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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

#321

Post by peapicker »

gotorazor wrote: post #260
gibolt wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is generally true, imagine if Sears had honestly realized their competitors potential and tried to compete. They had the country covered in stores and could have easily cut shipping times down by shipping from the nearest one. Their stores were also a hodgepodge of junk all randomly mixed, and they never made their store a desirable place to stroll.

Walmart is following this exact strategy right now. How are they doing?

After years of getting many if not most things from Amazon, my last several big ticket tech items were bought from Walmart online. The prices on identical items were better at Walmart.

Other things I've stopped buying from Amazon are the frequently-counterfeited categories of items (USB chargers, etc etc). I'll just go to Microcenter or Walmart or wherever local whose supply chain I have more faith in.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#322

Post by Skunkleton »

mikestew wrote: post #36

Lampert might have "saved" AutoZone, which AFAICT was the feather in his cap to make him "the next Warren Buffert", but if you asked me I'd be hard-pressed to tell you how the shopping experience changed. I speak from ignorance, and the laziness that prevents me from researching deeper, but I assume he did some accounting tricks, sold a few inefficient assets, etc. But as the owner of some old vehicles and a frequent…

Autozone has a similar feel to visiting a mechanic, so it is probably OK that it is dingy inside. Sears was just depressing.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#323

Post by wavefunction »

MetalGuru wrote: post #277
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.

So instead of investing in actually making Sears better (like Target and Walmart did), he thought it was a good idea to spent nearly all of Sears' cash reserves buying back its shares (at prices as high as $170)? Now shares are $0.33. Is he just an incompetent buffoon, or did this strategy line his pockets? For example, was he buying shares owned by ESL with Sears' money? If so, that's highly unethical. Seems par for…

This seems like standard operating practice for vulture capitalists (Bain Capital) that swoop in and extract the value from the firm before discarding its debts and bankruptcies and moving on to the next firm.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#324

Post by dsfyu404ed »

mikestew wrote: post #36

Lampert might have "saved" AutoZone, which AFAICT was the feather in his cap to make him "the next Warren Buffert", but if you asked me I'd be hard-pressed to tell you how the shopping experience changed. I speak from ignorance, and the laziness that prevents me from researching deeper, but I assume he did some accounting tricks, sold a few inefficient assets, etc. But as the owner of some old vehicles and a frequent…

>I speak from ignorance, and the laziness that prevents me from researching deeper,

More "customer focus", (no more haggling on warranty, less pushy upsells, "sure ma'am, we'll install your wipers for you" ,etc, etc.) and they greatly improved the house brands and logistics. Basically they dumped a bunch of money into their product lines and stores with the idea that people would shop there more if the parts weren't shit and the service didn't suck. They also own Alldata which they probably turned into a massive cash cow around the time Lampert was there (which was when electronic service manuals started becoming a real thing).

I personally thing it worked well. They're basically the McDonalds's of auto parts. The customer service experience is pretty much the same in any store and part quality is consistent and you almost never get the really, really terrible stuff that you sometimes get when you buy the cheapest parts online.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#325

Post by bluGill »

ghaff wrote: post #165
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…

TBH, I think there's a much better case to be made for Sears doubling down on some of its core assets and creating Home Depot before Home Depot did. Its store footprints weren't right, which is no small thing. But they were already a significant home improvement and major appliance store. They probably had a window when it was clear that discount retailers (and some high-end stores) were the future of "department sto…

Note that Target stores have always been entirely owned by Dayton's department stores. Some years back they realized the department store was much smaller and changed the company name to Target but there was never a big shift, just lots of little shifts that turned the department store into the discount retailer.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#326

Post by jonknee »

Sargos wrote: post #91
neurobashing wrote: post #25

My parents were young, and broke, and opened a Sears "charge card" to buy their wedding rings. "Craftsman, so it'll last forever!" I mean, intellectually, I get why Sears is going away, but it still kinda tugs at the ol' heartstrings a little, you know?

This makes me wonder... what happens if you open a Sears card (yesterday) and max it out with all kinds of fun stuff and then Sears goes out of business? Does someone come after you for money?

Sears doesn't actually do the financing for their credit card, it's a Citibank product.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#327

Post by daotoad »

mondo9000 wrote: post #19
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…

The other point is Sears Catalog was empowered by the railroads, then along comes the Internet and they miss the analogy.

The internet was billed as the "Information Super-Highway" not the "Information Super-Railroad". That's why they didn't see it.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#328

Post by anoncoward111 »

Sargos wrote: post #91
neurobashing wrote: post #25

My parents were young, and broke, and opened a Sears "charge card" to buy their wedding rings. "Craftsman, so it'll last forever!" I mean, intellectually, I get why Sears is going away, but it still kinda tugs at the ol' heartstrings a little, you know?

This makes me wonder... what happens if you open a Sears card (yesterday) and max it out with all kinds of fun stuff and then Sears goes out of business? Does someone come after you for money?

While the others who responded to you are correct, there is a chance that they wouldn't be able to prove that you owed the debt properly somehow.

Of course this is a pretty dumb risk to take, even if you were able to resell the valuable items you bought like TVs, tools, and jewelry

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#329

Post by filmgirlcw »

stinky613 wrote: post #289
filmgirlcw wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pricing benefit really cannot be understated. Amazon was 40% less than list for books -- which was a massive amount, even if you lived in Barnes & Noble markets (and B&N wasn't as pervasive in 1996/1997 as your average mall bookstore was), where there were similar markdowns. And of course, you could get any book you wanted from Amazon. And then Amazon very quickly moved into media like CDs and DVDs. I used to ord…

Very good points. I'd like to add that Amazon began in a time when the typical person didn't trust ANY online shopping options. To my recollection, Amazon and eBay were the two biggest players that found ways to give people confidence that they could safely shop online.

YES! That's an excellent point too -- though I think this is where legacy retailers really lost out because I know my mom for example, was more comfortable giving her credit card to a known brand than some random website. My first order from Amazon was in 1997, when I was 14, and I did it using a gift card I got as a holiday gift from GeoCities (as thanks for being free tech support -- this truly is the most 1990s story ever), because my mom wouldn't hand over her credit card and I didn't get a Visa check card until I was 16.

In 1996, Mom had been screwed over by phone reps for CompuServe's attempt at a true ISP stealing her credit card to order shit from Tiger Direct (told you this was a 1990s story) and was leery about anything online for years after that (and Tiger Direct was technically a mail-order catalog but it had a website).

But you're right that eBay and Amazon were two of the earliest trusted, in part because they were the two biggest/first to market. (And also, both proved themselves to be trustworthy, which was important in the age of fly-by-night e-tailers).

The same is true for PayPal.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#330

Post by cestith »

baddox wrote: post #130
krustyburger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their margins are high like the others because many households renew memberships each year but do not make much use of them. I also think their membership does skew more affluent than many other retailers.

Wouldn’t an unused membership be worse (for Costco) than a used membership? Perhaps barring some rare edge cases like customers who would only buy loss leaders, or stores that are congested with shoppers.

Costco actually sells most products at or near cost. Most of their profit is in memberships.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/05/how-costco-wholesa...

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