Sears Holdings Opens 200th Lands End Store

Well that did not take long at all.

Just two week ago I commented that the Lands end store in a store concept was on track and Sears Holdings (SHLD) announced this past week that they have reached to 200 store goal ahead of schedule.

To celebrate the opening of the 200th Lands' End Shop at Sears , the company is asking customers to share where they'd like to see the next Shop located. click here
"We've had an overwhelming response from customers to the Lands' End Shops at Sears," said David McCreight, president, Lands' End. "People write to tell us how thrilled they are to have us in their communities. We also receive a number of letters saying 'we hear you are in Sears -- when are you coming to my town?'"

Lands' End will accept customer suggestions for the location of the next Lands' End Shop at Sears between September 25 and December 31, 2007. Customers can send their suggestions to nextshop@landsend.com, by calling 1-800-800-5800

"We've had an overwhelming response from customers to the Lands' End Shops at Sears," said David McCreight, president, Lands' End. "People write to tell us how thrilled they are to have us in their communities. We also receive a number of letters saying 'we hear you are in Sears -- when are you coming to my town?'"

I have been saying since February that the future of Sears retailing is the Land's End concept. Now, that being said we need some more information when earnings are released. For instance, we know that Lands end will report another record year for sales and earnings. But, when you double your locations sales and earning are bound to produce record results. Now that Lands End is becoming a more dominant earnings driver for Sears Holdings, we need to know how it is doing.

While I agree with Lampert that same store sales are not the end all be all metric for retailers, if Lands End is going to be the future, we need to know how the stores with the store-in-a-store (SIS) concept are performing vs those that do not have it. Are the retail operation at these locations experiencing positive results? If they are not, at least is the decline less that those without them?

My opinion is that those stores with the SIS concept are experiencing much better results than those without. Even if sales are level, profitability should be far greater. Lampert could easily boost shares and quell the naysayers out there by releasing this information. But, he may keep the results under wraps while he finishes buying the $2 billion worth or stock he wants at the current low prices.

I do not expect them to break it out at the next earnings announcement but I would like to see it when the annual results are released. If the results are what I anticipate them to be, it would illustrate positive momentum on the retailing level and really go along way to help shareholders (of which Lampert is the largest).

On another note. It is real satisfying to see Lampert not let anything stop him from accomplishing stated goals to shareholders. It would have been real easy to slow down the expansion given the current retail environment and just focus on share repurchases. As a shareholder it is nice to know that when the Chairman says "we are going to do "X"", it gets done.

 Subscribe in a reader