Sears Is Turning Shuttered Stores Into Data Centers 137
miller60 writes "Servers may soon fill the aisles where shoppers once roamed. Sears Holdings is seeking to convert former Sears and Kmart stores into Internet data hubs. Some stand-alone stores and distribution centers may be repurposed as data centers, while mall-based stores can be converted into disaster recovery sites, the company says, offering access to stores and eateries for displaced workers who may be on site for weeks. Then there's the wireless tower opportunity. Seventy percent of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Sears or Kmart store, and these rooftops can be leased to fill gaps in cell coverage. It's not the first effort to convert stores into IT infrastructure, as Rackspace is headquartered in an old mall, and companies have built data centers in malls in Indiana and Maryland. But Sears, which operates 25 million square feet of real estate, hopes to make this strategy work at scale." Also at Slash DataCenter.
Satisfaction guaranted or (Score:5, Funny)
Xbox One server centers (Score:2)
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No, that's just a result of their Windows 8 adoption strategy.
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Yes, they are buying up all those Win8 tablet-laptops and installing them as servers.
Course, they'll wipe them and install RedHat.
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Well I will only be satisfied with the service if I get my data back.
New HDD in Isle 6, New HDD in Isle 6! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't understand why place data centers in urban mall environments where property value is supposedly higher?
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Because the cost to retrofit an old and empty store costs significantly less than trying to build a new location from the ground up, once you consider the acquisition of land, the cost of construction plus any infrastructure costs (water, sewer, roads, electricity, possibly gas lines as well - though waste heat may be used to heat the building during winter, if required).
Re:New HDD in Isle 6, New HDD in Isle 6! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the cost to retrofit an old and empty store costs significantly less than trying to build a new location from the ground up, once you consider the acquisition of land, the cost of construction plus any infrastructure costs (water, sewer, roads, electricity, possibly gas lines as well - though waste heat may be used to heat the building during winter, if required).
I don't know... sure you're saving on a bunch of stuff. But you're talking about a building that was never made to handle the kind of stuff a data-center needs.
For SOME projects, sometimes starting from scratch is easier and cheaper than trying to retrofit an older / existing thing. Because by the time you tear down section A to rebuild it, that's a lot of time and money right there. I don't know if there's enough tear-down in this scenario to qualify but it's something to consider.
I've worked in a number of stores. Their power situation stunk. In the year 2000 I had to run the aisles and look up prices when the power went out for like 1/2 a day but the boss wanted to stay open. Meanwhile another store I worked at had power issues from time to time. And that was just for running lights, some registers, a photo machine, and a couple of PC's. There wasn't even a refrigerated section.
So you're talking about re-doing the power INTO the place as well as the power INSIDE the place.
Then you have to worry about cooling. No raises floors. Weak units. Not laid out for maximum air flow. You're re-doing a lot for the A/C.
Then security. Some stores have building that aren't exactly well protected if someone really wanted in. Sure there's an alarm but when one whole wall is plexi, the walls are thin, and the doorways weren't setup for protection. It's hard to really offer much protection.
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Raised floor is a thing of the past. With all the heavy stuff coming in just for storage, ie EMC VMAX that weighs ~24,000 pounds for 9 bay, it's best if it and everything else is on the concrete floor. Then you install in-row cooling and cold aisle containment. Heat will do what it naturally does which is rise, you want the cold air to be contained who cares about the rest of the data center if it's hot, you just want your servers/equipment cold. Everything from power to cabling to the water for the in-
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Did you not read the article? It specifically said stand alone stores and distribution centers. A distribution center is not a urban mall area and stand alone stores are just that, a stand alone store located on property they own and not part of a mall area kind of like the sears appliance outlet near me that closed but still sits on private property and not located in or near a shopping center or direct urban area.
Im guessing no you did not read a thing, you saw the headline and at best skimmed the article
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Did you not read the article? It specifically said stand alone stores and distribution centers. A distribution center is not a urban mall area and stand alone stores are just that, a stand alone store located on property they own and not part of a mall area kind of like the sears appliance outlet near me that closed but still sits on private property and not located in or near a shopping center or direct urban area.
