SANTA ANA, Calif. _ Susan Romero remembers how she welled with pride when her family bought its first washer and dryer in 1968. At Sears, of course.
"My whole kitchen, my whole house was furnished by Sears," said Romero, 74, who has shopped at the retailer for 50 years. "I go to other stores, but I always come back here. It's always full of what I need."
Once an essential part of life for American consumers like Romero, the 123-year-old icon for a graying generation is sinking.
"It's so sad," Romero said, looking across the deserted aisles at a Burbank, Calif., store.
The year's end inspires holiday-shopping nostalgia for its loyal customers, but it brings mostly gloom for once-mighty Sears, including an adjusted loss of $333 million for the third quarter that landed as Black Friday sales were being tallied.
The Illinois-based retailer announced this year that it would shutter 76 stores across the country. It's also considering selling off its most popular and enduring brands: Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard.
Sears isn't alone; most of the chain's traditional mall-anchor peers are struggling, too, their customers wooed to discounters, young-skewing specialty merchants and online titan Amazon.
Across the mall, however, 114-year-old competitor J.C. Penney has logged a surprising, against-the-wind comeback.
Casting aside the trendy designs and one-price-fits-all strategy of former CEO Ron Johnson, JCP appears to have reconnected with its midlevel market after years in decline. Once at death's door, JCP is scrapping head-to-head with Sears for the admittedly shrinking midlevel, brick-and-mortar market with doorbusters and a strong connection between its websites and its mall stores.
It has even gambled by returning major appliances to the sales floor.
The company rushed to open up 500 new appliance showrooms by October, which it said helped raise sales 2 percent that month.
"We literally touched and rearranged one half of our stores to accomplish this reset," CEO Marvin Ellison told investors in November. "We felt it was important to enter this appliance business in a meaningful way going into key holiday selling periods."
The sales bump came on the heels of a three-year period that saw the chain close more than 80 stores.
Regardless of how they fare, some analysts see the fates of the two consumer stalwarts as tied, two legacy companies choosing divergent paths to an uncertain future.
"Sears and J.C. Penney have similar issues," said Ira Kalb, professor at USC Marshall School of Business. "The world of retailing has changed, and to date, neither has done a very good job of adjusting."
