The Internet Archive has scans of Sears catalogs from when it was a major mail-order retailer. For example: 1911: https://archive.org/details/sears-roebuck-catalog-122-spring... 1922: https://archive.org/details/SearsRoebuckAndCoCatalog1922_201... When I was young, they were especially known for their tools: 1974/1975: https://archive.org/details/SearsCraftsmanPowerAndHandTools1... More here: https://archive.org/sear…
My house, built in the 60s, is actually 4 Sears cabin kits. The guy bought them, and assembled them end to end, making a long house.
Same guy dug the original ditch by driving back and forth with his jeep for an hour during spring rain. This gives a perspective on his can do attitude.
But really, I'm living in the house still, so it can't be that bad.
At one point Sears owned an ISP, a bank, and a nationwide stock tracking and distribution system. They were Amazon before Amazon, but just didn’t realize it.
I think they did realize it and tried as hard as they could and still failed. I was a Sears salesperson in 2003 and 2004. The whole operation took itself very seriously and embraced the internet and technology. They just… failed. I’d love to know how they missed because everything was in their favor.
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.
Oh yeah they from what I recall they slowly dismantled it after what’s-his-face became ceo. Too big to fail before that. By the end, in a lot of their stores they would have people with iPads walking around accepting payment right there in the aisles. People also forget that what helps build sears’ reputation was their supply chain and curation, they mostly sold brands of good-quality stuff, a lot made in America too…
I bought a riding lawnmower used, 17 years ago. The mower was very well maintained, engine was good, and already 25 to 30 years old when I bought it.
I wanted the manual.
Sears parts still existed, and they shipped me a complete copy of the manual(photocopied) for 10 bucks.
Manual listed all parts, breakdown, etc. I was able to confidently order parts, keep it running for a decade.
That was one reason Sears was so liked.
(for reference, my new mower manual has as much detail, I checked before I bought)
Oh yeah they from what I recall they slowly dismantled it after what’s-his-face became ceo. Too big to fail before that. By the end, in a lot of their stores they would have people with iPads walking around accepting payment right there in the aisles. People also forget that what helps build sears’ reputation was their supply chain and curation, they mostly sold brands of good-quality stuff, a lot made in America too…
> I feel like a big part of the downfall was the huge lumbering corporate culture unable to cope with JIT supply lines and race to the bottom economies of consumer goods. i think its simpler than that. they got so big that they didnt pay any attention to all the waste, e.g. all the ad time that they spent on the old "I'll call today" A/C commercial.
I wonder if those networks had a hard time filling ad orders, so Sears ended up with a massive discount?
If those ads were pennies compared to other spots, it could be deemed worth it. Parents often are nearby when kids are watching TV.
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.
i think the infamous "I'll call now" air conditioner commercial in the '90s was a canary/sign of the mismanagement that was occurring. This commercial played during every commercial break on cartoon network, nickelodean, and the disney channel. Ive long wondered... how many kids bought AC units from sears? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4rqZZgVxnCk&pp=ygUMaWxsIGNhbGw...
Figure though: how many kids would then run around the house screaming 'another scorcher!' and 'call now!' on a hot summer's day?
The weird market of things-on-kids-channels-for-adults was always to try to turn the kid on the parent to use them to close the sale ;)
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.
Oh yeah they from what I recall they slowly dismantled it after what’s-his-face became ceo. Too big to fail before that. By the end, in a lot of their stores they would have people with iPads walking around accepting payment right there in the aisles. People also forget that what helps build sears’ reputation was their supply chain and curation, they mostly sold brands of good-quality stuff, a lot made in America too…
Fun memory and a bit of an internal photo (and a rare shot of PalmOS software from the inside): https://ibb.co/nsVrW0h1
Sears' jewelry was... definitely marked up. This is from a SNC (SEARS Network Communicator, just a fancy term for their Symbol PDTs) showing true cost on a "$1299" necklace. $1299 down to $324? What a steal! It still only cost Sears a hundred bucks.
The Internet Archive has scans of Sears catalogs from when it was a major mail-order retailer. For example: 1911: https://archive.org/details/sears-roebuck-catalog-122-spring... 1922: https://archive.org/details/SearsRoebuckAndCoCatalog1922_201... When I was young, they were especially known for their tools: 1974/1975: https://archive.org/details/SearsCraftsmanPowerAndHandTools1... More here: https://archive.org/sear…
My house, built in the 60s, is actually 4 Sears cabin kits. The guy bought them, and assembled them end to end, making a long house. Same guy dug the original ditch by driving back and forth with his jeep for an hour during spring rain. This gives a perspective on his can do attitude. But really, I'm living in the house still, so it can't be that bad.
>Same guy dug the original ditch by driving back and forth with his jeep for an hour during spring rain.
Oh yeah they from what I recall they slowly dismantled it after what’s-his-face became ceo. Too big to fail before that. By the end, in a lot of their stores they would have people with iPads walking around accepting payment right there in the aisles. People also forget that what helps build sears’ reputation was their supply chain and curation, they mostly sold brands of good-quality stuff, a lot made in America too…
I bought a riding lawnmower used, 17 years ago. The mower was very well maintained, engine was good, and already 25 to 30 years old when I bought it. I wanted the manual. Sears parts still existed, and they shipped me a complete copy of the manual(photocopied) for 10 bucks. Manual listed all parts, breakdown, etc. I was able to confidently order parts, keep it running for a decade. That was one reason Sears was so li…
I will detail the evil anti machine from sears, combo washer dryer, drop the lid and it breaks the switch, the switch trigger is on the lid with a very long prong, dropped gently it works, fast it breaks, $150 plus service call, where it turns out the prong can be snapped off, leaving a stub that still triggers the switch, but wont break it.
Next, the waterpump sits on three bosses, with spring clips, if it ingests anything like a dress sock that WILL go through the machine, it stripps the drive shaft, but AGAIN, the bosses can be snapped off, there is a second place for the spring clipps, and the motor shaft now engages much further, and it will power it's way through whatever.
So the standard model was that, and the "heavy duty$$$" model was 3 min snapping of plastic booby traps.
pure evil, and very very likely illegal
but as someone who can fix/repair or make almost anything, I see this stuff all the time, but of course, today, it's done in the software.
Our obligation is to personal profit at the expense of everything else. This is empirically the default operational behavior. It should always be assumed as opposed to our current strategy of always being baffled and shocked that it happens. We could be serious about this and restructure incentives away from naked kleptocracy to avoid it. I mean we never will, but we could...
If the passive investor class wanted more and better options to collect profits with low long-term risk they would actually support that kind of restructure - but alas it's all very short=sighted profit taking now that actually hurts long term growth. It's no small irony that Buffet's retirement aligns with the close out as an iconic holdout of long view valuation - even his more recent moves I think showed some retr…
These things continue until we criminalize it.
Slavery kept going until we said that's illegal.
Child labor kept going until we said that's illegal
Putting heroin in baby food formula kept going until we said that's illegal.
We don't defer to the free market for everything.
Nobody is like, well child porn, I guess there's a market demand for it so it's right over there with the magazines
It is neither strange nor unusual to value things more than the freedom of the market. We do it all the time.
We should do that with societal harms and not just individual ones. Criminalizing obvious crime shouldn't be some kind of wild eyed fantasy. It should have been done 150 years ago.