Im guessing no you did not read a thing, you saw the headline and at best skimmed the article for a second and then posted a comment without actually reading the source material and posted a uninformed response filled with assumptions and what sounded good to you.
Did you not read the article? It said:
Although mall-based stores may not be right for data centers, they could be ideal for disaster recovery facilities, Farney said. That includes mall stores that have closed, as well as those that have downsized to a smaller retail footprint
So unless they are talking about building office space as a DR strategy, then they are thinking about using in-mall stores for DR datacenters. Which are pretty much the same as primary datacenters.
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They may be thinking in terms of where people go in a BCP scenario - so rows of desks with PCs on them waiting for when one of their clients activates it's DR/BCP plan and has to relocate their staff temporarily. A Mall location could potentially work quite well for this kind of application as it will generally have parking and/or good public transport access. It will have access to toilets and other amenities such as food and drink on site already.
Re:New HDD in Isle 6, New HDD in Isle 6! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Structure strength, cooling (Score:1)
Well, a lot of other factors come in. Two big ones:
a) cooling
and
b) power
Another one is structure strength. Depending on what was actually in the floor-space, I wonder about a location's ability to handle a lot of heavy racks and HVAC equipment etc. Believe it or not the weight of all that stuff can be a consideration.
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Parking? Since when did you need "loads of parking" for a datacenter? Many of them are at or close to lights-out operations, and even "fully staffed" locations the size of a dept store still only have a handful of employees.
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Yeah, but if you own it outright, you can sell it. Thirty year lease, and you have to figure out what to do with it.
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(sorry about replying twice)
Maybe in standalone stores (Score:1)
... or malls that have closed completely. But very few mall management firms would sign off on turning one of their anchor stores into a datacenter.
Re:Maybe in standalone stores (Score:5, Informative)
The summary actually says they are considering this for standalone stores and distribution centers.
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No matter how much I strain, I cannot hear the summary.
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... or malls that have closed completely. But very few mall management firms would sign off on turning one of their anchor stores into a datacenter.
Wouldn't the number of firms that would turn up their nose at someone continuing to pay them rent (especially those malls that can't sustain a Sears, which are probably half empty) be far lower than those who would be grateful for the income?
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They're called anchor stores because (more so than the other, smaller retail) they serve as a draw. If a particular shopping center is in really bad shape or circling the drain, then sure, it might be one of those very few.
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No. They're called anchor stores because they sell anchors and other nautical equipment. Geesh. Did you even read the article?
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... or malls that have closed completely. But very few mall management firms would sign off on turning one of their anchor stores into a datacenter.
Wouldn't the number of firms that would turn up their nose at someone continuing to pay them rent (especially those malls that can't sustain a Sears, which are probably half empty) be far lower than those who would be grateful for the income?
It's not really in question here because Sears is doing this with standalone stores, but an anchor store is exactly like it sounds; once a mall loses its anchors, it is done for, it's not a mall any more, it is a hangout for kids who don't spend money. Mall managers will do anything to keep anchor stores in place, and I mean ANYTHING.
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One of the links (the "in Indiana" one) points to a datacenter installation in a former mall The other one ("in Maryland") does in fact describe a former anchor store of a still-working malll turned into a datacenter. They apparently (http://www.marleystation.com/directory) still have at least a Macy's and a J.C.Penney's.
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One of the links (the "in Indiana" one) points to a datacenter installation in a former mall The other one ("in Maryland") does in fact describe a former anchor store of a still-working malll turned into a datacenter. They apparently (http://www.marleystation.com/directory) still have at least a Macy's and a J.C.Penney's.
Except neither of those is about Sears, plus: in Indiana the whole mall was bought and converted after it closed, and in Maryland I am pretty sure the store in question is not part of Marley Station, it looks a lot bigger like a standalone department store near a shopping center (but I am not from there so I don't know).
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in a mall part of the rent is paying the mall a percentage of your revenue for that store. data centers have no revenue like a retail store
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Tell me more about all the data centers you've seen that don't charge money.
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Don't listen to the Analysts. You guys are every bit as good as Amazon. But what's the one thing Amazon's got that you ain't got? DATACENTERS!"
The whole thing seems like an April Fool's joke, until you realize that these are the people who thought that buying K-Mart was a good idea.
