This is not really new news unless you haven’t heard it before but did you know Sears stopped selling Kenmore sewing machines? From what I can tell this happened as early as January of 2012 but I JUST came across that little tidbit while gearing up for more 2013 reviews to put on this site.
Not quite sure how to break this to my mother as she’s been using an old Kenmore for ages and periodically needs parts and replacement accessories. It does look like Sears is still selling some of the Kenmore accessories – just not the machines – but who knows how long that will continue.
Kenmore machines were last being made by Janome and only sold at Sears. I’m not totally surprised they stopped selling them. I don’t know what Sears is doing but they have a hard time competing price-wise on some products and sewing machines certainly fell in that category.
(This really stood out for me when we needed a new dishwasher several months ago and started at Sears. We then found the model we wanted for more than $200 less than what it was at our local Sears store.)
Sears is still selling sewing machines but now you’ll see Singer, Brother, and Janome brands. However, it seems they’ve been trying to redesign themselves the past couple of years and so they don’t just sell their own inventory but they act as a fulfillment center for other sellers. If you look carefully at some of the sewing machine listings (or any product listings on Sears) you might see something like this:
That means the item is being sold by someone else using Sear’s site, payment processing functions, and maybe even the shipping operation to retail their own goods. I compared prices on a number of the machine listings to the price on Amazon and Amazon was significantly lower so just pay attention when looking at any of the options on the Sears site and make sure you do some comparisons before you buy.
