K-Mart and Sears

It came as a blockbuster early today. K-Mart and Sears were going to merge. No, actually, little old nearly bankrupt K-Mart was going to buy Goliath Sears. This really seemed weird. But the two companies apparently complement each other. The new corporation will have K-Mart's real estate in places away from malls and Sears' tradition of quality. They are going to call the company Sears Holdings. Holdings? That seems trite to me. Is the CEO of Sears going to pick up and hold the CEO of K-Mart?

I think they deserve a better name than that. One immediate idea is K-Sears, but that seems too ordinary. Perhaps S-Mart would be better because that would be smart. S-mart, don't you get it? Shop Smart at S-Mart! But maybe that seems too much like PetSmart. Or how about K-Sears? Or K-Mart, Roebuck and Co.? Or K-Mart, Sears, Roebuck and Co.? Or maybe KSR corporation? Uh-uh. That is getting a little hackneyed again. How about Mart-K-Sears, as in The Three Mart-K-Sears? Or maybe Mouse-K-Sears? Em-Aye-Cee, Kay-Ee-Wye… Uh-oh. I see another merger coming.

But if not the name, maybe this merger will come with interesting subnames. For example, K-Mart sells Martha Stewart products, and Sears recently purchased Land's End. So combine these two together and the result is Martha's End. Or maybe we will fix our houses with Martha Stewart Craftsman tools or wash our clothes in our Martha Kenmore washer. Or maybe call the store K'Mart in honor of Apostrophe, one of Sear's product lines. Or how about the Sears Tower? Paint that blue and get The Blue Tower, or the Blue Light Tower. That won't work. The tallest building in the US is the Great Tower of Chicago, not the Sears Tower, because Sears no longer owns it, and so Sears can't paint it blue.

Of course none of this will happen. We will go to our Sears and K-Marts as always, although we may see Craftsman Tools in K-Mart or Martha Stewart products in Sears, and we may see a host of Sears outside the malls. But remember that a titanic merger occurred today between two retail giants. Let's hope that's titanic as in colossal instead of as in blub, blub, blub.