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Dunno. You might be able to get them to do it.
Don't listen to the Analysts. You guys are every bit as good as Amazon. But what's the one thing Amazon's got that you ain't got? DATACENTERS!"
The whole thing seems like an April Fool's joke, until you realize that these are the people who thought that buying K-Mart was a good idea.
You have that backward, K-Mart was the one who bought Sears (though it is more casually described as a merger). Sears was near bankruptcy and K-mart had the upper hand. Yes, it was a messed up world back then.
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... or malls that have closed completely. But very few mall management firms would sign off on turning one of their anchor stores into a datacenter.
Anchor store? Probably not.
But 30,000+ sq ft of space that's not turning a profit? Absolutely.
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...they said exactly that in the article!
Farney acknowledges that many of Sears’ mall-based retail locations aren’t viable for data center usage. “I don’t think the industry is yet ready for a mall-based data center,” he said. “That may take some time. The stand-alone location is optimal.”
And also said:
Although mall-based stores may not be right for data centers, they could be ideal for disaster recovery facilities, Farney said. That includes mall stores that have closed, as well as those that have downsized to a smaller retail footprint
What's the different between a primary datacenter and a DR datacenter?
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I've heard the terms used in ways that implied that a primary datacenter always had your data, but a DR datacenter just had hardware and the ability to load the data when needed, for downtime of days while loading data rather than weeks while setting up new hardware, while still being cheaper than a redundant primary.
Our DR facility has less hardware than the primary facility (just enough to keep critical services running), but everything is powered on 24x7 and data is replicated and up to date. Unless hardware is powered on and monitored, you have no assurance that it will actually power up when you need it.
My CEO would laugh in my face (and probably have security escort me out the door) if I said "Thanks for purchasing nearly an entire set of redundant equipment. So now if we have a disaster here, someone will need to
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It doesn't say DR datacenters, it just says DR. There are of course disasters that require recovery that don't involve datacenters (eg office fire). Since his selling point for this idea is 'access to stores and eateries for displaced workers' I am guessing he is talking about more workers than would be in a datacenter.
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Talk about.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Any sufficiently old company eventually becomes a real-estate and finance business.
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there is a blue light special on red light web sit (Score:4, Funny)
there is a blue light special on red light web sits to day.
red light as in web sites that have slowed down to a stop.
This is a typical Sears Stupid Move... (Score:2)
This is just as stupid as the other stuff Sears has done (or not done) over the last 20 years to slowly go out of business. Sears and K-mart stores are "retail" land uses and are located on land appropriate for retail. This means that there is a) a sizable nearby population base to draw customers from, b) access via high-volume roadways, c) lots of onsite parking, d) other retail nearby to draw retail customers, etc. None of these are important for a "Data Center" which can be located (and often is) in a
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I was thinking airport with those big parking lots
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I'm concerned about maximum floor loading for the multi-story retail buildings vs. what a bunch of 3000 lbs. 47u racks can do.
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no, you can't just go in after the fact and change the load limits on floors for a building. we're talking about essentially putting the kind of weight a parking garage would bear. nothing in the building could take it, not the foundation, not the columns, not the floors and not the lateral beams.
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Not all retail space is high-value anymore. There are a lot of old Sears and Kmart stores in completely dead areas that have no traffic. And why would it be better to use the old stores for more retail instead of data centers? Like America needs more plastic shit.
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brilliant, put data centers in ghettos like what's left of Detroit. what could go wrong? jimmeh teh gangbanger gonna get a lot of bling and crack for pawning those servers and disk arrays....
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Well, you're not going to put datacenters in run-down sections of Detroit, or any other crime-ridden city. But how about all those semi-rural communities scattered across America with defunct (or underperforming) K-Mart stores? Especially if they're in regions with cheaper electrical power...
Sounds rational to me.
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thanks to Bush-Cheney and then Obama, those are becoming or are ghettos. visiting my relatives in southern illinois, its become the third world down there.....
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Obligatory xkcd: Sysadmins [xkcd.com]
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This is just as stupid as the other stuff Sears has done (or not done) over the last 20 years to slowly go out of business. Sears and K-mart stores are "retail" land uses and are located on land appropriate for retail. This means that there is a) a sizable nearby population base to draw customers from, b) access via high-volume roadways, c) lots of onsite parking, d) other retail nearby to draw retail customers, etc.
