2 Catalogue Outlets to Close

Two Ventura County retail outlets have been doomed, but a third has been rescued as their corporate parents position themselves for challenging times ahead.

Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s surplus stores in Ventura and Simi Valley will be closed by the spring of 1994 as part of the retail giant’s massive downsizing.

But a GTE Phone Mart in Thousand Oaks has been saved, along with four other Phone Marts that were scheduled to be closed.

Each of the Sears outlets employs about 50 full- and part-time workers. The store on Main Street in Ventura opened in October, 1977. The outlet on Tapo Street in Simi Valley opened in February, 1981.

The stores are part of a chain of 91 company-owned units that sell discontinued and damaged merchandise from Sears’ catalogue operation.

Sears announced last week that it will close its catalogue division and 113 unprofitable department stores. Most of the company-owned surplus stores--also called outlet stores--will be shut, Sears spokesman Greg Rossiter said.

“It’s possible some of the people in the outlet stores might be transferred elsewhere,” Rossiter said. “I just don’t know at this time.”

Neither of Sears’ two full-size department stores in Ventura County--in Thousand Oaks and Oxnard--will be affected by the companywide closures.

The rescued Phone Mart in the county is in Janss Mall in Thousand Oaks. GTE California, which also is based in Thousand Oaks, credited a successful cost-cutting campaign with saving the nearby retail unit and four others.

A total of 24 jobs were threatened by the scheduled closings, although the company said it would have tried to transfer the stores’ employees to other positions.

GTE, which markets telephones, answering machines and other communications equipment at 16 Phone Marts throughout the state, announced in December that five of the units were to be closed by Jan. 1.

But expense reductions throughout the company have made it possible to keep the entire chain open, according to GTE spokeswoman Jaya Koilpillai.

The stores’ merchandise will be changed somewhat to improve profitability, however, Koilpillai said.

“A list of the items that will be dropped hasn’t been drawn up, but I know that more mobile products and services are going to be added, such as paging, cellular phones and voice mail.”

The other Phone Marts that were marked for closure are in West Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs and Santa Maria. The stores are operated by GTEL, a deregulated subsidiary of GTE California.