Walmart To Crush Kmart Next Year?

A recent Time magazine article says a new Walmart program called Project Impact seeks to beat down its competitors. We didn’t know that was anything too new, but apparently the company is shifting to a higher gear in its efforts.

Says retail consultant Burt Flickinger III: “They’ve got Kmart ready to take a standing eight-count next year.” He also predicts the new measure will give Toys “R” Us and Rite Aid some serious problems.

Could Kmarts Become Drive-Thru Warehouses?

Sears Holdings Chairman Edward Lampert revealed a plan at the company’s annual meeting that would convert Kmart stores into warehouses where consumers would order products online and then pick them up at the facility. Called MyGofer, the first pilot store has opened in Joliet, IL, where shoppers can even get their items at a drive-thru.

Lampert didn’t give a timeline for rolling out more MyGofer’s across the portfolio. “But if it works, it could give Lampert a way to convert a lot of high-cost stores into low-cost warehouses that still generate a good deal of revenue,” a Chicago Tribune article says.

Sears’ Lampert Talks Recession, Not Real Estate

In his annual letter to shareholders yesterday, Sears Chairman Ed Lampert has a lot to say. In a Chicago Tribune article about it today, one reporter bothered to check the behemoth note’s word count, and it clocked in at 8,500.

We’ve looked it over with the intention of saving Counter Culture readers some time, trying to find what would be of most interest the retail real estate community, and we found the future of Sears’ real estate summed up in one unsatisfying sentence: “We will be closely monitoring stores throughout 2009.”

My Old Circuit City is a…Church!?!?!

Do you ever get jealous?

We did when we recently heard about Big Box Reuse, a book published late last year that was written by Julia Christensen. The author went around the country and looked a creative ways in which former big-box stores were converted into other, creative uses.

Why can’t we come up with these ideas?

This Holiday’s All About Sales

People might shop this holiday season after all – if retailers keep slashing their prices. This BusinessWeek article says that Old Navy has pairs of gloves for $1, and even Saks has slashed prices on some items by almost half.

Says retail analyst Jennifer Black: “”I have never seen any environment like this. The fight is on … They are all scared.”

Sears Holdings Is Shutting Stores

This isn’t big news…yet. Sears Holdings is closing 12 underperforming stores – eight of them Kmart units and four of them Sears location.

We know, this is an extremely small number in comparison to the 3,800 the company owns across the country. But how long will it take before we see mass closures?