311–320 of 568 posts
I think this is now incorrect: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/08/business/sears-future-bankrup... yup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18858494
Edit: No need to change the link, the article has been updated to reflect the changing situation. Can a mod please change the title to match? :)
My first online shopping experience was with Sears over Prodigy in 1991. You could browse online, or order from the paper catalog (which is more likely what you'd do because NAPLPS graphics didn't lend themselves well, or at all, to product depictions). Then they'd ship to you, or you could go to the order pickup area at your local Sears store. They had a touchscreen kiosk there where you'd punch in your order number…
My local grocery store had a drive-thru pickup back in the 90s. The strange part was you still had to pick your own items and check out conventionally. Then walk to your car and drive through the pickup area. They converted it to a cart return around the turn of the century. If they simply had a way to order ahead they would have been two decades ahead of the current industry.
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So what I'm hearing is "so big they had to fail".
I wonder if Amazon will ever get to that point. It's hard to imagine.
> "Amazon is not too big to fail ... In fact, I predict one day Amazon will fail," Bezos reportedly said when addressing a question about Sears recently going bankrupt. "Amazon will go bankrupt. If you look at large companies, their lifespans tend to be 30-plus years, not a hundred-plus years."
> "If we start to focus on ourselves, instead of focusing on our customers, that will be the beginning of the end ... We have to try and delay that day for as long as possible."
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-says-amazon-will-...
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Buying online and picking up from a store really isn't that advanced of a concept. You're right. Service Merchandise build an empire around it, just by mail or phone instead of computer. Other stores did it, too. JCPenny comes to mind. Even some local and regional chains. Amazon and others think they've invented something. But once again, it's just SV re-inventing something that worked last century.
And by the early 90s Sears had a century of experience as a catalog fulfillment company and had pretty much become synonymous with the concept.
Probably an impediment, instead of being an asset. A newcomer can see things differently: pick the right things and discard the wrong ones. Good luck with a 100 year old company.
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…
This is 50% of the thesis of The Innovator's Dilemma, the book that introduced MBAs to the the word "disruption".
The other half if why this happens to behemoth companies, which is that they are listening to their customers. In this case, the customers are those who are OK with waiting 3 weeks and would just like a wider selection or lower prices. People who would but if delivery were faster by definition aren't customers.
Startups have to address the non-customers because otherwise they'd have to pry them away from their existing supplier -- generally a much tougher task.
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Costco is an upscale place to shop? I’ve never seen them lumped together with Whole Foods or even Apple. Edit: Wow I didn’t realize Costco’s profit margin was higher than Whole Foods, Wal Mart and almost a full percent above Kroger’s.
Costco's average customer is definitely higher income than the average American, although I've seen different attempts to quantify this. The first result from a Google search gives me this: https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/17/who-is-costcos-fav... A couple of factors act as a "filter" that makes Costco less worthwhile for lower income shoppers: - Buying in bulk requires a bunch of cash up front, which not every…
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…
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There's a lot of stuff I don't buy online. Clothes -- I like to try them on first. Tools -- I like to see if they are well made and how they feel in my hand. Photos on a website don't provide this. Food -- I want to check produce and meat before I buy it. And it's easier to stop at shops I'm passing on my way home anyway. Household supplies -- I don't want to deal with disposing of shipping boxes, styrofoam peanuts a…
Isn't warranty provided by the manufacturer and not the retailer, and hence better to buy big ticket items online (likely cheaper since there is no local retailers markup). Even for clothes, yes offline stores do give us the ability to ability to try, but online offers more choices, colours, fabrics, sizes and brands than any one physical clothes store could possibly offer, so I do think online has an edge.
The cost is usually covered by the manufacturer, but the local retailer is usually a point of service.
I truly don't understand what's in this for Lampert. Why does he keep trying to resuscitate the company he hastened to its deathbed? How does him offering $4.4B benefit him personally? That seems like pride/hubris/denial to think he could ever recoup that money or pull Sears out of the condition he put it in.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lampert-to-bid-for-sears-real-e...
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Amazon introduced the ability to seamlessly and automatically blend counterfeit goods into their supply chain, from sellers that you never heard of before, and may never encounter again.~ But recall that Amazon started with books. The catalog for books is the size of the card catalog that used to be at your library. A row of cabinets, filled with rank and file of drawers, each filled with index cards. One could not s…
Agree wholeheartedly with everything you said except: > They didn't build the other pieces they needed for a 120-year business while they had the protection I would argue they did with things like AWS.
Any new entrant is going to have to compete with Amazon on shipping cost/time. Yet Amazon can do it using their own distribution and sorting hubs, from which gig workers use their own cars to do the deliveries.