[legion]

Sears owned most of its locations prior to Eddie Lampert taking over. He sold the locations to his REIT. I've long thought that Eddie Lampert's bet was that even if Sears went out of business, he'd make money on the real estate that he forced them to sell. Well, guess what? Most malls are not doing well and finding replacement tenants is difficult.

His best bet would have been to revive the catalog business online, put money into Sears' backend systems (where everything requires a follow-up phone call or two to complete and which haven't been changed since the 1980s), and invest in the stores by transforming them into hybrid retail locations/order fulfillment centers/order pickup centers.