Here is the Sears store at Town East Mall in Mesquite Texas. This was the first visit of my 4-mall Dallas and Fort Worth area trip in August 2020. Here is my early short Town East Mall post, click here.
The entrance on this side of the store had been sealed off.
The newish logo.
This Sears location had received a renovation not too long before this visit. The store had different signage and unique checkout areas.
Check out the department signage here, very different than other Sears stores.
Inventory was thin in some areas of the store as shown here. Not as bad as other locations in 2020, but not great either.
One of the checkout areas. This setup is similar to what many retailers have done. A set of checkouts with one line to stand in while you wait on checkouts to open up.
Near the escalator area. This store was in really good shape.
I wonder if this area had a skylight in the past that was covered up.
Second floor
The former electronics department. The baby department, vacuums, and mattresses had been stretched out across this area.
This signage was new looking. I had not seen this in another location. We are looking from the old electronics department towards the escalators.
Back to the rest of the electronics department.
Mattresses round off this corner of the store.
This store had a pretty sizable electronics department.
Appliances.
Closeout appliances.
Without a lot of closeout appliances, this area was thinning out.
Sporting goods.
Appliances looking towards the middle of the store.
Outdoor work clothes, this store had a large selection.
Lawn and Garden were pretty much eliminated by Sears in 2020, not much is left here.
Most of the former Lawn and Garden space was filled with items from the stockroom. Random tools, clearance items, old paint, industrial floor cleaner, and even some office supplies were out for sale.
No more batteries left either in Lawn and Garden.
Here is a display of Smart Sense items within the Sporting Goods department. Smart Sense was the Kmart generic brand of medical, hair and body, sundry, and household items. This was as close as you could get to a Kmart in Texas in August of 2020. It was pretty cool to see this setup, this was new to Sears stores and never made it down to the Houston area.
The other side of the Smart Sense display.
Another look at the random stuff for sale in the former Lawn and Garden department.
I forgot to mention floor tiles. These were extra floor tiles from the store flooring. If you wanted to put down Sears tile in your house, this was the place to get it from.
The industrial cleaners along with more floor tiles.
Some of the soft plastic display flooring was for sale as well.
There was so much random stuff for sale in this part of the store, I had to get some up-close photos. This is the kind of stuff that is usually for sale when stores close. This store ultimately closed on April 18 2021. You will get to see this store again here on the blog. That visit is from April 15, 2021 when I visited this store with Retail Mix USA, click here for that video.
Vintage Sears mini toolbox.
Just so much random stuff for sale.
Outlet covers, paint roller trays, clipboard, just random things.
The outdoor furniture area was thinning out as well.
Now for the tool department.
A little bit of Lawn and Garden stuff remained mixed in with the tools.
Tool sets spread out to fill the space.
Lots of space to fill, but not a lot of inventory left.
Even with just a few aisles left in the tool department, there was still not enough left to fill the shelves.
An interesting end cap advertisement.
A look across the store from the edge of the tool department.
More of the tool aisles.
I was surprised to see some hammers. The last two Sears stores in the Houston area had run out of hammers months before they closed.
The tools did not match the department signage anymore. They were just filling shelf space as best as they could.
This is about a quarter of the size of what this selection of tools used to be. They did a nice job of filling up this area, but a lot of popular sizes were sold out.
This newer department signage really looked nice.
The remains of the electronics department were in that cart. Mostly charger cables, cell phone cases, and a couple of random items left.
Another look as we walk towards the center of the store.
Escalator area in the center of the store appliances to the right, kids clothes/mall entrance to the left, and housewares behind me.
Housewares were located in the center of the store.
The housewares area was looking very thin.
From this photo the area looks good. Some of the new signage is here as well.
Inventory looks good from this angle.
But when you look closer, the shelves are not very full.
The former photo studio and drivers Ed. down past the housewares section. A curtain was put up to cover up the closed photo studio. In my later visit, we will walk into some of those areas of the store.
More views of the center of the second floor.
The checkout area is very easy to see from far away.
Down to the second floor, we see the jewelry and checkout counters.
This is the one section of the store that was closed off. By 2020, inventory at Sears stores was so thin sections of the store were being closed off.
Shoe department.
Men's clothing.
From the Mens clothing to the shoe department.
Check out the electronic price signs. I had not seen these on regular items before. The appliance departments had these at some stores.
Ladies Wear.
Now we will pop out into the mall for some logo shots. Here is the first-floor mall entrance.
Back into the store to finish this tour off. We are back in the Ladies clothing department.
Looking across the store to the Mens department again.
Optical was still open on certain days.
An up-close photo of the store entrance door. If you look close enough, you can see the signs with Covid restrictions on the right-side door.
While the blog might have just seen the last Kmart post, it's good to hear that there are still some Sears posts to come! Unfortunately, as I mention in more detail in the recent McAllen Kmart post, it looks like Sears Hometown will be closing their Willowbrook Mall and Humble locations here soon so that might limit how many more Sears posts we may see here. But, yeah, these are some great photos of the Town East Mall Sears, thanks for the photos.
ReplyDeleteThis is about as close as we're going to get to seeing an updated Sears. I think I remember seeing some signage and checkouts like this at Sears' Home & Life stores, and maybe at one or two downsized full-line stores that had to be remodeled, but I don't recall seeing it on a regular store like this. I think these updates would have helped a little bit, but given all the inventory problems and bad news surrounding Sears in the post-bankruptcy period, I don't think the updated signage package did much to boost this store's prospects. Oh well.
