At the beginning of the internet era, people didn’t know how Internet retailing would take off as it has .
Then again, once it became clear how profitable internet sales would be, retailers had to know that development of their internet presence would be a key to success.
Not really an excuse as they had a broadly distributed chain of stores...a prudent path would have been to utilize those stores as drop/ship/pick up points, safe and familiar to Sears customers, while they built and tested IT structure and integrated with mail/telephone sales. Just short sighted management in depth. CEO should have vision otherwise you just need book keepers doing the same old same old, not overpaid underperforming MBAs.