Sears Rules Out Converting Hardware Stores

Sears Roebuck & Co. has decided against converting its 250 hardware stores nationwide to Orchard Hardware & Garden outlets after a test run in Ohio flopped. Customers of Sears' 10 Columbus-area hardware stores preferred the Sears name and product line, company spokesman Chuck Merydith said. Executives had hoped the Orchard format would attract more female shoppers, but that didn't happen, he said. Columbus was Sears' only test market for the concept, which downplayed Sears' trademark tools and appliances in favor of Orchard's broader line of home and garden products. Sears bought Orchard in 1996, attracted by the California chain's broad selection of housewares, nursery supplies and hardware. Sears renamed its Columbus stores after Orchard and changed the stores' merchandise mix a year later, spending an estimated $10 million on the overhaul. To accommodate the added merchandise in the same 20,000-square-foot stores, the company eliminated its line of large stationary power tools, most of them bearing Sears' Craftsman name.