[eyedigress]

This is what happens when the corporate drains it.

Sears had the Amazon of all time locked up. They did nothing with it.

Just like Motorola has been reduced to a phone.

I don’t like to see the old icons go away but I’m sure not going to lose any sleep.

Management killed these companies.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Sears had the Amazon of all time locked up. They did nothing with it.

Another good example....Service Merchandise. Perfectly positioned to become a leading internet retailer. IT systems best in the industry in the early 90's. They could drop-ship items to customers, transfer them to a store, hold them, anywhere throughout the chain. All they had to do was build a webfront to access it all, and you would have had Amazon.

Smart people in the company proposed this to their then-President, Raymond Zimmerman. He did not like the idea. Did not believe the internet was the future of retail. And he was of course always the smartest one in the room, because he was the boss.

So he authorized a demonstration project, which was doomed to fail, because he wanted it to, because he wanted to be proven right.

The company is long gone. Scratch any of these other failure stores and you'll probably find similar arrogance.