All of the KMart stores in my area - and I include in this the ones that are currently closed, which is most of them - are located in parts of town that used to be high-traffic retail but aren't anymore. The other businesses in the area are mostly commercial services and specialty. One I can think of that is still open is pretty much surrounded by large car dealerships. The KMart where I had my first part-time job closed over a decade ago. The building is now used as a warehouse for a construction suppl
Re:This is a typical Sears Stupid Move... (Score:4, Informative)
A K-mart store in my area stood empty for 6 years. The parking lot had weeds growing up, there was graffiti on the walls, and nearby small businesses were of the low-revenue, low traffic type with a lot of retail vacancies. This was for a store that was in a relatively affluent area with a lot of traffic going by every day. The problem was that the ownership of the store property was tied up in legal issues and no one could do anything with it. Maybe it was Sears or K-mart pre-bankruptcy or someone else. Anyway, finally, finally, the legal problems got resolved and the store was gutted and redeveloped into an LA Fitness and a Walmart food store. That was two years ago. Now, the whole block is thriving, parking is hard to find, and a nearby corner gas station was torn down to make way for construction of another retail block. The point is that sometimes the reason that the store property is no longer in a 'prime retail location' is because of the property owner. The same thing happens in residential neighborhoods when someone moves in and parks a lot of old cars around the house, lets rusting trash pile up, stops mowing the grass, and does not repaint when the paint is peeling.
Old malls (Score:2)
HP used to have a big office park in Palo Alto that was converted from an old indoor mall. Recycling big buildings isn't a bad idea.
I want to see a BestBuy hosting Amazon servers. (Score:2)
Relates to K-Mart purchase (Score:1)
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Sears Holdings isn't a retail company, or an IT company, or a realistate company, they are a hedge fund trying to squeeze out all the possible paper value from their assets. So that they can eventually convince some other sucker to buy these assets.
This is a continuation of some rather silly decisions that they've been making for some time.
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The KMarts are pretty much completely gone, but those building now house other retailers. There seemed to have a motivation to lease the spaces.
OTOH the Walmart that was built in the first Wave of the
Not far enough! (Score:2)
They should turn ALL Sears stores into data centers!
this is great! (Score:4, Insightful)
For some reason, every time they want to put up a new store, they build new. Meanwhile, when the old stores get closed they just sit and the building never gets used. It's almost like ringworm, you get this ever expanding ring of dead stores that expands out for the city center. Every day I drive by 3 abandon grocery stores and even worse, new construction for 2 new stores of about the same size!
Its good to hear they are doing something with at least some of them.
Old news (Score:5, Interesting)
Retailers have been doing this kind of thing for many, many years. The first indoor big box shopping mall every built (Southdale) was built just to have a place to attach a Dayton's store too. I got my start in IT in operations for a large retailer, working with the real estate team in setting up and closing down store properties was part of my job. Many retailers have as much business in real estate as they do in retail and this has been the case for years.
By way of point Home Depots are often located near Target or Walmart since they buy large tracts of land for their stores and as a defensive measure to keep the other companies store from being put up nearby. They then use the best space for their own and develop strip malls around their property. When they have a lot just the right size for a big box retailer they will lease it to someone like Home Depot just to keep the land from being used by the competitors as many cities have will build taxes for unused property.
McDonalds has been known to buy a large tract of land and build a strip mall just to ensure that they get a restaurant in a prime location. When stores closed down the realtors then find other uses for the store. This is something that the retailers have been doing for decades with professionally run and managed real estate companies that they own. There are even special tax exemptions to allow these operations with special discounts.
When Icahn wanted to do a hostile takeover on Target a year or two back his highest priority to get in - sell their property off for great profit - and get out. The only thing that is new about this case is that Sears wants to get into the data center hosting business. If they bring in professionals (which the article says is exactly what they are doing) to run it there is no reason that you couldn't see Sears do very well in a very short time doing this.
Zombies? (Score:2)
The old Sears Catalog (Score:2)
I was working for Sears (as a retail minion) when they mostly shut down their paper catalog operations, as the internet was becoming a thing.