I'm guessing the Optical department was fully closed by August 2020 as I seem to remember a sign going up at the Willowbrook Mall Sears in January 2020 or so indicating that Sears Optical was going out of business nationally around Feb. 1, 2020 or so. It was probably open up til that point in 2020 though.
It's pretty crazy that this store was selling old store maintenance stuff and used tools from the ~1970s even before this store's closure was announced. I wonder if anyone bought those old flooring tiles or tools as Christmas presents for Christmas 2020, lol. In a year where toilet paper might have been a reasonable Christmas present, it's hard to eliminate any possibilities! The Smart Sense bandages and other random stuff is certainly a strange fit at a Sears store, but I guess it isn't any more strange than all the Centrum vitamins Sears stores were selling in around 2018-9 or so.
Some of those Sears home improvement things, like the garage doors, reminds me of Sears stores in the 1990s when they used to push home improvement stuff in store displays all the time. Not only did this store have that, but it looked like new signs as well. I wonder why we didn't get all of that down here in Houston.
Anyway, this is one of the nicer Sears we've seen. This store is an odd mix since it was renovated, but then also clearly in an early liquidation. Sears stores were such an odd mix in their last few years and I'm sure that's especially the case with the handful of remaining stores.
This store was a really cool one to visit. All of the other stores in the area were closing except this one. I was about all worn out on Sears since this was also the time that the North Shepherd store was closing. That post is going to take a lot of time to complete when I decide to get to it. This store and mall had a lot going for it. Despite the Sears closure, this mall is doing quite well.
DeleteI read the post on HHR about the Sears Willowbrook closing after seeing a link on the Sears Layoff page. I also paid a visit to the store on Saturday afternoon to get in my documentation of the store. The lady working there told me it would be open about another month or so. She also told me not to take photos of the store after wandering into the wide-open but closed off auto center. No big deal, I had already documented what I wanted to by that point. The mall entrance was closed off, but you could walk through the tarp tunnel.
I also visited the Fiesta store and thankfully the neon has not been taken down. It looks like they are organizing all of their stores the same way now. The 69 and Jensen store is set up the same way. I think Fiesta eliminated some products to squeeze everything into the aisles. Pallets of dry goods and other random things have taken up space in the areas where international foods were recently located.
Thanks for the update about the Willowchase Fiesta. I have not been back there since my initial discovery that they were renovating the store. I'm relieved to hear that the neon has survived so far. Fiesta seems to be getting a lot of design plans from their fellow stores owned by the Chedraui group. I'm okay with these floorplan resets as long as the store decor remains intact. I hope Fiesta does not eliminate the non-Hispanic international items as they are something that the suburban Fiestas are famous for, but I'm not sure if Fiesta is quite the destination for those items like they used to be in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to the growth of many ethnic supermarkets in the Houston area.
DeleteThat's too bad about getting hassled by the Willowbrook Mall Sears Hometown employee. It sounds like the Eddie Lampert Parkway, the tarp-lined one at least, is now a dead end street, but I suppose that's fitting for a store that is closing. Anyway, as I mentioned over at HHR in a comment to your recent comment about the Sears, I'm glad you were able to get some photos anyway. It'll make for a great blog post about. The very brief and unexpected return of Sears to Houston malls certainly deserves coverage on this blog.
I'm looking forward to seeing the North Shepherd Sears posts. I know you covered that store quite well so there will be a lot to see. While there might not be anymore new Kmart posts on the blog, I think you might have quite a few Sears ones left to post. Of course, Sears Hometown looks like it'll continue on in small towns at least for now and maybe in Sugar Land as well. It's always hard to tell what Eddie Lampert is up to though.
One thing that was odd with the two different Fiesta stores I visited were the differences in prices. I did visit one store on Saturday night and the other one on Sunday evening so that could explain the differences. A Gatorade 8 pack of bottles on Saturday for example was $7.77 up from $4.98 in June!!! At the store on Sunday the packs were $6.48 I believe. Crazy price swings for sure. It seems like they are decreasing the product selections for international foods and going with a consistent selection from store to store. Fiesta was known for a variety of products from store to store and I hope they don't wind up shrinking their selection anymore.
DeleteThe employee at the Sears was nice otherwise and we made a small tool purchase. I was able to get some photos through the tarp highway, it was funny to walk through that in person. I don't have any hope of another Sears comeback, but you never know. I wonder if the Sears Hometown stores were some kind of Fast Eddie attempt at showing prospective buyers that the empty anchor stores were still viable retail locations.
The remaining Sears articles I have are pretty robust. I would guess that I have around 50 backlogged articles. I still have a lot of electronics department photos that never quite fit into other posts. I have been planning on organizing those into a decline of Sears article. At first it was going to just be the decline of Sears electronics. Since the company is almost gone, I may change how I build that article.
I drove past Greenspoint mall today and there was some construction going on in the parking lot between the former Dillard’s and Sears. I wonder what’s being built
ReplyDeleteI noticed that as well a few weeks ago and drove around to see if I could find the permits for information. The old Sears auto center was demolished as well for whatever this new building will be. I hope I can save some of the red tiles from the old Sears mall storefront if they do decide to demolish the store in the future. With the development encroaching on the building, I can see them demolishing the Sears.
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