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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

#371

Post by stronglikedan »

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…

Ah, good ole' NAPA, where you pay twice as much for half the quality (in their house brand anyway). At least, that's why I avoided them like the plague a quarter century ago when I was building muscle cars. Also, they always seemed to prioritize their garage delivery service over their walk-in customers. Although,that was a long time ago, and perhaps they've gotten better over time.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#372

Post by [deleted] »

xnyan wrote: post #200
excalibur wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much in agreement here, although I do find it more convenient to buy appliances through the big box store's website than to go in person and spend an hour guiding an associate through the options in their arcane inventory system.

Also you get to avoid most of the 99% profit-for-them "warranty" hard sell. I try not to hold it against the salesperson as I've done that kind of job and I know they don't have a choice but it's still incredibly annoying.

[deleted]

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#373

Post by kelnos »

ghaff wrote: post #343
mattkrause wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

In a way, I miss the serendipity of browsing bookstores. There was a time when it was a circa monthly ritual to go into Harvard Square on a weekend (I think stores were mostly open on Sunday by then) and make my way through all the new and used bookstores as well as run other errands. But, really, although I still like going into a good bookstore now and then, having this vast collection of (however imperfectly) revi…

I do wonder how typical your experience is, though. I personally never found much by doing that (partly I was paralyzed by choice without a good algorithm for narrowing things down), and consequently stopped the random browsing in bookstores long before the bookstores themselves mostly disappeared.

When I was much younger (pre-teens and teens), I was a voracious reader and would spend a lot of time at the library. But even there, I would mostly stick to the long-running series that I knew well, or prolific authors that I knew I liked.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#374

Post by hrktb »

_dark_matter_ wrote: post #201
hrktb wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could say the same for other big box retailers. I don’t know any that even comes close to te amazon experience, short of Yodobashi.con in Japan. I think it requires something very special for an organization to accept to canibalize itself. Apple is the only exemple that I would see at a behemoth scale.

What is "The Amazon experience"? Ads being served as the first few rows of results? A review system that cannot be trusted? The same item listed multiple times by different sellers? Extreme price variance when choosing different colors and sizes?

These are all valid point. I’d add to that bad knock off items mixed with the real ones.

But most of these issues are plaguing every other major site. Ads that stick with you for days and days whatever site you look at are becoming the norm.

No ec site review system can be trusted in my opinion, they are usually way to easy to game. For anything that actually matters reputable and dedicated review sites end up to be the most useful.

Different sellers and different price are fine to me, it actually helps to mitigate the knock off issues in my experience.

All in all amazon has degraded a lot in these aspects, but I feel the whole industry took the dive and don’t see competing retailers coming up with fresh ideas.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#375

Post by heurist »

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…

One day, Amazon, Google, and Apple will also die. It's the circle of life. Sears operated for 126 years - astounding in our era.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#376

Post by Broken_Hippo »

greedo wrote: post #364
jessaustin wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even while our dads were swearing by Craftsman, better tools existed. You're right that Craftsman was good enough for most people's needs. Craftsman is still an OK brand for hand tools (not power tools). It was just easier to get Craftsman, because they sold it at a store that wasn't too far away. Back in the day you could only get Snap-On etc. if you were affiliated with e.g. a mechanic's shop that was on a Snap-On…

Sear's return policy for Craftsman pro tools was exceptional; lifetime warranty. If it broke, bring it in to exchange for a replacement.

I was just going to mention this! The warranty is the real reason my father had quite a few craftsman tools. Well, at least the ones he used the most, anyway.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#377

Post by kazinator »

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…

Ordering something on Amazon, while it can be fast, can take two months or more to arrive from China, and everything in between.

Amazon started as purely a book store in 1994 and stayed that way for a good while; it was not immediately obvious to sell every damn thing imaginable. Bezos was cautious about what to try selling online. In 1998 they announced they would move beyond books, but without specific.

Amazon did not turn a profit until 2001; they really took it on the nose in the beginning, and had to weather the dot com bust.

Before Amazon expanded into things other than books, the site most known for that was eBay. In popular culture, every meme and joke about anyone buying or selling anything online was about eBay for the longest time.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#378

Post by scrooched_moose »

jerrysievert wrote: post #179
Thasc wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with Prime, the couriers Amazon uses to service some areas take long enough to deliver that most other online retailers are preferable.

For me, they’ve “fixed” that. I finally got their amazon couriers blacklisted, so they are shipping usps. But, if i order from an account without prime, they wait 11 days to ship, thus giving me 12 day delivery (just within their promised 2 weeks). If i order from an account with prime, it alternates between next day and two days. Editing to add: Last order without prime, Dec 28. “Shipped” yesterday (usps shows it ar…

How'd you manage that?

UPS/USPS do great in my area, while if it's Amazon or FedEx I'll get it a week from never.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#379

Post by marnett »

babygoat wrote: post #294
kickopotomus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a golden parachute though. Those are retention bonuses being paid to management so that they don't lose their entire staff before they are able to liquidate remaining assets and close properly. Going out of business is a process. It is not some sort of overnight ordeal. Especially not for an organization as large as Sears.

That makes zero sense. How does management getting all that money keep their staff around? They'd use that money to pay the staff if that were true.

unfortunately most staff are incentivized enough by a continued salary. the managers could just flee and the lowly laborers would have no idea how to do what needs to be done.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#380

Post by roenxi »

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…

But as a counterpoint, why would anyone build this business? Compare Amazon's profits [0] to Walmart's [1]. Assuming I've got the right chart, and recalling that the profits are coming from AWS (ie, unrelated to the catalog business), is it obvious that a sane management team would want to replicate Amazon?

We're talking two decade of basically no profits. Risk free rate of profit (ie, bonds) was something like 5% for a lot of that period, although there is obviously a lot more to consider. This is longer than long term from an investment standpoint - compare it to jobs who took Apple from "return the money to shareholders" to "most profitable company in the world" in a bit more than a decade.

[0] https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin

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