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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

#241

Post by amyjess »

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…

Honestly, I think both of those perspectives don't quite explain why Sears died.

Sears died because Eddie Lampert spent years systematically looting the company. If not for Lampert's dismanagement [0], Sears would be in roughly the same position as other department stores like Macy's or JCPenney. Yeah, sure, they're not doing super great, and Amazon is kicking their asses, but they're still keeping their heads above water.

[0] Sic. I'm trying to coin a neologism here. Dismanagement is to mismanagement as disinformation is to misinformation. Mismanagement and misinformation come from incompetence; dismanagement and disinformation come from malice.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#242

Post by nilkn »

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…

Looking over the comments and replies here, it seems everyone has their own version of "the real reason Amazon was successful was X..."

My own conclusion reading this is that Amazon was just highly competent across the board. They were online in the mid-90s. They were quick with shipping (eventually, if not right at launch). They were competitive on pricing. They quickly had a huge inventory. They had the "you might also like..." algorithm that's impossible to get from a print magazine. They had online reviews. They offered Prime in 2005.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#243

Post by mensetmanusman »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #192
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…

Not to be snarky, but there needs to be a name for selective amnesia when an idea that seems obvious in retrospect is ignored later on. In this case, the thing that made Amazon so great, before Prime existed, was that it had the "Things you might also like" section. AFAIK it was one of the first online stores that used machine learning to recommend new and related items you didn't realize you wanted and to have user…

They used mechanical Turk to build recommendation lists.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#244

Post by rhacker »

bpicolo wrote: post #219
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be snarky, but there needs to be a name for selective amnesia when an idea that seems obvious in retrospect is ignored later on. In this case, the thing that made Amazon so great, before Prime existed, was that it had the "Things you might also like" section. AFAIK it was one of the first online stores that used machine learning to recommend new and related items you didn't realize you wanted and to have user…

Is that really a primary growth factor? I've never once acted on an Amazon recommendation, and it's always felt almost entirely useless - "you just bought a vacuum, here's 15 more vacuums just in case you're a vacuum-obsessed lunatic"

That, and the ONLY analytics based feature I used was the "After viewing this item most people purchased" section WAS THE ABSOLUTE BEST for shoppers. It made me feel like I could look at a vacuum, but then be directed to the BEST one. It was like, I'm doing all this crazy research and stuff, but how could a billion other people's research help me here. It seems like they run experiments now where once in a blue moon you might see that section.

I know why they got rid of it - and Amazon has this problem all over the place, but some products just sit, while others, with really no difference just fly off the shelves.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#247

Post by chipotle_coyote »

bpicolo wrote: post #219
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be snarky, but there needs to be a name for selective amnesia when an idea that seems obvious in retrospect is ignored later on. In this case, the thing that made Amazon so great, before Prime existed, was that it had the "Things you might also like" section. AFAIK it was one of the first online stores that used machine learning to recommend new and related items you didn't realize you wanted and to have user…

Is that really a primary growth factor? I've never once acted on an Amazon recommendation, and it's always felt almost entirely useless - "you just bought a vacuum, here's 15 more vacuums just in case you're a vacuum-obsessed lunatic"

I doubt it is. Recommendations can be great for certain kinds of purchases -- books, Amazon's original niche, being an obvious example: "people who looked at this book also tended to look at these books" can be a meaningful signal. But I don't think that's what helped Amazon to astronomic growth, particularly when we're comparing it to Sears.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#248

Post by Alex3917 »

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…

> They owned part of Prodigy in 1984!

Widely considered one of the worst-run businesses of all time. No wonder they thought expanding into bigger box retail was a better move.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#249

Post by amyjess »

icelancer wrote: post #120
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…

> I think this is especially relevant here on HN because it shows how startups are required to solve problems. For many problems, a behemoth company has no reason to improve, and a lean startup can rush to a solution faster in many cases. Pretty much. Jurvetson calls it the luxury of being a new entrant. It's very hard to steer the Titanic away from an iceberg.

Yes, first movers in general have a disadvantage. For example, this is part of the reason why Sega's hardware business died.

Admittedly, that was only part of it: there was some mismanagement behind Sega's decline too. Actually, you could say the same thing about Sears: the final nail in their coffin wasn't Amazon learning from Sears's lessons but rather Eddie Lampert's deliberately and systematically looting the company over a period of several years. If not for Lampert, Sears would just be another Macy's.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#250

Post by dragonwriter »

amyjess wrote: post #241
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…

Honestly, I think both of those perspectives don't quite explain why Sears died. Sears died because Eddie Lampert spent years systematically looting the company. If not for Lampert's dismanagement [0], Sears would be in roughly the same position as other department stores like Macy's or JCPenney. Yeah, sure, they're not doing super great, and Amazon is kicking their asses, but they're still keeping their heads above…

> I'm trying to coin a neologism here. Dismanagement is to mismanagement as disinformation is to misinformation. Mismanagement and misinformation come from incompetence; dismanagement and disinformation come from malice.

I've seen “malmanagement” used the way you seem to be trying to set up “dismanagement”, by analogy to the distinction between misfeasance and malfeasance. (Dictionaries seem to view it as a simple synonym of “mismanagement”, though.)

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