Posted on 06/25/2017 8:56:12 AM PDT by ARGLOCKGUY
I haven't been inside a Sears store for more than 10 years, until Thursday, June 22. And, wow, did I learn a lot.
Mainly, I came away with a better understanding of why Sears Holdings Corp. is closing an additional 20 stores on top of the 245 it already planned to shutter. And why it has failed to turn a profit in 29 out of the last 37 quarters and seen same-store sales decline in 11 of the past 12 quarters.
I observed alienating treatment of a loyal customer at the store in Jersey City, N.J., which was also messy and uninviting inside.
When I came upon customer Stephanie Rosso, a resident of Jersey City, she was struggling with four employees to get a simple return transaction completed for a dryer she'd bought and sent back to the warehouse that day with the delivery man. Normally, getting a refund takes about two minutes tops.
and the Christmas catalog was the best....who didn’t spend hours pouring over the toy section in the back when they sent it out 40+ years ago...
Sears was the Amazon of its day.
The current owner bought Sears and KMart for their real estate.
In 1886 Richard W. Sears founded the R.W. Sears Watch Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to sell watches by mail order. He relocated his business to Chicago in 1887, hired Alvah C. Roebuck to repair watches, and established a mail-order business for watches and jewelry. The company’s first catalog was offered the same year. In 1889 Sears sold his business but a few years later founded, with Roebuck, another mail-order operation, which in 1893 came to be known as Sears, Roebuck and Company. In 1895 Julius Rosenwald, a wealthy clothing manufacturer, bought out Roebuck’s interest, and he reorganized the mail-order business. Sears meanwhile wrote the company’s soon-to-be-famous catalogs. The company grew phenomenally by selling a range of merchandise at low prices to farms and villages that had no other convenient access to retail outlets. The initiation of rural free delivery (1896) and of parcel post (1913) by the U.S. postal service enabled Sears to send its merchandise to even the most isolated customers. Rosenwald succeeded Sears as president of the company in 1909.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sears-Roebuck-and-Company
most CEOs have a business degree but clueless about business.
For them a widget is a widget. They can’t tell the difference between a gm car, screwdriver, or pair of socks.
Was in downtown Baltimore 1978 or thereabouts. Stores closed on Sunday because of blue laws. Suburb stores open.
Then along came Harbor Freight.
Then along came Home Depot
Sort of. Then along came the cheapening of Craftsman tools. Electric tools were being made by the cheapest international manufacturer that guaranteed the tool wasn't going to last very long. And when the tool failed, it was impossible to fix because Sears had no idea who made the tool in the first place.
Plus, Craftsman mechanics tools used to be an industry standard, but they decided to cheapen those as well. The last time I bought Craftsman sockets they were about the same quality I'd find at the dollar store.
Lowes too. Bought a whole box of canned lights there for my kitchen ceiling redo. Electrician said wrong ones take them back and gave me the number for the correct ones. When returning them I told the gal to please call someone to meet me over there. I went.....and waited, and waited. Finally went back to the return register and said wtf? She said she’s cutting pipe. I said can’t you call someone else? Nope. I just have to wait. I finally flagged down another employee and more or less forced them to find the lights I needed.
Home depot/Lowes/Walmart/Target/Amazon has made Sears/Macy’s/JC Penny’s OBSOLETE.
I haven’t been inside a Sears store for more than 10 years,
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I think you aren’t alone in that regards. Thus
one of the reasons Sears, etc are on the wane.
No one knows how to count back change anymore.
I have discovered one sure-fire way to get a Lowe's or Homo Depot employee to notice you. Start climbing one of those roll-around ladders.
They come up out of the grave to tell you you can't do that. Oh. By all means. Have it your way. Get it for me. They instantly do their Homer Simpson impersonation. D'oh!
...and mcdonalds replaced the order takers.
will robots service helpers bring back the stores?
craftsman was sold off (by the woman in charge?) and it did not matter because most people know Stanley makes them anyways. The name is meaningless.
Another way to get a Low’s or Homo Depot employee to notice you is to pretend like you’re going to undo one of those scissor-like barricades they put up when they pretend like they’re doing something with a forklift down an aisle.
I know its silly and today they have computers. my first experience making change was at a gas station in the mid 70s with just a silly cash drawer out on the island
Cheap shot clickbait headline. Did the author expect Sears to be flourishing? The organization’s decline has been well covered without this kind of garbage that passes for news. Check financial performance if we want to know how the org is doing.
I grew up in a poor town. The periodic Sears and Monkey Ward catalogs worked fine as toilet paper.
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