The fact that Amazon exists is a testament to the stunning mismanagement of Sears’ corporate leadership in the 90s and early 2000s. They had all the ingredients and instead simply set the company on fire.
Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
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Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
#12What did they sell? A bit of everything?
Literally almost everything, up to and including entire houses. I've lived in two Sears houses, great quality stuff if not a bit small by modern tastes. When I was a kid it was normal for parents to let their kids read the huge yearly Sears catalog to get ideas or pick gifts. By then they'd stopped selling items like firearms and houses but had pretty much everything else. If they had the foresight, they should have…
Ironically they had the foresight, they were just too early/didn't execute. They ran an online service (co-owner with IBM and CBS) called Prodigy that competed with AOL and CompuServ, and they tried to do online shopping there.
Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally almost everything, up to and including entire houses. I've lived in two Sears houses, great quality stuff if not a bit small by modern tastes. When I was a kid it was normal for parents to let their kids read the huge yearly Sears catalog to get ideas or pick gifts. By then they'd stopped selling items like firearms and houses but had pretty much everything else. If they had the foresight, they should have…
Ironically they had the foresight, they were just too early/didn't execute. They ran an online service (co-owner with IBM and CBS) called Prodigy that competed with AOL and CompuServ, and they tried to do online shopping there.
Everyone is talking like creating Amazon was some kind of low hanging citrus to be picked from the tree.
Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically they had the foresight, they were just too early/didn't execute. They ran an online service (co-owner with IBM and CBS) called Prodigy that competed with AOL and CompuServ, and they tried to do online shopping there.
Everyone is talking like creating Amazon was some kind of low hanging citrus to be picked from the tree.
For a company that had Sears’ positioning at the time? It wasn’t far off from that description.
Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
#15[deleted]
Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
#16Meanwhile Sears is still thriving in Mexico under different ownership.
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Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone is talking like creating Amazon was some kind of low hanging citrus to be picked from the tree.
For a company that had Sears’ positioning at the time? It wasn’t far off from that description.
But a lot of stuff had to be invented and Bezos was the person to do it. Amazon sounded intense to work for to get to where it is.
Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
#18What did they sell? A bit of everything?
The original Sears was the Amazon of the 20th century.
I would argue that they were a lot like Walmart (when Walmart was starting out)... clothes, electronics, sporting/seasonal goods... then they ventured out into additional services like family photography, optometry, pharmacy... really, the only difference was the mail order catalog.
Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
#19Intentionally destroyed to get access to its real estate. I dunno how the CEO is not behind bars for what he did.
I think it would have been hard to recover but yeah when Lampert got involved it was all about the financial engineering rather than the operations. I bought the shares around then but sold soon after, turned off by the conflicts and the lack of focus on ops.
(I vaguely recall some realisation that he had made money but the public equity did not… It was a bit of an awakening for the young investor who had bought into fiduciary duty, shareholder interests, etc.)
Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.
#20The fact that Amazon exists is a testament to the stunning mismanagement of Sears’ corporate leadership in the 90s and early 2000s. They had all the ingredients and instead simply set the company on fire.
The internet was a paradigm shift… full of unknowns. I think you are underestimating those challenges. We only speak about Amazon now because it was the one that survived.