The Sears Holdings Corporation, which is projected to lose more than $2 billion this year, may seem to be another morality tale for bricks-and-mortar retailers in the age of Amazon, according to a New York Times editorial today. Like other retailers, the company is scrambling to adapt to today’s internet market. The question is whether it can do so before its cash runs out and the deal-making of its hedge fund chief executive, Edward S. Lampert is not enough to create more. Sears started as a catalog business, the Amazon of a century ago, where you could buy just about anything. But in recent years, Sears has struggled. The company has lost over $9 billion in the last five years. Since 2011, it has shut more than 150 of its big Sears stores and over 350 Kmart stores, and it has just announced the closing of another 150 stores. Its revenue has fallen to a projected $25 billion in 2016, from $42.6 billion in 2011, according to Standard & Poor’s Global Market Intelligence.
