The Sears Home & Life store in Overland Park is going out of business and holding a liquidation sale as it clears out its inventory.
The store, 6327 W. 119th St., is the last vestige of the once-iconic department store retailer in the Kansas City area and the last Sears-affiliated store in the state of Kansas.
Sears Home & Life’s parent company filed for bankruptcy
- Sears Hometown, which is owned by private equity firm Transformco, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December.
- The next month, the company announced the closure of more than 100 stores nationwide, including six in Kansas and three in Missouri.
- But the Overland Park Sears Home & Life was not included in that announcement and local store officials told the Post at the time that they planned to remain open.
Sears Home & Life opened in Overland Park in 2019
- At approximately 15,000-square-foot, the 119th Street store has focused on selling mattresses, appliances and other home products.
- When it opened, the store was one of three locations that were part of Sears’ Home & Life concept, part of a larger rebrand after the retail giant’s 2018 bankruptcy.
- Recent reports have shown the other two Sears Home & Life stores — in Anchorage, AK, and Lafayette, La., — are also closed or in the process of closing.
Sears has closed thousands of stores in last two decades
- At its height in the early 2000s after a merger with Kmart, Sears operated more than 3,500 stores nationwide and was best known for anchoring indoor shopping malls across the U.S.
- As with many other brick-and-mortar retailers, Sears’ sales and revenue have steadily declined over the past two decades, leading to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2018 and Transformco’s acquisition of much of the company’s assets.
- According to its website, Sears now operates less than 80 retail locations nationwide, including traditional Sears outlets, Sears auto centers and Sears Hometown stores.
- The last traditional Sears department store in Johnson County — on Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park, once part of Metcalf South Mall — closed in 2017 and is now the site of a new mixed-use development centered around a gym and health club.
It’s unclear how long OP Sears Home & Life will remain open
- Transformco did not respond to the Post’s request for comment for this story.
- Signs in the windows of the Sears Home & Life on 119th Street says the store is closing and that everything is on sale.
