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Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

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Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#181

Post by lotsofpulp »

baddox wrote: post #104
lotsofpulp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have wrote that it's just one factor, but at the end of the day, people opted for lower priced goods rather than the service that Sears offered, which I assume was partly due to the decent compensation they provided. Another example of a low wage industry where paying employees more doesn't work in the grand scheme are hotels. People like to stay in newer, renovated, upscale hotels. Well if one hotel pays mo…

> but at the end of the day, people opted for lower priced goods rather than the service that Sears offered, which I assume was partly due to the decent compensation they provided. Huh? The parent commenter was just describing how poor the service was at Sears stores.

I was referring to its reputation 30+ years ago.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#182

Post by jandrese »

melq wrote: post #76
bluGill wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are. You need to have a good amount of extra money to afford the membership and the cost of buying 6 months of toilet paper in advance. Those are cheap items that you will need, if you are not poor you probably don't even think about it. However when you are poor it doesn't matter if it is cheaper or not to buy in bulk because you don't have the cash to afford it. (you also are unlikely to have the storage space…

Membership at Costco is like 60 dollars a year. Not saying it's doable for everyone but its hardly something 'you need to have a good amount of extra money' to afford.

You can also get the $120 membership that gives you a percentage back. If you shop there regularly the membership becomes effectively free. But this doesn't help someone living paycheck to paycheck. Where the hell are they going to find an extra $120?

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#184

Post by commonsense1234 »

Evolution and Death

"The most important component of evolution is death. Or, said another way, it’s easier to create a new organism than to change an existing one. Most organisms are highly resistant to change, but when they die it becomes possible for new and improved organisms to take their place.

This rule applies to social structures such as corporations as well as biological organisms: very few companies are capable of making significant changes in their culture or business model, so it is good for companies eventually to go out of business, thereby opening space for better companies in the future."

— John Ousterhout, Stanford professor

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#185

Post by bilbo0s »

dv_dt wrote: post #157
xigency wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this as well until I heard a counter-point [0] which was very convincing. The reason Amazon is successful is not because you can shop online (from a catalog) and receive items in the mail. The reason Amazon is successful is because you can do those things and receive your items within two days. Before Prime existed, Amazon had very quick fulfillment, and after Prime two-day it became even better. The Sears…

Hmm, I could be misremembering, but I think there was almost a decade between the point when Sears had all the legos but didn't know how to assemble them, and when Amazon really started using fast shipping as a differentiator. And I think the "Prime" account branding came still later into the picture. Before shopping at Amazon ramping up, right around 2000, I remember Sears logistics starting to break down with kafka…

HN user xigency is right, Amazon has always been light years faster than Sears.

Personal anecdote:

My mother, back in the late-nineties came to me one day and told me how she had figured out how to get stuff from the jcpenny and sears "even faster". Because she could just search Amazon, "and they actually deliver it to me by the end of the week!"

"I bet you thought they only sold books right? It's something new they have!" yada yada yada blah blah blah. She was pretty proud of herself to be telling me about the new stuff on the web, but I digress. Point is, she was like a kid in a brand new candy store. Only a candy store that sold toys and video games too, and opened up across the street from the kid's house.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#186

Post by Scoundreller »

melq wrote: post #76
bluGill wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are. You need to have a good amount of extra money to afford the membership and the cost of buying 6 months of toilet paper in advance. Those are cheap items that you will need, if you are not poor you probably don't even think about it. However when you are poor it doesn't matter if it is cheaper or not to buy in bulk because you don't have the cash to afford it. (you also are unlikely to have the storage space…

Membership at Costco is like 60 dollars a year. Not saying it's doable for everyone but its hardly something 'you need to have a good amount of extra money' to afford.

And you can usually get a second card « for someone else that lives in the same household ».

You can also tag along with someone else that has a membership if they’re willing to offer you their time.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#188

Post by lotsofpulp »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #119
lotsofpulp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a restaurant is located in an area that has no customers interested in better ingredients or food, then it will lose business to competitors. And Sears' customer experience has been terrible for a couple decades, but from all accounts I've heard it was great in its heyday. What changed, and this is my conjecture of course, is the introduction lower cost options such as Walmart, Home Depot, Amazon, etc, that reveal…

> Sears' customer service has been terrible for a couple decades, but [...] was great in its heyday. Wouldn't "worse customer service" be the change that allowed other retailers to eat Sears' lunch, then? You say Sears' clientele were not willing to pay a premium for whatever extra Sears was offering, but by your own words they haven't actually offered anything premium for a long time. More expensive and better is a…

Yes, but I think it takes a while to switch a company's atmosphere, and they also have or had a ton of defined benefit pension liabilities on the books that other retailers didn't.

Sears catered to the giant American middle class, and while I'm sure that mismanagement was a huge part of its demise, I also think the declining spending power of the American middle class also contributed.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#190

Post by rubicon33 »

xigency wrote: post #96
wombatpm wrote: post #5

Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check. They threw it all away, ending catalog operations in 1993 a year before Amazon.com opened in 1994. They owned part of Prodigy in 1984! Yet somehow thought it was a better move to expand into bigger box re…

I thought this as well until I heard a counter-point [0] which was very convincing. The reason Amazon is successful is not because you can shop online (from a catalog) and receive items in the mail. The reason Amazon is successful is because you can do those things and receive your items within two days. Before Prime existed, Amazon had very quick fulfillment, and after Prime two-day it became even better. The Sears…

Where's the startup that is solving the pile of Amazon boxes in my backyard that I am too lazy to breakdown?
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