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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

#441

Post by dkarl »

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…

Big companies have an extraordinary ability to overlook what small competitors are good at. Instead of thinking, "This company is setting a new competitive standard that we don't know how to meet," they attribute it to immaturity and lack of scale. I worked for a company that got acquired by a Fortune 10 company, and the people from the "mothership" were downright smug and condescending when they heard how fast we expected to do things, because clearly we were not doing things right if we thought we could them done that fast.

I bet when Amazon's fulfillment speed was brought up as a competitive advantage, the Sears execs looked at some spreadsheets, did some calculations, and said, "This is stupid. They're losing a ton of money shipping stuff so fast. They won't get far before some adults take over and force them to smarten up."

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#442

Post by mjevans »

rossdavidh wrote: post #418
taneq wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, in '98 there weren't many people with big corporate web store experience who were also experienced enough in retail to trust with a big corporate retail operation.

Truth. I think that might be a reason why none of the retail incumbents, not even the ones with a by-mail background, did well. If you were an upstart, by-mail-only internet company, you didn't need to know how to run a bricks-and-mortar retail chain (of large size). It is probably relevant to consider Amazon's (limited) forays into bricks-and-mortar establishments. They have had about as much impact as the online ve…

I remember that what became NewEgg opened a brick and mortar store for (mostly) software and such (some hardware) in the suburb of Seattle that I lived in at the time, then a year or two later shifted entirely to online. They pivoted //hard// and made it work.

I don't think Sears could have done quite that, but keeping the catalog and 'order to the store for free (long time) shipping' / 'delivery to home with paid shipping' would have been a much better move and SHOULD have been within their grasp to understand and execute on. All the more so if a customer could look at clothing styles and options and order slight variants or harder to get sizes from the catalog.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#443

Post by bluedino »

jbob2000 wrote: post #395
Nelson69 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would spin culture the other way too. Sears was a more premium company. They had commission salesmen working the floors. (I think it was as recently as like 2010ish, I walked in to one and looked too long at something was was swarmed) You didn't go there for the "lowest price" you went there for good stuff and when you bought something big they helped you figure it out, they'd show you a dozen fridges, maybe with f…

Reading this, it makes it seem that Sears died because the middle class died. Why did people ditch this middle-of-the-road experience for the cheaper one? Because they were forced to .

People also buy more of things. Before, you saved up $800 for a 35” console tv.

Today, you buy a $199 tv for every bedroom, living room, man cave, etc in the house

We have way, way more possessions than our parents, and especially grandparents did.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#445

Post by mulmen »

spaceflunky wrote: post #394
mulmen wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There use to retail chain called BEST where the whole store area was a "showroom" and the products were on display outside of their packaging. You were encourage to touch and interact with the product. There was no stock on the showroom floor. Once you made a decision you would go to the front to place an order, then go to another corner of the store where your item would come out on a conveyor belt. https://en.wikip…

We had a BEST for a while. It’s an ice rink now. IKEA has a very similar experience.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#447

Post by Shorel »

ForHackernews wrote: post #135
artursapek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Amazon will ever get to that point. It's hard to imagine.

As it grows larger, the "Amazon marketplace" is getting more and more filled with garbage knockoff products and fake reviews. There may eventually come a tipping point where they lose user trust.

For many things that is an issue.

But I still buy laptops and other electronics from Amazon.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#448

Post by drdeadringer »

ams6110 wrote: post #50
ben1040 wrote: post #35

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…

Being too early is as bad as being wrong.

In the late 90s there was Bolt.com, a social network very similar to Facebook and similar sites we have today.

It died in the early 00s. Within a couple years, MySpace and Facebook and others walked on stage and here we are.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#449

Post by mjevans »

chihuahua wrote: post #402
ben1040 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly (or more importantly, even) is they've now built out a proprietary fulfillment and last mile delivery infrastructure that runs parallel to USPS/UPS/etc. 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.

Based on my own experience with Amazon's own AMZL delivery service, it's a big advantage for their competitors who don't subject customers to this experience.

The only real positive side to this infrastructure are the Amazon Lockers that are paid for as part of the shipping service and actually at good locations most of the time. (While later movers like UPS and FedEx have stuck their lockers at SUPER ANNOYING locations).

It's really too bad the post office can't just setup something like this at the actual post-offices and be open for any carrier for a small fee. That'd solve a ton of last mile problems.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#450

Post by chrisgd »

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…

The reason Amazon is successful is AWS. They can buy stickiness in retail by offering lower prices subsidized by being the biggest cloud provider.
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