Sears stores have ALWAYS been BORING and utilitarian. They were/are this countries version of the GUM store in Moscow at its worst. Sears always felt dead-drab-something was missing. Merchandise was ok-but the catalog stuff was better. Now, with all the Amazon and online shopping they should close the stores and go back to catalog sales. They ruled that market back when.
We are going to see retail, in general, take a HUGE hit in 2014, resulting in millions more unemployed, in waves that will create a domino effect across all economic sectors. This is due to 0bamacare, and the result that the “middle class†who buy the everyday goods at stores like Sears and Macy’s, will have NO MONEY left to use after paying their health insurance premiums. This is my prediction, but just IMHO. I think the last “recession†is going to look mild compared to the next one.
for later
I was in Sears around Christmas time looking at tools. I didn’t buy any, as much of the Craftsman branded stuff is now made in China, but the prices haven’t changed.
There were more employees lurking around than customers.
Mixed feelings...used to spend a LOT of time at Sears with my folks as a kid. Dad LOVED the Craftsman line of tools and I’m pretty sure he had every single one.
I remember Mom buying washers, dryers, vacuum cleaners and every other large and small appliance you can imagine.
What happened, I wonder? I know this has been a decades-long slide, but it’s hard to believe that it couldn’t be reversed when it first started.
This was a publicly traded company, right? This isn’t a ‘Third Generation Thing’ where the family members are just using the brand as a cash cow...or are they?
Here's your problem - back assward thinking.
You don't sell the profitable stores, you sell off the dogs and put *more* money where you already have a winner.
Selling your winners to back your losers is just dumb.
Sears closed down catalog sales in the mid-1990s just as every other retailer was moving to the newfangled internet.
My first job was selling automotive products as a brand new Sears store in 1977. At that time they had brought in career sales staff from across the nation and who came from the original Sears mold, dedicated, loyal, and who knew their product was the best on the market. I was 17 and making $2.75/hr. + 3% sales commission. and would routinely bring home $200 + a week.
Walk into a Sears store today and its virtually empty of sales staff who know little to nothing about the product.
Lampert is bleeding them white.
I was in a Lands End/Sears store last week.
The place looks like it hasn’t been remodeled since the 80s.
Those same sights are visible in businesses across America as stores and employees and most importantly consumers have given up all hope for prosperity under Obama.
Any efforts to improve Sears would be little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
They deserve to go under. They refused to honor the warranty on a failed DieHard (not!) battery a few months ago. I will never set foot in a Sears again. No one, not even numerous Sears phone reps gave a damn when I said if they didn’t honor my warranty, we’d never set foot in a Sears again. Some of the phone reps, “customer service” people, were very rude. I had to hang up on one of them. It was disgraceful. Sears was a decent place to shop when I was a kid.
Horrible, drab, depressing pictures at the link.
Photo 1 - who chopped off Rick Santorum’s head?
All I ever notice in stores is whether they have what I want or not, and whether it’s reasonably priced so I don’t feel the need to look elsewhere. I’m FAR more critical of stores like Best Buy who seem to utilize a random-access organizational scheme than whether the mannequins are modern or whatever. How do you modernize a mannequin, anyway? Give it an ear-ring and put manboobs on the male ones?
They lost me when they started posting signs in Spanish.
Sears’s partner store, K-Mart, is the same, and seems to be closing stores at an even faster pace.
Boy, that was depressing. Like Soviet Union, no?
Sad to see. When I was a kid, I’d enjoy looking around at their tools and yard gear. Back when I was about 12, they also had a great assortment of mini-bikes. My mother also bought appliances there.. at one time, Kenmore was the gold standard for washers and dryers. Wondering if those are even sold there anymore.
I want to pay for my stuff and go. I don't want to give my phone number, or my email, or any of that crap.
You HAVE to push credit applications on EVERYONE. If you don't you get in trouble. With their antiquated equipment it takes TWO open registers to do an in-store credit ap.
I read that the only thing keeping Sears alive were credit sales.
I doubted I'd ever find a worse place than walmart to work, but Sears was it.