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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

#511

Post by Fins »

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…

Sounds very much like Service Merchandise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#512

Post by johnvanommen »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #283
acdha wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a significant gap between Amazon launch and having two-day shipping — it took years of behind the scenes development before orders started arriving notably faster than other retails. Sears' numbers include regular postal delivery in both directions so switching to online ordering would have cut them in half with no other changes (and don't forget the efficiency wins from orders arriving as validated electro…

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…

> I think a lot of us forget that Amazon wasn't the only big e-tailer in the late 90s, it's just the one that survived. There were lots and lots of bigger and smaller places that straight up went out of business after the .com crash, but Amazon, despite taking a massive beating, survived.

It's my opinion that The Dot Com Crash is what created Amazon.

Here's how:

I worked in Redmond Washington during the crash, and there were thousands of people who lost their jobs due to that. I knew so many people who were struggling to find work.

This was Y2K, when Seattle wasn't the tech powerhouse it is today. T-Mobile didn't exist, Google hadn't opened any offices in Washington, and tech companies were failing left and right.

I think that the crash gave Amazon an opportunity to hire people. There was a lot of talented people out of work.

Arguably, this may also explain why T-Mobile has become so huge. I worked there before they were T-Mobile, and I can remember how tiny we were. You could fit our entire operations team into a conference room.

Nowadays, T-Mobile is HUGE and I think a lot of that may be a combination of geography and timing. In 2003, Sprint was bigger than T-Mobile, but they're based in Kansas and the Seattle area just has a much larger pool of engineers to support a company like that.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#513

Post by johnvanommen »

aswanson wrote: post #416
acdha wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a significant gap between Amazon launch and having two-day shipping — it took years of behind the scenes development before orders started arriving notably faster than other retails. Sears' numbers include regular postal delivery in both directions so switching to online ordering would have cut them in half with no other changes (and don't forget the efficiency wins from orders arriving as validated electro…

In hindsight, Bezos was playing chess while the retailers were playing Uno. I'm generally suspicious of a CEO making that much of a difference, but in this case, clearly, his vision was worth billions in business advantage.

> In hindsight, Bezos was playing chess while the retailers were playing Uno.

Keep in mind, his long term goal is to put people on other planets. So he's definitely playing the long game. Blue Origin is a huge factor here.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#514

Post by samatman »

confiscate wrote: post #504
3pt14159 wrote: post #472

Ahh, I came to this thread far too late, but hopefully this won't be missed. In 1980 The Yankee Group (a tech consultancy) reached out to my dad to help them understand how Sears could respond to the growing tech phenomenon. For reasons too long to get into, Gates and my pops (a Canadian) knew each other and were even both covered in The Intelligent Machines Journal out of Palo Alto in the same issue during the wanin…

60 minutes interview with a young Jeff Bezos, 1999 https://youtu.be/VuI-ss5aQU8?t=629 "how do you view that phenomenon [laugh] that Amazon is worth more than Sears!? [condescending laugh]" "a couple of geeks [laugh laugh], who sketched out some software, could destroy Sears Roebuck [laugh]" same 60 minutes "expert", telling young Bezos, Amazon stock was wildly expensive https://youtu.be/dTxuzW9RAO8?t=20 "Amazon is wo…

In 1999, AMZN peaked ar $80.

Two years later it was trading at $10, and didn’t recover until 2007.

The interviewer was right; Amazon was over valued.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#515

Post by lostlogin »

unknownkadath wrote: post #508
marcrosoft wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media manipulation is likely at hand.

Or there was a last minute reprieve after the article was posted. Not everything is malicious, friend.

The URL is old headline - strange not to post a new story with some sort of addendum on the old one. I’ve added spaces below to prevent the URL shortening.

https: //www.cnbc.com /2019/01/06/ sears-rejects-eddie-lamperts-bid-to-save-company-will-liquidate-. html

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#516

Post by lostlogin »

samatman wrote: post #514
confiscate wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60 minutes interview with a young Jeff Bezos, 1999 https://youtu.be/VuI-ss5aQU8?t=629 "how do you view that phenomenon [laugh] that Amazon is worth more than Sears!? [condescending laugh]" "a couple of geeks [laugh laugh], who sketched out some software, could destroy Sears Roebuck [laugh]" same 60 minutes "expert", telling young Bezos, Amazon stock was wildly expensive https://youtu.be/dTxuzW9RAO8?t=20 "Amazon is wo…

In 1999, AMZN peaked ar $80. Two years later it was trading at $10, and didn’t recover until 2007. The interviewer was right; Amazon was over valued.

Or was it radically undervalued in 2001?

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#517

Post by confiscate »

samatman wrote: post #514
confiscate wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60 minutes interview with a young Jeff Bezos, 1999 https://youtu.be/VuI-ss5aQU8?t=629 "how do you view that phenomenon [laugh] that Amazon is worth more than Sears!? [condescending laugh]" "a couple of geeks [laugh laugh], who sketched out some software, could destroy Sears Roebuck [laugh]" same 60 minutes "expert", telling young Bezos, Amazon stock was wildly expensive https://youtu.be/dTxuzW9RAO8?t=20 "Amazon is wo…

In 1999, AMZN peaked ar $80. Two years later it was trading at $10, and didn’t recover until 2007. The interviewer was right; Amazon was over valued.

Amazon worth more than Sears? Can you imagine?

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#518

Post by drb91 »

samatman wrote: post #514
confiscate wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60 minutes interview with a young Jeff Bezos, 1999 https://youtu.be/VuI-ss5aQU8?t=629 "how do you view that phenomenon [laugh] that Amazon is worth more than Sears!? [condescending laugh]" "a couple of geeks [laugh laugh], who sketched out some software, could destroy Sears Roebuck [laugh]" same 60 minutes "expert", telling young Bezos, Amazon stock was wildly expensive https://youtu.be/dTxuzW9RAO8?t=20 "Amazon is wo…

In 1999, AMZN peaked ar $80. Two years later it was trading at $10, and didn’t recover until 2007. The interviewer was right; Amazon was over valued.

You can’t proclaim it a right decision or wrong decision without comparing exits as well. It’s the delta that’s meaningful, not the value at that single point in time.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#520

Post by samstave »

3pt14159 wrote: post #472

Ahh, I came to this thread far too late, but hopefully this won't be missed. In 1980 The Yankee Group (a tech consultancy) reached out to my dad to help them understand how Sears could respond to the growing tech phenomenon. For reasons too long to get into, Gates and my pops (a Canadian) knew each other and were even both covered in The Intelligent Machines Journal out of Palo Alto in the same issue during the wanin…

My grandmother received an invite.

We are a seattle-native family. Through people we knew at the time, they asked her to invest in their company and she could have 10% of the company if she gave them money.

She discussed it with my grandfather and they both agreed: "Nobody is going to drink that much coffee." and rejected Starbuck's offer.

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