Photo by Karin Elton U.S. retail icon Sears has filed for bankruptcy, but Eric Novosad of the Marshall Sears Hometown Store says the future is bright.

MARSHALL — The Marshall Sears store is doing just fine — in fact, better than ever, said Sears Hometown Store owner Eric Novosad.

Sears Holdings has announced plans to close 142 unprofitable stores, as part of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, on top of 46 store closings announced in August.

Novosad said he has been fielding questions Monday about how the Chapter 11 bankruptcy will affect the Marshall Sears and the answer is not all.

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Novosad. “We’re fine.”

One customer said she has been buying her appliances at the Sears Marshall store since 1972 and did not want it to close.

While Sears has a massive debt load and staggering losses, Novosad’s business has seen an increase in sales — “20 percent growth every month,” he said — since he bought the franchise in 2016 and moved the store to larger and more visible quarters near Hy-Vee from the Market Street Mall. “We are averaging 30 to 40 appliance deliveries a month.”

Novosad, who has worked at Sears since he was a junior in high school in 2000, said his store is under the aegis of Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores, which handled the franchisee part of Sears. Sears Hometown split from Sears Holdings in 2012.

“They saw the writing on the wall,” said Novosad. “They knew something was coming.”

Sears Hometown is publicly traded as a separate company and has its own website, SearsHometown. com for online ordering.

“We have no plans to file for bankruptcy,” Novosad said. “We have fulfilled all of our vendor contracts.”

Sears Hometown has vendor contracts with Whirlpool, which owns Maytag and KitchenAid and Sears Holding lost its contract “about a year and a half ago,” Novosad said.

Sears’ stock has fallen from about $6 over the past year to below the minimum $1 level that Sears Holding, which once had 350,000 workers, has seen its workforce shrink to fewer than 90,000 people as of earlier this year.

The Sears Hometown store in Marshall has hired more workers since 2016. Novosad said the store had a “great lawn and garden season” and he is looking for a successful Christmas season as well.

“All indications are that it will be a fun fourth quarter,” he said. “I’m super excited.”

While the China tariffs are hurting Sears Holdings, they aren’t affecting Novosad’s store much.

“Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid appliances are readily available,” he said. “The parts for the foreign made appliances — LG and Samsung — may take a little longer to receive. What once took one to two weeks now takes two to four weeks.”

As of May, Sears Holdings, which operates both Sears and Kmart stores, had fewer than 900 stores, down from a 2012 peak of 4,000.

Novosad said there might be some Sears Hometown stores that close.

“If the store hasn’t shown a profit within a five-year span, the owners will either have to fix it or shut down,” he said, adding that Sears Hometown is opening some stores as well.

One of the keys to the success of Sears Hometown Store in Marshall is its symbiotic relationship with Marshall and the Marshall area, said Novosad.

“We’re a member of the Chamber, I’m in the Booster Club at SMSU, I teach band and the parents know me, we donate to the dance team, softball, Pheasants Forever…,” he said.

“People are buying here and they want full service,” said Novosad. “This store has been in Marshall since 1997 and it’s not going anywhere.”