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Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

cnbc.com

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Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#261

Post by smelendez »

LeftTurnSignal wrote: post #101
Panino wrote: post #7

Sears is a macro-example of the phrase, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Seems like this company has been walking dead for years. When the October news hit that Sears was going out of business, my wife and I used up all our Sears points (kind of like airline miles) to get tons of free food from Kmart. Then Sears kept just giving her points so we kept getting free stuff. How on ea…

I had a friend who worked at Kmart during the Sears transition and stayed until it closed a few years ago (or so). He worked there for maybe 12 years total, and maybe 7 of that as a manager. The first week after he started there, he started to wonder how they could stay in business. He said most of his time (in the 12 years) was spent walking around, cleaning, organizing or just watching TV just because there wasn't…

Even the Kmarts in New York City (where lines at Target are routinely insane) were like this.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#262

Post by MetalGuru »

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…

Free 2-day shipping was an absolute game changer. Customer reviews was also a huge competitive advantage that brick-and-mortar retailers lacked since it let you quickly identify which specific product was most popular for what you were looking for: much better than asking a store rep for their recommendation.

I'd really be interested in a graph that showed some growth metric like revenue or number of orders plotted against a timeline of when Amazon introduced certain features. I remember seeing one for Facebook that was really illuminating.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#265

Post by mattkrause »

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…

The recommendations have never been the selling point for me.

Instead, the thing that got me to use Amazon was that it provided you with access to a long tail of books—and later, other stuff.

Bookstores and record stores did do "special orders", but there was a lot of friction in the process. You'd have to find out about the book, visit the store (twice!), and if what you wanted was even available, you would wait a few weeks for your order to be bundled in with the next shipment from the publisher.

Amazon removed all of that—and the reviews even made it less risky. Want to read the next book in a series? Check out the reviews and if you want it, done deal! Need some obscure technical title? It'll be AT YOUR HOUSE next week.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#266

Post by rdiddly »

tw04 wrote: post #82

Sears died because of Lampert, that's the beginning and end of the story. While they were far from perfect, post-Kmart "acquisition" both the service and stores became garbage and he used Sears as a personal slush fund.

Yeah this article does a great job of painting Lampert as heroically struggling against foes that turned out to be insurmountable, but there's a lot to suggest he was simply siphoning the wealth out of the company, with this being the final and inevitable result.

Couple of HN links with the opposite slant to this article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18085640

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18244870

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#268

Post by anovikov »

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…

I think they even had no way to improve rather than (or in addition to), no reason. Their existing operations never allowed for going from 3-week delivery to 2-day delivery.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#269

Post by dragonwriter »

whitten wrote: post #267

I'm sad. Sears brought the Atari micro computers into the Heartland of America and spurred my imagination. They were a bit pricey, but all computers were. I remember almost $300 for 32K of extra memory.

The Sears that did that died a long time ago; it was buried when Kmart bought them in 2004.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#270

Post by wccrawford »

wvenable wrote: post #148
reaperducer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name recognition This can't be understated, and is something a lot of new companies don't understand. If people know your brand and trust your company, they will hand you money. Anecdata: My parents were massive Sears loyalists. When they bought an appliance, my father researched the various GE models, then bought the Kenmore version. When he wanted a video game console, he researched and decided he wanted an Atari 2…

And Sears, like Walmart now, was big enough that they could go to manufacturers and get special versions of products to makeup the "Kenmore" brand. I remember looking at fridges back in the day and the Kenmore version had just minor differences that made it slightly better than the 'same' model from the actual manufacturer. The difference between Walmart and Sears through is that Walmart pushes manufacturers to build…

But also cheaper, which is what a lot of their customers are looking for.
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