Sears is starting its next chapter with openings instead of closings.
The retailer, which emerged from bankruptcy in February, announced Thursday that it will open three new “Sears Home & Life” stores in May.
The small-format stores will range in size from 10,000 to 15,000 square feet and located in Anchorage, Alaska; Lafayette, Louisiana, and Overland Park, Kansas, Sears said in a statement.
Peter Boutros, chief brand officer for Sears and Kmart and president of Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard brands, said in a statement that the new stores “will carry power categories where Sears has a real strength: Appliances, mattresses and our home services business.”
Sears has closed more than 3,500 stores and cut about 250,000 jobs in roughly the last 15 years as sales cratered, leading to the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in October.
The company was on the brink of liquidation, but its largest shareholder and former CEO Eddie Lampert’s hedge fund ESL Investments made a $5.2 billion offer for the company that was approved in February by a federal bankruptcy judge. About 425 stores and 45,000 employees were transferred to ESL.
Now, almost two months later, Sears says in its statement that the openings are “part of a new era.”
“We are here to serve these communities and this is part of our strategy to maintain a presence in markets where we have right-sized our footprint,” Boutros said. “Sears Home & Life supports our strategic plan to become a stronger, more profitable business and these test stores will enable us to learn and improve as we move forward.”
Also on Thursday, the company’s Kenmore brand announced in a statement “an expansion of its line-up of smart appliances integrated with Amazon Dash Replenishment.” The brand’s smart laundry appliances and dishwashers can now “automatically reorder goods from Amazon the moment more are needed.”
In 2018, Kenmore’s smart refrigerators were integrated with Dash Replenishment so customers could automatically reorder water and air filters when they need replacing.
According to the statement, with the smart washers, dryers and dishwashers, “customers may now opt to have laundry detergent, dishwasher pods, rinse aid or dryer sheets reordered automatically on Amazon.com when they need replacing.”