Specialty Stores

Sears Holdings Corp., one of several struggling big-box retailers, is splitting off more than 1,000 Hometown, Outlet and hardware stores as a separate, public company. The spinoff will affect 1,238 stores total. Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores, Inc. will trade under the “SHOS” symbol on Nasdaq. The new company will sell home appliances, hardware, tools and lawn and garden equipment, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Hometown stores are mostly independently owned, based in smaller communities and often offering proprietary Sears products such as Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard.

At midnight on Thanksgiving night, Narine Anton and her regiment of 10 workers will welcome shoppers into Body Basics at the Glendale Galleria. That's if she doesn't decide to open the specialty shop even earlier. Anton, manager of the store stocked with pajamas and cotton basics, is considering moving the time up to 10 p.m. on Turkey Day. "If we open earlier, then maybe we can get the traffic from Macy's or Target and make more money," she said. "If we don't open with the big stores, they have extra hours with customers and we miss out on that.

Renee Mohrmann has never been on a safari and doesn't plan on taking one anytime soon. But that doesn't stop the 30-year-old Santa Monica pathologist from browsing through the racks of safari clothes at Banana Republic. "It's interesting," she said of the store's ersatz jungle interior. "I like the travel motif; it's an escape, an adventure, you might say."

Sears Holdings Corp., one of several struggling big-box retailers, is splitting off more than 1,000 Hometown, Outlet and hardware stores as a separate, public company. The spinoff will affect 1,238 stores total. Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores, Inc. will trade under the “SHOS” symbol on Nasdaq. The new company will sell home appliances, hardware, tools and lawn and garden equipment, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Hometown stores are mostly independently owned, based in smaller communities and often offering proprietary Sears products such as Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard.

Sears Holdings Corp. said it plans to close 53 specialty stores in the first half of 2012. The closures include 43 Sears hometown dealer stores and 10 Sears Hardware stores, the company said. Hometown stores are small hardware stores, usually operated by independent dealers in rural areas. Sears Hardware stores are larger, corporate-owned outposts that carry Craftsman tools, DieHard car batteries and a limited selection of Kenmore appliances. The closures follow Sears' plan, announced in late December, to close as many as 120 poor-performing Sears and Kmart stores and a plan, disclosed in February, to close all nine of its Great Indoors stores.

A $13.7-million renovation is transforming the former Ohrbachs department store in the Glendale Galleria shopping center--acquired late in 1987--as a home for about 20 specialty stores. The project by Donahue Schriber Co., Newport Beach, was designed by the Feola/Deenihan Partnership, Glendale--a firm that was part of the galleria's original design team. The job involves 55,000 square feet of space. Contractor is Robert E. Bayley, Santa Ana.

Holiday sales at mall-based specialty stores rose by 2.1%, the International Council of Shopping Centers said. The industry association tracks sales at more than 4,000 specialty stores in 80 regional malls across the United States. The survey does not include sales made at mall-based department stores. Apparel sales fell by 0.6%, but sales of home furnishings rose by 4.9% and home-entertainment products, including music and videos, rose by 10.9%.

The Chicago-based retailer unveiled the first test store of one of two previously announced specialty store formats targeted at towns and cities of 10,000 to 100,000. The test store in Alma, Mich., carries hardware, paint, appliances, electronics and a catalogue operation in 8,300 square feet of selling space. Three more such stores are planned this year. The second planned specialty format, which will emphasize apparel and home fashion, will be introduced this summer.

Now that hemlines are indisputably on the rise, should women with less than perfect bodies show their kneecaps? Nancye Radmin, owner of the Forgotten Woman large-size specialty stores, thinks not. "Our dimples have to be on our faces, not on the backs of our knees," said the outspoken retailer, who recently opened her 18th shop in Newport Beach's Fashion Island. (Her Wilshire Boulevard outpost in Beverly Hills is now 8 years old.

The City Shopping Center in Orange looks like a lot of malls--plenty of plants, the ubiquitous Parkland Hosiery and your usual assortment of ice cream and hot dog emporiums. What sets The City apart, however, are its number and variety of gift and specialty shops. Of the 101 stores (including two department stores, May Co. and J.C. Penney), 15 are gift or specialty stores.

--Madewell, the younger, more relaxed division of retailer J. Crew Group Inc., is going mobile this spring. Think less smartphone and more road trip. The brand, formally a work wear manufacturer in Massachusetts before getting rescued by J. Crew, is taking its denim line on a cross-country summer journey with a retro Airstream trailer. Retailers have been trying to shake up brick-and-mortar stores with more creative spaces such as pop-up shops, specialty stores and now stores on the go. Madewell's Airstream is rolling into Santa Monica Place this Saturday, loaded with stylists, discounts on jeans and a hair-braiding station.

Sears Holdings Corp. said it plans to close 53 specialty stores in the first half of 2012. The closures include 43 Sears hometown dealer stores and 10 Sears Hardware stores, the company said. Hometown stores are small hardware stores, usually operated by independent dealers in rural areas. Sears Hardware stores are larger, corporate-owned outposts that carry Craftsman tools, DieHard car batteries and a limited selection of Kenmore appliances. The closures follow Sears' plan, announced in late December, to close as many as 120 poor-performing Sears and Kmart stores and a plan, disclosed in February, to close all nine of its Great Indoors stores.

James Reva, 67, a California fashion designer who owned boutiques starting in the early 1970s and later sold his label through specialty stores in Beverly Hills and New York City, was found dead March 17 at his Los Angeles studio. The cause was a heart attack, according to his friend William Collins. Reva, born July 15, 1940, in Los Angeles, graduated from Woodbury College. He launched his business in 1972 and captured national attention with his version of the "rich hippie" look, a mix of dressy fabrics with denims.

Hershey Co. plans to acquire a Berkeley-based maker of premium dark chocolate bars and baking products. Hershey did not say how much it would pay for Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker Inc. Scharffen owns and operates three stores in New York, San Francisco and Berkeley, and its products are carried in other specialty stores.

The supermarket strike was widely portrayed in local media and among politicians and analysts as a battle between corporate greed and workers' needs, with the giant market chains cast in the role of economic villain. But in reality, market-chain power was far weaker than ballyhooed and probably will not grow after the strike. The best evidence of this was the remarkable ease with which most Southern Californians managed the strike.

In addition to giant tubs of mayonnaise and mega-packs of toilet paper, thousands of Costco shoppers are finding room in their carts for a more high-end product: plasma TV sets. Sharp price cuts have brought plasma sets and other thin, flat televisions out of high-end electronics boutiques and into thousands of mass-market outlets such as Costco, a wholesale buying club best known for offering members bulk items and big discounts.

As the owner of one-sixth of the land in Orange County, the Irvine Co. is far and away the biggest force in the county's continuing development. Its holdings include roughly 2.5 million square feet of retail development. That number is expected to double to about 5.2 million square feet within the next five years. The largest chunk of its retail property consists of small community shopping centers. But there's also the Irvine Co.'s crown jewel--Newport Center/Fashion Island, the 1.

For many shoppers, stepping into a Woolworth store is like passing through a time tunnel and entering a cozy and dependable world. Cramped aisles display the kind of inexpensive candies, sponges and note pads that have been sold for a century at Woolworth stores around the country. Many of the outlets still house the familiar luncheonettes serving coffee, sodas and hamburgers.

The nation's big retailers reported mixed November sales results Thursday despite a surge in Thanksgiving weekend shopping, while some California firms told of solid gains. Sales at stores open at least a year -- a key measure of growth -- dipped 0.1% last month from a year earlier, the first such drop in November since at least 1970, according to Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. San Francisco-based Gap Inc.