[kingu]

Sears went after the urban market, and rather than changing those stores to more trendy (translation, making every sign bilingual and trying to integrate some very garish looking clothing), they did it to all the stores. They reduced their in store appliance and tool lines, and attempted to attract a more ‘youthful’ clientele.

Illegals want higher discounts, working families could rarely find school and boy scout uniforms, much less actual work clothes, and what was a staple for mechanics and homeowners became a useless paltry selection.

So then they went through a very expensive re-imaging campaign where they ripped apart half their stores for months at a time only to re-open with even worse merchandise selections.

All along they took a very successful mail order company and basically shut it down, only later to start it up again at much more cost as a website. Simultaneous to that they went to on time shipping for stores, meaning that most stores were always out of popular products with customers being told to ‘shop for it online.’

All that said, I think some stores are back on track. The only question is if there's still enough of a company to survive, and I sincerely doubt that.

[RoosterRedux]

A poster upthread suggested that Sears should have followed the Amazon model. That said, I don't think that was an option at the time.

Sometimes companies just have to die before the right time arrives for rebirth.

Of course, it is a lot easier for us armchair generals.;-)