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THE BIZNOB – Global Business & Financial News – A Business Journal – Focus On Business Leaders, Technology – Enterpeneurship – Finance – Economy – Politics & LifestyleTHE BIZNOB – Global Business & Financial News – A Business Journal – Focus On Business Leaders, Technology – Enterpeneurship – Finance – Economy – Politics & Lifestyle

Business

Business

Sears to Sell Kenmore Appliances On Amazon

Sears announced Thursday that it would begin selling Kenmore appliances on Amazon, Phil Wahba of Fortune reports.

By partnering with Amazon, Sears will bring its Kenmore products to a wider market than ever before. “The launch of Kenmore products on Amazon.com will significantly expand the distribution and availability of the Kenmore brand in the U.S.,” Sears Holdings CEO Eddie Lampert said in a statement.

Sears Holdings’ stock jumped over 20% on the news in early trading Thursday, to $10.50 a share, but have since modulated to $9.78 per share as of 1:00 Eastern, still an 11% increase since the market closed Wednesday.

Kenmore appliances will also be integrated with Amazon Alexa, as Sears looks to capitalize on a recent boom in the “smart home” industry, which sells high-tech home appliances that can, among other things, be controlled remotely.

“Voice is a natural interface for the smart home, so we’re thrilled that customers can now simply ask Alexa to interact with their Kenmore Smart appliances,” said Charlie Kindel, Director of Alexa Smart Home. “We’re excited that Kenmore has added Alexa functionality to these products and we think customers will love the convenience of cooling their home, starting their laundry, and more, using only their voice.”

J.C. Penny is making its own strides into the “smart-home” sector, and in late June Best Buy announced plans to showcase the Amazon Echo and the Google Home, which can be used to power “smart appliances,” more prominently at 700 of its stores.

The Amazon partnership marks Sears latest effort to compensate for declining sales numbers by licensing out or liquidating its proprietary brands. In January, Sears sold Craftsman, its line of tools, to Stamley Black and Decker in a $900 million deal.

“We continuously look for opportunities to enhance the reach of our iconic brands to more customers and create additional value from our assets,” Lampert says.

Sears Holdings, which owns Kmart in addition to Sears, has seen drastic drops in important performance metrics over few years, largely because Amazon continues to dominate the retail sector. Since 2012, Sears Holdings’ total revenue has fallen almost 50%, according to eMarketer.com. Its online sales, which consistently account for less than 10% of total revenue, have dropped almost 40% since 2013.

Sales per store have risen more than 11% since 2012, but Sears has been forced to close almost half its stores in the past five years. As of June 2017, after Sears’ announcement that it would close 72 more stores, approximately 1200 stores were operational, as opposed to 2073 in 2012, Hayley Peterson of businessinsider.com reports. Almost 900 Sears stores (43%) have shut their doors in the past half-decade.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s total revenue has soared by over 130% since 2012. That year, the company reported just over $61 billion in revenue; in 2016, it brought in almost $136 billion. Gross profits have jumped by 235% since 2012, from about 15 billion to just under 51 billion.

Sears is not the only retail company to join forces with the eCommerce giant, which has so long been the enemy of brick-and-mortar operations. Spencer Soper of Bloomberg  reported on June 21 that Nike was set to begin selling shoes directly through Amazon. Nike products were already sold on Amazon by third-parties, but many of them were knockoffs.

Nike’s annual revenue, unlike Sears’, has continued to trend upward over the past five years, as has the company’s stock. Still, by hopping on the back of Amazon, the company stands to make exponential gains. Jackie Wattles of CNN cites a Goldman report that says the partnership could increase Nike’s annual revenue by over 150%, from $200 million to $500 million.

Sears’ and Nike’s partnerships with Amazon could spur a new trend toward cooperation rather than competition between online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores. Traditional retailers are presumably employing an “if you can’t beat them, join them” logic, while Amazon jumps at the opportunity to offer established and well-renowned brands such as Kenmore on its site.

The alliance makes since, even if Sears and Amazon have been sworn enemies since the latter began cutting into the former’s profits.

Featured Image via Flickr/Raymond Shobe


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