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Only 5 Sears stores remain in the U.S.

nytimes.com

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

#61

Post by throwaway173738 »

lumost wrote: post #42
nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is talking like creating Amazon was some kind of low hanging citrus to be picked from the tree.

People are talking about putting a mail order catalog store online. Presumably, sears already had the catalog, shipping infrastructure - so it really should have been about digital payments, and an online storefront. How significant their shipping catalog was in the 1990s I do not know, scaling the online storefront would have required Amazon scale investments which a dividend maximizing company was unlikely to do.

people underestimate how slow picture loading was back then. Online storefronts seem to live and die by their product images. It wasn’t really feasible to sell anything other than books until DSL came along.

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

#62

Post by acdha »

nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote: post #17
100721 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They invented almost all of that a century earlier. Amazon improved their warehouse management and, later, delivery times but that happened later. If Sears management had been earning their pay in the 90s that would have been much harder because Sears had a huge inventory and unmatched local presence for returns, support, etc. if they hadn’t been AWOL moving the catalog online. Amazon was shipping at regular postal speeds then, too, so Sears could even have beat them if they shipped from their warehouses.

This wasn’t uncommon back then: we had several clients in the 90s who just couldn’t wrap their heads around how quickly many of their customers would switch to email or online forms when it saved them a few days on the transaction.

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

#63

Post by phendrenad2 »

klipklop wrote: post #7

Intentionally destroyed to get access to its real estate. I dunno how the CEO is not behind bars for what he did.

Why would he be behind bars? He did what the shareholders voted for - increase profits temporarily. If the shareholders voted against their own long-term interest that's on them.

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

#64

Post by LeFantome »

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.

Amazon does not make any money retailing either.

Amazon took their largest cost center, IT infrastructure, and made it a profit center (AWS). That is the part that makes money.

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

#65

Post by acdha »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #61
lumost wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are talking about putting a mail order catalog store online. Presumably, sears already had the catalog, shipping infrastructure - so it really should have been about digital payments, and an online storefront. How significant their shipping catalog was in the 1990s I do not know, scaling the online storefront would have required Amazon scale investments which a dividend maximizing company was unlikely to do.

people underestimate how slow picture loading was back then. Online storefronts seem to live and die by their product images. It wasn’t really feasible to sell anything other than books until DSL came along.

It wasn’t perfect but we had plenty of successful sites where most users used dialup. You’re talking small, heavily compressed JPEGs but it was manageable and especially important to remember that people didn’t expect it to be super fast. For browsing, it was slower than paging through a full catalog but still days faster than mailing an order and less stressful for a surprising number of people than calling an order phone line, especially if they weren’t certain about what they wanted. Web pages had room for a lot more text than a printed catalog, too.

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

#66

Post by saghm »

When visiting my parents a couple weeks ago who live closer to where I grew up, my dad mentioned he recently visited one of the Sears stores that we used to go to sometimes when I was at kid. He said the store seemed to be only half full of inventory, with entire display shelves empty, and he couldn't understand why it was even being keep open at all.

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

#67

Post by trillic »

rainsford wrote: post #60
brushfoot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Nintendo and Netflix are the only examples I’ve got.

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

#69

Post by toast0 »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #61
lumost wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are talking about putting a mail order catalog store online. Presumably, sears already had the catalog, shipping infrastructure - so it really should have been about digital payments, and an online storefront. How significant their shipping catalog was in the 1990s I do not know, scaling the online storefront would have required Amazon scale investments which a dividend maximizing company was unlikely to do.

people underestimate how slow picture loading was back then. Online storefronts seem to live and die by their product images. It wasn’t really feasible to sell anything other than books until DSL came along.

Online ordering from the paper catalog would have worked well enough to bootstrap. For items in the catalog, you don't need a lot of pictures, and they don't need to be big. If you want to have a few more pictures on a details page, you would put them behind a more photos link and show one at a time so you don't trash the connection.

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

#70

Post by bfrog »

rainsford wrote: post #60
brushfoot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Intel famously pivoted from memory. Maybe it’ll still get to where Pat wanted it to go as a foundry in its most recent pivot attempt, unclear yet.
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