Sears is keeping Lands’ End, new chairman says

Despite widespread reports last week that the new Sears Holdings Corp. was looking to sell off its Lands’ End apparel unit, Sears intends to keep its upscale apparel brand, chairman Edward S. Lampert said.

“Lands’ End isn’t for sale,” Lampert told a meeting of shareholders last week at Sears’ headquarters in Hoffman Estates, IL. “It’s a great American brand, and a brand we could run very well.” That meeting had been held to finalize the merger of Kmart Holding Corp. and Sears, Roebuck and Co. as the new Sears Holdings Corp.

Reports had circulated that Sears was looking to sell Dodgeville, WI-based Lands’ End for a steep discount from the $1.9 billion it paid for it in 2002. Although Sears learned from Lands’ End better ways to coordinate online and offline merchandising, it hasn’t been able to leverage Lands’ End to improve overall softlines sales, says Ulysses Yannas, stock analyst with Buckman, Buckman & Reid in New York.

The new company has its work cut out for it in fitting Lands’ End better into the mix, especially now as it merges Sears with the more discount-oriented Kmart, experts say. “If Kmart hadn’t come along, Sears by now probably would have figured out better how to deploy the Lands’ End brand,” one industry insider says.