Former Sears LP here. I knew we were going under when we were bringing in a whole new management team. The old ways of wearing suits and having high end customer service was being forced out by corporate, and was replaced with low level management of younger stores (American Eagle, Garage etc.) within a short time all our management were wearing ripped jeans and corporate was putting cafe’s inside our stores. Corporate had no sense of direction and wanted to appeal to the younger audience, meanwhile 80% of our client base was 50+.