I saw it then as a huge mistake, as with their experience with order processing and shipping they would have had a HUGE head start against upstarts like Amazon.
But corporate inertia, along with MBA's probably would have ruined them anyway.
I bought my Hutch bmx at Sears (Score:2)
yah its wasn't a real Hutch but they licensed the name. But hey when you're 14 and its 1/3 the price of a real one you'll love it just as much.
My former employer built a DC in a Hechinger (Score:2)
Made a pretty good datacenter too. Already had a loading dock, concrete slab floor, & plenty of HVAC installation points.
Skynet: The beginning (Score:2)
predicted moment of irony: (Score:3)
Car culture (Score:2)
It took me a while to understand why it would be possible to abandon in-city retail place, but I think I got the idea: since all US shoppers go the retail place in their car, there is not more value for a specific place in the town, you can just open a new place a bit more far away, shoppers will follow.
You know america is fucked when. (Score:2)
Leaks, of the physical kind. (Score:1)
It seems like every Sears and KMart I've ever been in while there was heavy rain showed leaks in the roof. Unless they plan on using that as auxiliary cooling I sure hope the structures are carefully evaluated prior to putting infrastructure in.
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So, we're gonna be where people come after the disaster?
Yeah. There's bound to be money in that
Huh. Just gotta ask -- wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask -- How much did the Superdome people make off that whole thing? Cause I can't see us beating their volume.
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It scares me that anyone would think there would or should be any economic viability in 'disaster recovery sites.'
Providing disaster recovery services is already a big business.
I certainly wouldn't want to do business with a financial institution that has no capability to recover from a disaster that affects their data center.
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This type of [large percentage] of people are within [range] of a [ubiquitous thing] could be said for a lot of things when you figure how population is distributed. You know how AT&T can claim they cover 90-some% of the population? They aren't lying, but that doesn't mean that huge chunks of land aren't dead to them, including plenty of places you drive on the way between places.
Go ask google maps to show you all the sears locations in some major metropolitan area. Now take the measure tool and swi
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How much closer to a Walmart or Target are they? That is why Sears and Kmart are going under.
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No, I don't think that's it at all. I think Wal-Mart won out because Sam Walton and the Wal-Mart execs realized the majority of Americans would rather have quantity over quality.
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the majority of Americans would rather have quantity over quality.
"Good enough" is usually good enough, especially for consumer goods that won't be around that long anyway.
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That's the funniest thing I've read today.
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No, I don't think that's it at all. I think Wal-Mart won out because Sam Walton and the Wal-Mart execs realized the majority of Americans would rather have quantity over quality.
Maybe my opinion is biased by my experience with the K-Mart in my town, but when most Americans think "quality", I don't think that K-Mart jumps to mind.
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Statistically, there's a reasonable chance they're driving by a Sears or KMart to get there.
Sears died not because of poor locations or lack or same. They died because they were viewed as non-competitive on price and poor merchandise choices, coupled with some pretty poor marketing (especially in the case of KMart).
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But Sears was one of our biggest clients from the 80's through the mid 90's, and what I saw that hurt them was a lack of identity. One year they would try to compete with Kmart, then next year they would try to be higher end and compete with Marshall Fields and Nieman Marcus, then they would decide that Craftsman hardware and Kenmore appliances were their strength, then they would decide that apparel was higher margin, and they would try to emulate Penny's o
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Interesting theory, but would you care to explain how out here in the West I can name numerous examples of shopping malls where one of the anchor tenants is a Sears, and the other is now a Walmart, Target, or Kohl's?
That doesn't sound like a location placement problem.
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Craftsman is no longer a Sears exclusive. Can't guarantee this is the case in all areas, but my local Ace Hardware carries Craftsman.
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I was foolish enough to keep my order for a new refrigerator active, despite weeks of delay in delivery. They had no problem accepting my money (they took it when I ordered it) but even after it had been delivered to their store they took a week and a half to get it to me.
After talking to me every day, assuring me, "We're loading it on the truck right now."
When it was finally delivered, the truck driver (who worked for a delivery company, not Sears) apologized profusely and told me that he had been standin
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Nah... but Hot Dog on a Stick can!