORS
According to UBS, the biggest earners were giants such as Best Buy, Lowe's and the Home Depot, whose stores are 80 percent comparable to those of Sears, located no more than 15 minutes by car. . The exit from Capitre 11 management, despite a financed recovery plan and store closures, is not at all safe and the bankruptcies of Circuit City, CompUSA, and other giants of the American trade have already demonstrated this in recent years. Analyzing the causes of the Sears disaster, in fact, it emerges that repeated and prolonged financial mistakes, Amazon's commercial dumping, a failed reorganization and a gigantic delay in multi-channel and e-commerce are almost impossible to repair and avoid.
Sears and Kmart (the company's other brand) had, so to speak, the misfortune of having been managed for a long time by Eddie Lampert and his hedge fund ESL Investments which massacred – as the blog La Casa di Paola points out – both the coffer of his fund and that of Sears and Kmart sales since the 90s. Unfortunately, the proverb that "to err is human but to persevere is diabolical" always applies.
The other retailers are learning something from these unfortunate events, but analysts agree on a prediction: if Amazon, Alibaba and other big names in e-commerce are not contained within the confines of fair competition, the shopping centers and large-scale distribution and large-scale distribution will continue to close. In fact, 2018 will close with a record number of points of sale in various categories: around 9 compared to 6.900 in 2017, considered an almost unbeatable level. “It is in reality – writes Business Bourse – an Apocalypse that seems to have no end”.
