We are now due to lose our last two Sears stores in my city by March, according to the latest press release, but even beyond that it is really difficult to imagine Sears/KMart lasting until summer 2019. As an uninvolved potential customer, I'll tell you a quick story ...
My washing machine died about 8 months ago, had to go shopping for a new one. I knew what type of machine I wanted (old-school, top-load w/spindle), so that was a great way to weed out potential vendors. Sears was in the mix (they carried the type of machine I was after) and they topped my list at the beginning of my search, because I figured they'd be offering at least one of the best price deals, thanks to the struggles I'd been reading about. Wrong! They fell about middle-of-the-pack on price, with Best Buy and even JC Penney beating them by $20-50 or more. I finally narrowed things down to the exact machine I wanted and three stores carried this: Sears, Best Buy, and one other I can't remember now. It all came down to delivery specifics - cost and the ability to schedule delivery for the exact day I was wanting to receive the item. It wasn't even close. Sears wasn't able to deliver until about 1.5 weeks after when I wanted to receive the machine, while Best Buy let me pinpoint my date and time of day (am., pm., etc). They also offered lower prices for haul away, etc.
I was really surprised at this. I figured, given the death-woes I'd been reading about, Sears would be trying harder.
This past Black Friday, I visited a large local mall with my niece from about 3-6 p.m. The entire mall was humming - packed, actually - even that late in the day. I had to walk through Macy's to get into the mall, and it was a difficult journey - most of the aisles were jammed with people standing in line or examining merchandise. I had to zig-zag through the clothing racks to get to the mall entrance. Macy's had a DJ spinning discs at their entry-way, and they'd set up several dozen fold-out chairs people could use to cool their heels and take a load off for a few minutes. A bit later I had to run out to my car to drop off some packages and I purposely cut through Sears which was situation next to the Macy's, because I wanted to check out the action there. Ghost town. I saw maybe ten or twelve people shopping on the floor I walked through, and it seemed like there weren't even sales going on. At least there was a significant lack of signage about big Black Friday discounts. It was something of a bizarro-world; just outside Sears entryway it was like a beehive of fast-paced activity, but within the Sears store itself, one could have ballroom danced with a partner down any of the aisles without fear of bumping into anyone.
You can't make a go of it in retail without customers, and the customers just ain't gonna be there if you don't carry stuff they want to buy. Bankruptcy means that many vendors are going to get stiffed, meaning they're going to be hard-pressed to find quality manufacturers willing to sell to them.
As for KMart, forgetaboutit. Really can't see much reason for them to exist, not when Target makes it so fun to shop.
It's really difficult to imagine Sears/KMart existing much longer and frankly I can't think of many reasons to consider shopping there. Too many competitors are doing things too much better to bother.