The company that essentially invented mass mail order got out of the business and now claims they can't compete with Amazon...
Posted on 10/15/2018 7:50:59 AM PDT by Borges
Sears was once the nation's largest retailer and its largest employer. In its heyday, it was both the Walmart and Amazon of its time.
Formed in 1886 by railroad station agent Richard Sears, the company started as a watch business in North Redwood, Minnesota. Sears moved to Chicago in 1887, and he hired watchmaker Alvah Roebuck as his partner. The first Sears Roebuck catalog, which sold watches and jewelry, was printed in 1896.
The Sears catalog was the way many Americans first started to buy mass-produced goods. That was an enormous shift for people who lived on farms and in small towns and made many of the goods they needed on their own, including clothes and furniture.
Sears' stores helped reshape America, drawing shoppers away from the traditional Main Street merchants. Sears brought people into malls, contributing to the suburbanization of America in the post-World War II era. Its Kenmore appliances introduced many American homes to labor-saving devices that changed family dynamics. Its Craftsman tools and their lifetime guarantees were a mainstay of middle-class America. Sears truly changed America.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
When they have no customers, they can’t survive. Target should be next and none of their virtual posturing with perverts in the bathrooms will save them.
If they had vision they might have been in the role Amazon is in today.
Memories.....
As a kid we couldn’t wait to get the annual Christmas catalog....
Dads toolbox was filled with Craftsman tools.
I hate to see Sear’s fold. Kind of tugs at the heart.
They would have an immediate turnaround if they would fire their board and announce they are carrying a full line of Trump and Pro-America products.
The Sears store near me closed a few months ago.
They are closing many stores and retrenching, to try to stay alive.
I hope they can stay in business. But it also seems clear that Sears didn’t adapt to the changing retail environment.
lifetime tool guarantees were the best thing they had going for them IMO. Their lawn mowers however are a different story. Over the years I heard story after story about how bad the quality on them was.
They changed America for sure. But America is always
changing if you think and look at history. Things come
and go and will continue to the end of time.
There are Craftsman and then there are tools (yes, Stanley makes a very good product too). But Sears sold off the Craftsman line previously did it not?
It’s too bad.
I wondering they’ll change the Chapter 11 filing to a Chapter 7. I can’t imagine the Sears Holding Company that emerges from Chapter 11 will be very strong.
Sears got out of catalog sales in themid-90s
Biggest mistake ever.
It was right as people started to turn to mail order on the internet.
Sears could’ve been Amazon if they hadn’t based their thinking on shopping malls.
My craftsman lawn mower lasted 26 years
When I purchased a new one about 4 or 5 years ago, it cost the same.....$200
“Sears didn’t adapt to the changing retail environment”
Agreed. Going in to the one in the mall by my house feels like you walked into a store in 1976.
The cause is simple: BAD MANAGEMENT.
Sears did not compete with online marketing - Walmart did, and they are doing well.
Sears had Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances; standards for quality and cost.
This has been a long time in coming. Even when I was a kid in the 1970s, Sears didn’t have a good reputation for anything other than tools and appliances. You’d cringe if your mom was going to take you shopping for clothes as Sears.
Well, we will see, if Sears goes out of business.
I recall how Montgomery Ward, which had been around for over a century, went out of business.
There are smaller retailers such as Radio Shack which went away as well.
Many local department stores, such as Marshall Field in Chicago, The Broadway in southern California, Woodward and Lothrop in the Washington DC area, found the enviroment had changed. Some of these were merged into the company which owns Macy’s.
At one time, those local department stores were solid local institutions, and it would have been unthinkable that they would ever not be there.
Sears may well join the ranks of retailers where we say, whatever happened to them?
“As a kid we couldn’t wait to get the annual Christmas catalog....”
I started a response to this thread that started out with exactly that...even the same words.
Right now it sounds like the end of a legendary company. Still, I believe the “Sears” brand still has value. I’m sure there are many who know that and will attempt to acquire and make money with it.
Maybe Walmart will get it...or someone else...
The company that essentially invented mass mail order got out of the business and now claims they can't compete with Amazon...
Somewhere recently, I saw there was an attempt to return to the places where Sears stores were closed with independently operated Sears Franchise stores.
I’m not exactly sure what these mom and pop stores would sell, but it would be a counter to the online purchasing trend.
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