Here is a blast from the past. I figured this would be a good time to finally post this article about disappearing electronics departments at Sears. I am going to see what I can remember from these photos and give some commentary from April 2023, two years after the last Sears department store left the area. Sears Hometown made a brief come-back in late 2021, but by the Summer of 2022 those were gone as well. Dates of the photos are provided as known. I initially intended this to be a before and after article, but in many cases I was unable to document the departments as intended. Instead, this will serve as a simple documentation of the Sears electronics departments of the past.
Here is the Lufkin Sears as their electronics department was being eliminated. Store currently vacant except for the yearly Spirit Halloween pop-up.
Here is what the departments were eventually reduced to, small leftovers.
Now for Alexandria Mall in Alexandria Louisiana. We will see more of the same. Store currently vacant.
Empty video game cases. Video games were one of the first categories of electronic merchandise eliminated prior to the removal of most electronics from Sears stores. These photos are from Mall St. Vincent in Shreveport Louisiana. Store currently vacant.
Sears Pierre Bossier Mall, Bossier City Louisiana. Store currently vacant.
Sears Austin Texas, when electronics were still featured prominently at the 41st Street location even after the second floor was closed off. Store currently vacant.
And a view of the closed portrait studio across the aisle from the electronics.
An up-close view of the product aisles.
A random Xbox One in the case.
Mall of the Mainland, Texas City Texas. Replaced by World Gym.
Sears Broadway Square Mall, Tyler Texas. Replaced by Dick's Sporting Goods.
Sears Deerbrook Mall, Humble Texas. Store currently vacant with the exception of the yearly Spirit Halloween pop-up. I have a lot more to share from this old Sears location as this was my closest Sears department store.
Appliances later took over the former electronics department in the last couple of years the store was open. Here is the area just before they painted over the electronics department logos.
What the electronics department was later downsized to.
Anyone remember the Kenmore TV's, I certainly do.
And the last gasp....
Mall of the Mainland again, prior to the complete elimination of the department.
And one more time at Mall of the Mainland a few weeks later, almost gone!
Sears Post Oak, College Station Texas. Store mostly redeveloped into a Conn's Home Plus.
San Jacinto Mall Baytown Texas 2015. Store demolished, site currently under construction for new big-box shopping center development.
Sears Prien Lake Mall, Lake Charles Louisiana. The electronics department here was also very similar to the Woodlands Mall location. Store was demolished and the site is currently a grass lot.
The consolidation of the electronics department was slow here.
The video game cases here were pretty sad towards the end.
The Lake Charles Sears was built to be a competitor in the mid 1990's. Sadly, the store spent the last few years in business as an oversized behemoth with too much floor space once the electronics were phased out.
Sears Memorial City Mall Houston Texas. Similarly to what happened at the Deerbrook Sears with the electronics moving to an underused part of the store. Here is the downsized electronics department. Store was demolished and there is a redevelopment plan in place.
And the mattress section that replaced the old electronics department.
The same area after they repainted the walls.
Sears West Oaks Mall Houston Texas December 2015. Store currently vacant. This was one of the first Sears stores in the Houston area to eliminate their electronics department. The Sears in Pasadena also began eliminating their electronics department at around the same time.
Sears Willowbrook Mall Houston Texas December 2017. Store is currently vacant after Sears Hometown briefly reopened the store. These photos were taken after the glass partitions surrounding the area were removed.
Sears Baybrook Mall Webster Texas 2017. Store briefly reopened as a Overstock Mattress center and still hosts a yearly Spirit Halloween.
Sears Westwood Mall Houston Texas. Store redeveloped as a Momentum BMW dealership.
As for Sears in 2023, your choices of stores are pretty slim with just 17 locations remaining in the United States. Will we have a chance to visit one of them in 2023?
In many ways, I am kind of glad that you waited some years to post these photos because the big de-emphasis Sears had in their electronics department in around 2015 is so many years ago now that it is a bit of a fading memory. Heck, Sears' presence in Houston, not counting the Hometown Stores, is even a slightly faded memory. Thus, it is nice to relive these electronics departments via these photos.
ReplyDeleteEven in 2015, Sears' electronics departments were not nearly what they were in around 2008 and they certainly weren't what they were in the 1990s/early 2000s. Still, it is great seeing photos of those Sears blank media departments! It is pretty crazy to think that Sears was still selling blank VHS cassettes (8 hour T-160 cassettes at that!) and VHS-C cassettes in 2015! That stuff is virtually impossible to find now outside of thrift stores.
One of those Alexandria Mall photos of the video game case surprised me because it has an ad for a Dell laptop above the case. I didn't even realize any Sears were selling laptops in 2015! Of course, the sign for the laptop is so hidden that it would be easy for people to overlook it. I figure that if any Houston Sears had laptops then, it probably would have been Westwood Mall because they still had PC software for sale when I visited it in around 2014-5 even though all other Houston Sears stopped selling that some years prior.
Those photos of the Willowbrook Mall Sears come from the period where the electronics were really downsized from the decent selection they had not long before back when they still had the glass dividers up. While I wasn't sad to see the dividers go, it was sad to see the electronics department dismantled. That's one of those moments when you knew the end of Sears was near...and that's what happened locally at least.
I am hearing that the Greensboro, NC Sears is currently under liquidation. Even the small number of remaining Sears is getting smaller. The remaining stores are so distant that it is probably unlikely that I'll visit one again barring some kind of bizarre Eddie Lampert scheme kind of like those Hometown Stores.
I remember the Kenmore TVs! Didn't you buy one of those or am I misremembering that? I think that was a good attempt by Sears to capitalize on a valuable name, but it was too little, too late. At least they tried I suppose.
This post certainly didn't get made like I had hoped, but you are right it is good to look back several years later. My before and after idea was too ambitious for the amount of stores I was hoping to cover. The fact that these stores were beginning to close, and the staggered way they were closed, made it pretty difficult to go back to for the after photos.
DeleteI vaguely remember a handful of laptops still around Sears stores at that time, but they were being overshadowed by tablets and the Smart Home stuff. Sears was also the only place I saw an available Playstation 4 in 2013 when those things were nearly impossible to find. If you are ever in Lafayette Louisiana you can still visit the Sears Home and Life store as long as they are still there. If not, you will get to see it here later on today.
It was sad to see the decline of the electronics departments since Sears was the last department store to feature electronics. I had a feeling once the video games started disappearing that the rest of the electronics would soon follow. Unfortunately, the entire store disappearing would soon follow. Technically Willowbrook and Deerbrook still had electronics even as the stores were closing, but with a very small amount of odds and ends.
We almost bought a Kenmore TV, but decided on a Samsung for the kids because the resolution was better. Our last TV from Sears was an LG floor model that lasted about 4 years before half of the LED strips burned out. The Samsung TV was damaged by some horseplay and replaced. I wonder if the Kenmore TV would have been more durable, but it is too late to go back.
Really sad to see the progression of these departments. But cool to see them all documented and compiled in one place in this post.
ReplyDeleteI had much bigger plans for this post, but with the size of the area I cover we just couldn't get around enough to cover each of the stores that I featured here.
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