Sears ready to step off the mall

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 10/25/2002 3:03:00 PM

Hoffman Estates, IL — Sears will open its first off-the-mall full-line store in West Jordan, UT, a suburb of Salt Lake City. The pilot store, with size yet to be determined, will open in the fall of 2003.

"We are now in a position of growing our store base," Sears chairman and ceo Alan Lacy told analysts during its annual meeting here last week. By going off-the-mall, a scenario long under consideration, "we will be more convenient to customers. We also will rethink the format."

Lacy also said that expansion for The Great Indoors would be held to two new stores for '03. "It's a big win with customers; it's very differentiated. But the investment level is too high."