Sears to close more stores

Transform Holdco announced Wednesday it will close an additional 26 Sears and Kmart stores beginning later this month.

None of the stores are in Iowa.

'Over the past several months, we have worked hard to strengthen our vendor relationships, return our inventory levels to normal, and improve customer satisfaction and operations,” the company said on its website. ' ...

however, we have faced a number of challenges returning our stores to sustainable levels of productivity, including differences with Sears Holdings over our purchase agreement and a generally weak retail environment. These challenges have unfortunately affected our performance and limited our strategic choices.”

It company officials said it was 'the right course for the company is to accelerate the expansion of our smaller store formats which includes opening additional Home and Life stores and adding several hundred Sears Hometown stores after the Sears Hometown and Outlet transaction closes.”

That decision necessitated the closing of the 26 'large-format” stores.

This would not 'rule out additional store closures in the near term,” according to the website.

Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Transform was spun off from Sears Holdings in June, combining Sears stores, Kmart and Sears Hometown.