Posted on 10/09/2018 8:28:12 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
I see your point, especially the renting part at a mall. The rent at our closest mall (90 miles away) is over $100 per sq ft per mo plus utilities. That is outlandishly silly.
Of interest is that Best Buy and a few others purchased property adjacent to this mall and built their own stores. Sears could have done that.
I recall the Sears store there refusing to honor lifetime tool warranties. It appeared to be a manager thing, as this policy shifted with managers.
They screwed themselves.
I just hope that someone will buy the Sears name from Eddie Lamebrain and set it up like it should be done - clothing, tools, toys, appliances and autoservice. I’d love to buy the KMart store name, but There were 3 better stores I loved better than KMart -the ABCs - Ames, Bradlees and Caldor.
I don’t think the business plan works anymore
Sears was tottering on bankruptcy ten years ago when he took over
He failed
It’s just time now to probably liquidate and save something from it
It’s ironic when I was a kid we thought Sears kind of high
But they had nice architecture....ours was deco
No vision.
They had the assets and capital to not be pushed behind by the Walmarts and Amazon, but the Sears leadership had no vision. The Sears K-Mart merger was not part of any grand new vision, it was done as a last ditch effort at merely saving its status quo. It was a costly blunder.
They were set up perfectly to do internet sales and slowly begin to cut the number of brick and mortar stores. With their catalog all they had to do was put it on the internet and start undercutting Amazon and Walmart. Sears, still stuck in 1972.
They could have transitioned their catalog sales over to the internet. I have no idea why they didn’t do that, of course they had a website but it was pitiful, like an afterthought and they did not encourage online buying.
Another thing I noticed is they stuck with their same customers, which is great but as those customers aged and passed away they had not done anything to build a new loyal customer base with younger people. All my life when my mom and dad went to Sears they were treated very well, yet when I was newly married and having babies I went to Sears for my first new appliances and they acted as though their stuff would sell itself. I couldn’t even get answers to some basic questions. The sales people acted like there is the washing machines, you are on your own. There was none of the special treatment I had seen my parents get at Sears. The magic was gone.
No idea what happened to them but it was as if they stopped trying to get any new customers, instead depending on the old ones to keep coming. They did not even attempt to get the children of their loyal customers, we should have been easy to snag. Maybe they thought they would just keep going on their past reputation.
My last experience with Sears was when a lawnmower we bought new from them needed work. The old Sears my parents loved had a service center for appliances, ETC even after warranty they would repair things and you would pay. So simple. My husband and I took the lawnmower to Sears in a major city and they told us they had closed their service center and the mower would have to be sent to another city over 200 miles away...with no estimate on costs or even being able to talk to the service people. It was crazy, nope no more Sears for us.
I think that is the saddest thing about Sears; they lost their innovation. Shopping at a Sears became no different than shopping at Walmart or Kmart even before they got with Kmart. They were so far above that. I always heard their houses were nice, my grandfather considered getting one on his ranch, but decided to build out of local rocks instead.
My dad grew up on the family ranch in the middle of no where rugged Colorado. He told us when he was a kid he would run a trap line on the ranch and send his furs to Sears on the train. When Sears got his furs they would issue him a store credit and he could order things from their catalog until he ran out of credit. That would have been in the 1920s. Think about that customer service! Sears obviously had to sell the furs to a fur buyer to get their money; that is going pretty far. They also got a lifetime loyal customer, my dad always went to Sears first for anything. My mother ordered out of the catalog all year long and very few trips were made town that we didn’t go to the Sears store.
If they had kept the innovation they had going they would have used it to constantly reach out to younger, more modern people. They managed to do that through the 60s for sure, by the end of the 70s it was as though they were just hanging in there not looking ahead.
Things change. The Big mall in Colonie NY built in the 60’s I believe had two big anchors on each side, Sears and Macy’s. Wonder how long Macy’s can hang on.
Interesting questions about the house.
I think the original construction was 2 inch slats, with plaster. I’m not in the business, and seeing only the 2x4 stick houses going up now, I can only image the labor and workmanship that went into putting together the house-kit.
The house must have been modified later in many rooms, with insulation and dry-wall. Also, wiring was updated by previous owners. The door-frames, archways into dining room, window frames, stairs, etc.. are all beautiful hardwood. I will have to do research to see if this was included, or some kind of option.
I can only imagine the men who put this together, with simple tools.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.