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April 28, 2008
String of Sears Home Appliance Showrooms to open in Utah
By Barbara Rattle
The Enterprise
A group of people who recently moved from Florida to Utah plans to open six Sears Home Appliance Showrooms along the Wasatch Front, offering not only Sears-brand appliances but other major brands such as General Electric, Jenn-Air, Frigidaire, KitchenAid, Bosch, LG, Maytag and Whirlpool.
Sears Holdings Corp., parent company to both Sears Roebuck & Co. and Kmart, developed the home appliance store concept about a year ago and launched it in Houston. Since then, a handful of additional stores have opened and been so successful that between 70 and 80 more are slated to open this calendar year, said Brian Thomas, who holds the exclusive rights to open Sears Home Appliance Showrooms in the Salt Lake metropolitan area. The showrooms are privately owned by independent businesspeople but are designed and supported, in terms of installation and delivery, by Sears.
The first Utah store will open in mid-May in the Clinton Pines shopping center in Clinton. Last week, Thomas inked a deal for a second store in the Quarry Bend development in Sandy. Each store will measure approximately 5,600 square feet.
"We're going to be in Sandy, Tooele, Clinton and Orem and on the west side of Bangerter -- and hopefully a few more," Thomas said.
"With all the urban expansion and the expansion of the suburbs in virtually every area of the country, Sears realized that the one area of sales they've seen an annual increase in is the appliances," Thomas said. "So they devised this store available for private ownership. These stores are going to be phenomenal because they operate much more profitably. The overhead is much lower because all they sell are appliances. It's a comfortable place, it's a place where kids can relax and watch TV in a nice protected area. Plus what's happened in the last five to 10 years is that the female shopper has become the dominant appliance shopper, and they know what they want. Sears actually designed these stores around a woman's taste. They really make it beautiful. They have computer workstations so you can sit down with a trained person and see what it would look like with stainless steel over here, panel over there. When you walk into the big home improvement stores, you almost have to hunt for help. This is designed so that someone can stand next to you right away. They carry every single brand you can imagine. If you want to buy an LG washing machine, half the people out there don't carry them. Maytag doesn't, Lowe's doesn't. Sears has really been able to keep the dominant role in the home appliance industry because they do carry every single brand that you can imagine outside maybe the obscure European brands that haven't really made it big in the U.S. yet. Even Electrolux, which is just barely coming to the U.S. market now, weĠre going to carry."
Shipping and installation will be handled by staff at full-sized Sears stores due to their proximity to most customers, he said.
Thomas, whose family is from Utah and who served with a Tooele-based unit as a Marine reservist during Operation Desert Storm, said he sold his medical products distribution company in southern Florida to return to Utah, "which I've always considered home" and launch the new Sears appliance concept. He has brought with him several key people who helped him to become a success in the Sunshine State.
John Briggs of NAI Utah Commercial Real Estate is assisting Thomas with Utah site selection.
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