Check out "The Magnolia", a ten-room colonial. The kit was $6488 in 1921.
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 An example in Benson, North Carolina |
Posted on 10/21/2017 11:44:17 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Owners of well-established businesses almost always leave it to upstarts to blow up their business models.
Sears shut down their catalog business just as the internet started taking off. Within a couple years Amazon started. Just think if Sears executives had some vision and converted the catalog business to online they could have reinvented the brand for the new century. We wouldn’t be talking about Amazon being the new Sears because it would still be Sears.
Check out "The Magnolia", a ten-room colonial. The kit was $6488 in 1921.
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An example in Benson, North Carolina |
I remember studying the Sear Catalog division in a marketing class. You could order from the catalog but you had to pay for the phone call when you ordered. The competition was already using toll-free 1-800 numbers. And this was at a time when long-distance calls were more expensive than now.
Texan5, around the central part of Texas or nearly anywhere in the U.S. you can get a container like you say for around, $2,000.
Thing is this is on the Amazon, not quite the Guadalupe River and getting it there may be the real cost.
Along with GOD only knows what other costs would be associated
Back then houses were built out of hardwood.
I need space. I’m guessing it has something to do with being claustrophobic.
Nice!
They are. There is one across the street from me. I think about 11-1200 square feet.
Really nice!
Sears had local numbers to place calls almost everywhere? In small towns they had catalog stores, in large towns they had catalog departments in retail stores.
WOW !!
I don’t get the derision. This is a great solution for an unmarried young urban professional just starting out in life. Most of those people work all day and dine out at night - only really needing a place to sleep at night and maybe hang out reading books on a raining Saturday or Sunday morning. Or an elderly in-law who wants to be close to her adult child but not be an interfering busybody getting in the way of everybody in the main home. Just put the unit in a corner of the backyard and hook up some utilities. Perfect!
I suspect that is true-if the container is trailered and hauled to the customer’s location by 18 wheeler-that happens out here when someone buys one to use as a feed/storage barn or horse stalls-then the freight hauling and mileage charges could be ruinous if you were very far away from where the shipment originates. And I’m sure you are right about lots of “hidden” charges and costs-I’ve got a couple of single neighbors who bought one of those tiny houses already assembled to live in and had them trucked to their acreage from places right here in the state. While the price of the cabin was certainly way less than the $36K for the Amazon crib, the shipping and hauling charges really did a number on their bank accounts...
“If Sears had had some imagination, they could have done what Amazon did.”
Sad isn’t it? But true.
Sears had the brand and the long history of selling remotely through catalogs. Their catalog system of 100 years ago is similar in many ways to many aspects of e-commerce.
Sears also has the brick and mortar.
“I would from time to time close my eyes, click the slippers three times, and recite, “There’s no place like home.” When I opened my eyes, I was still in Japan.”
Probably because it can work only in the land of Oz.
Internet shopping sites are little more than old-time catalog outfits. No need to mail out the expensive catalog, inventory can be supplemented quickly, but still a (electronic) catalog operation.
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