Sears and Whirlpool will split after 100 years of business because of a pricing dispute.
This was revealed via an employee memo shared with Bloomberg on Tuesday, which confirmed that Sears would no longer sell Whirlpool items.
"Whirlpool has sought to use its dominant position in the marketplace to make demands that would have prohibited us from offering Whirlpool products to our members at a reasonable price," Sears said in the memo.
The termination of business between the two companies comes at a time when Sears is facing plummeting sales, with second-quarter sales of stores open for over a year declining by 11.5 percent, CBS News noted.
The department store chain has shut down a number of underperforming stores while also restructuring operations.
Losing a major brand such as Whirlpool could drastically affect sales by driving the already waning number of shoppers to go elsewhere.
Sears was once the go-to destination for household appliances, however, CNBC reported that the chain gave up an estimated $1 billion in major appliance sales in 2015.
Whirlpool chief executive Marc Bitzer said per CNBC that "the entire Sears business declined over time."
He added that sales from Sears only accounted for about 3 percent of Whirlpool's global business.
"We informed Sears in May we would no longer supply Whirlpool brand products [if] we could not reach terms that were acceptable to both parties," he said.
This comes on the back of an announcement made by Sears warning investors that it could not guarantee the company’s success.
"Our historical operating results indicate substantial doubt exists related to the company's ability to continue as a going concern," the statement said, according to CNN.
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