Illinois Is Down To 2 Sears Stores–And One Of Them Is Closing

For the company that started out as a watch company back in the 1880s, the clock has been ticking for quite a while on how long they'll be in business.

Over the last number of years, we've watched what was at one time America's go-to store and catalog spiraling toward oblivion. Closing after closing in city after city, including right here in the Rockford area with the Sears location at CherryVale Mall closing its doors for good back in March of 2019.

Right now, Illinois only has two Sears "full-line" stores.

We'll be down to just one when the Sears store in the Chicago Ridge Mall closes its doors permanently in late April of this year.

Patch.com:

Sears Holdings started shuttering Sears and Kmart stores nationwide in 2018, including south suburban Sears stores in Orland Park, Park Forest, Matteson, Joliet and Calumet City. With the closing of the Chicago Ridge Sears, only the Woodfield Mall location in Schaumburg remains in Illinois.

For people who've been around for a while, seeing Sears fall as precipitously as it has over the last 10 years or so has been somewhat surprising when you consider that since just after World War II until the early 80s, Sears was America's largest retailer. Who knocked them off? K-Mart and Walmart were the tag-team that ended up putting Sears on the canvas.

MoneyInc.com has a piece loaded with little-known facts about Sears like this one:

You could find practically anything at Kmart that you could at Sears and the price was drastically reduced in most cases. Kmart didn’t hold the top position for long though. They would meet a similar fate when Walmart came along and took the number one position from both of the competitors.

Then, a little company named Amazon showed up, and...you know the rest.