One branch of my (in Illinois) family was a Sears family in the forties, fifties and sixties. A great-uncle was Treasurer and Comptroller of world-wide Sears. Many uncles were buyers, great-paying, respected, sophisticated jobs in those days, travelling the country and the world to select the best products for the hundreds of departments in the chain's stores. Having a good job with Sears carried great cache in the retail world.
What a shame that management slipped from the best to the incompetent. There are millions of Sears-raised generational families still in existence who were long-time loyal employees and who are saddened by what has happened. When I walk through my mostly-empty local Sears and talk to an employee here and there, the long-timers are demoralized beyond belief and thinking of early retirement.
One thing to remember is that nowadays malls are becoming mausoleums populated daily with teeny-boppers hanging out, lunchers in the food courts and seniors doing walk-laps...fewer and fewer actual paying shoppers.
The high-rent, high maintenance Sears stores which have anchored almost every mall nationwide since malls were invented are now stones around the company's neck...and it won't get better for many varied reasons.
As an aside, I bet Trump could save Sears, I wish he would, but he's otherwise occupied, LOL.
Leni
Sears made a blunder by trying to go upscale.
They should have stayed in the reasonably priced good merchandise domain.
Also, they do not have the “customer is king” attitude like at Walmart. I have returned many items to Walmart ourely based on buyer’s remorse. Except for computer softeare and music CD’s, Walmart will take anything back, no questions asked. Just last week I bought a home phone at Walmart. I used it for 2-3 weeks, then cancelled my internet+phone bundle with ATT and Walmart gave me full refund, only question asked was “anything wrong with it”, and I said “I did not like it”.
One time I was on world travel, stopping in India, Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Francee, Sweden and England. No one ever questioned my American Express Traveler’s checks. Then I returned home to Chicago and went shopping at Sears on 79th street & Stoney Island. They refused to take my left over traveler’s checks! Sears failed to keep up with the trends and forgot what made them successful.
It beats anything I’ve ever seen, the gutting of this nation and it’s national brands. It gives all the outward appearances of people fleeing the Titanic.
Is there no pride left at all? You sure don’t see it from industry leaders.
Save Trump...
Sad, indeed.
Sears appliances, tools, batteries, kids jeans, etc have been basic mainstays of this country.
They fell behind on the ecommerce frontier, big time. Buying KMart wasn’t such a great move, either.