Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 120 posts

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#51

Post by razakel »

kotaKat wrote: post #36
jonway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All jewelry is ridiculously marked up. You see Cash for Gold places, but have you ever seen Cash for Diamonds?

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#52

Post by tdeck »

ksec wrote: post #49
silisili wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

Do they sell it all under their own brand? i.e Costco Kirkland like or was it like old Amazon where every brand have their own exposure?

It's like Walmart. Some things under their own brand (for example, Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances were their brands), many things were third party brands.

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#55

Post by craftkiller »

lazystar wrote: post #28
jonway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That ad was worth every penny. I _still_ quote that ad, and everyone over the age of 30 always recognizes it, yet I can't remember ads I saw last month. If only sears was still around to capitalize on the ubiquitous headspace they purchased.

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#56

Post by mjhay »

eesmith wrote: post #50
jbs789 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-hap... > In 2008, Sears CEO Eddie Lampert decided to restructure the company according to [Ayn] Rand's principles. > Lampert broke the company into more than 30 individual units, each with its own management and each measured separately for profit and loss. The idea was to promote competition among the units, which Lampert assumed would lead to higher pro…

By Ayn Rand standards, Lampert did an excellent job with Sears. He personally made over a billion in profit from his original investment.

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bsxn8l0u5yr6z...

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#57

Post by expedition32 »

mulmen wrote: post #32
LeoPanthera wrote: post #10

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.

Simple, the internet shifted power to the consumer and the Chinese.

Consumer: I can check prices at different stores in 1 minute

Chinese: why do business with the Sears agent in Hong Kong when I can sell directly to the West?

Rule numbero uno: there is no customer loyalty in Ba Sing Se!

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#58

Post by binary132 »

dv_dt wrote: post #21
kristopolous wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even if vicious profiteering is actually the better long-term strategy (and it is, because outpacing your competitors leads to market dominance), if it is the more destructive strategy, it should come with consequences at the very least. Personally, I’d like to see a society structured in such a way that makes vicious profiteering a non-option in the first place, but that’s a bigger problem to solve.

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#59

Post by shever73 »

expedition32 wrote: post #57
mulmen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Simple, the internet shifted power to the consumer and the Chinese. Consumer: I can check prices at different stores in 1 minute Chinese: why do business with the Sears agent in Hong Kong when I can sell directly to the West? Rule numbero uno: there is no customer loyalty in Ba Sing Se!

Thank you for the unexpected ATLA reference!

Re: Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

#60

Post by rainsford »

brushfoot wrote: post #44
mulmen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Think of the kinds of people who vie for leadership roles at established companies like Sears was at the time. Those people aren't innovators and creators. They're management types, MBAs, bureaucrats. And fair enough: When the ship is that big and there are that many people on board, you often don't want to "move fast and break things," because the downstream effects can be extreme. Now you've just broken a company t…

I'm even struggling to come up with counter examples where a major established company is able to successfully pivot when the business model that brought them success is no long as viable as it once was. Maybe IBM counts in that they still exist, although I'd argue they aren't nearly the omnipresent force they were back in the day. You could also count widely diversified companies, but I probably wouldn't because they never really have to try to pivot the entire business.

As you said, finding a balance is hard and maybe not truly possible.

Post reply on HN