Sears has another chance to avoid closing down • Hacker News Board

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#161

Post by Thasc » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #152

artursapek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Amazon will ever get to that point. It's hard to imagine.

For many it is here. If I can get the same product from walmart I do because returns onstore are easier and the product comes quickier without prime. Products always come at the very end of the fullfillment date but with walmart they fill the order before the expected date.

Even with Prime, the couriers Amazon uses to service some areas take long enough to deliver that most other online retailers are preferable.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#162

Post by refurb » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #69

krustyburger wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their margins are high like the others because many households renew memberships each year but do not make much use of them. I also think their membership does skew more affluent than many other retailers.

Operating costs for a store are also significantly less than a retailer like Walmart that has many, many more SKUs to stock.

That the key. Plus their stores are warehouses, so maintaining the store is pretty much keeping product on shelves and keeping the floor clean.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#163

Post by emiliobumachar » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

csydas wrote: post #30

bluedino wrote: post #11

How much of Sears's demise was due to Walmart? It's not like retail completely died. The home improvement chains hurt them too, once they started selling tools and appliances. We bought everything at Sears in the 80's. Electronics (including computers), appliances, toys, clothes, tools, lawn and garden... Was Sears too 'friendly' with their suppliers? When I worked at Sears at the end of the 1990's (the store was a g…

Sears also just wasn't able to get how to move its catalog online. My parents purchased a house that was mostly built with Sears appliances and furniture (cabinets, counters, etc). Ordering replacement parts from Sears was a chore; you were constantly moved around to tons of different domains, some of which weren't even made human readable; their inventory system was terrible, making it impossible to find the parts b…

>For a very long time, due to custom printing, you could get semi-permanent Sears URLs to rather vulgar images on shirts, pillows, blankets, etc.

I'm not sure I understand that, could you please elaborate? Are you saying that they provided custom printing, then some users printed vulgar images, and could pass on URLs for others to print another batch?

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#164

Post by RhodesianHunter » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #151

reaperducer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying online and picking up from a store really isn't that advanced of a concept. You're right. Service Merchandise build an empire around it, just by mail or phone instead of computer. Other stores did it, too. JCPenny comes to mind. Even some local and regional chains. Amazon and others think they've invented something. But once again, it's just SV re-inventing something that worked last century.

Amazon introduced the ability to seamlessly and automatically blend counterfeit goods into their supply chain, from sellers that you never heard of before, and may never encounter again.~ But recall that Amazon started with books. The catalog for books is the size of the card catalog that used to be at your library. A row of cabinets, filled with rank and file of drawers, each filled with index cards. One could not s…

Agree wholeheartedly with everything you said except:

> They didn't build the other pieces they needed for a 120-year business while they had the protection

I would argue they did with things like AWS.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#165

Post by ghaff » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

xigency wrote: post #96

wombatpm wrote: post #5

Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check. They threw it all away, ending catalog operations in 1993 a year before Amazon.com opened in 1994. They owned part of Prodigy in 1984! Yet somehow thought it was a better move to expand into bigger box re…

I thought this as well until I heard a counter-point [0] which was very convincing. The reason Amazon is successful is not because you can shop online (from a catalog) and receive items in the mail. The reason Amazon is successful is because you can do those things and receive your items within two days. Before Prime existed, Amazon had very quick fulfillment, and after Prime two-day it became even better. The Sears…

TBH, I think there's a much better case to be made for Sears doubling down on some of its core assets and creating Home Depot before Home Depot did. Its store footprints weren't right, which is no small thing. But they were already a significant home improvement and major appliance store. They probably had a window when it was clear that discount retailers (and some high-end stores) were the future of "department stores" and if they couldn't go there--which they probably couldn't--their future lay in focusing.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#166

Post by gregknicholson » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #135

artursapek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Amazon will ever get to that point. It's hard to imagine.

As it grows larger, the "Amazon marketplace" is getting more and more filled with garbage knockoff products and fake reviews. There may eventually come a tipping point where they lose user trust.

If that happens, I don't think the problem will be perceived as "Amazon" — people will say "online shopping" is untrustworthy, like how "social media" is responsible for the world's ills, not "Facebook".

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#167

Post by salawat » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #111

bluedino wrote: post #11

How much of Sears's demise was due to Walmart? It's not like retail completely died. The home improvement chains hurt them too, once they started selling tools and appliances. We bought everything at Sears in the 80's. Electronics (including computers), appliances, toys, clothes, tools, lawn and garden... Was Sears too 'friendly' with their suppliers? When I worked at Sears at the end of the 1990's (the store was a g…

It's all about real estate and moving tax writeoffs around. Big box is all about "financial innovations" that juice up financial statements. Sears owned everything and had to carry most of the costs. Big box retailers like WalMart own as as little as possible, there are a thousand LLCs, trusts, etc that hold the big fixed assets like stores, etc. None of the big retailers own much of anything. Doing this allows them…

That smells like Hollywood accounting to me. Or at least abuse of tax law that locks away a potential asset for someone else in order to be able to get out of paying a tax.

Admittedly, I'm still working on wrapping my head around the entire accounting thing, but in general, any material you acquire should be acquired with intent to do something with it. Unless this is some sort of economic "fallowing" technique. But I'm still not sure I'd buy any logic that tried to paint that behavior as anything other than glorified "domain squatting" on a community.

Interesting food for thought though. Good post.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#168

Post by projektfu » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

melq wrote: post #76

bluGill wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are. You need to have a good amount of extra money to afford the membership and the cost of buying 6 months of toilet paper in advance. Those are cheap items that you will need, if you are not poor you probably don't even think about it. However when you are poor it doesn't matter if it is cheaper or not to buy in bulk because you don't have the cash to afford it. (you also are unlikely to have the storage space…

Membership at Costco is like 60 dollars a year. Not saying it's doable for everyone but its hardly something 'you need to have a good amount of extra money' to afford.

You need to be buying enough to make it work out. A single person often doesn't benefit from Costco unless they're also a small business owner.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#169

Post by wvenable » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #138

ticmasta wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dig into the back story; aside from the public challenges of a traditional brick&mortar retailer, Lampert actively accelerated it's downfall to enormous personal gain. He literally destroyed the business (let the retail stores fall into disrepair) while he sold off it's most valuable assets like the brands and milked it for cash as a major creditor. He is a modern day robber-baron with none of the mystique or cachet…

> Lampert actively accelerated it's downfall to enormous personal gain. What exactly did he gain? His hedge fund invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Sears, and it's not even clear that they broke even. Meanwhile, stocks were on their longest rally in history.

Perhaps "attempted to gain" might be better way to put it. The first thing he did was have Sears take on a huge amount of debt owed to financial service companies that he controlled. Then sell real estate to companies that he controlled and have Sears pay rent to them. This list goes on.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#170

Post by jandrese » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

wombatpm wrote: post #5

Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check. They threw it all away, ending catalog operations in 1993 a year before Amazon.com opened in 1994. They owned part of Prodigy in 1984! Yet somehow thought it was a better move to expand into bigger box re…

IMHO this is one of those cases where the idea is pretty simple: move our catalog online, but you can't do it because it would undercut your existing business. The idea that someone else is just going to do it instead is always lost on these big businesses. They always want to protect the old way of doing business because it is tried and true, but that is only safe if the world never changes.

That said, Sears could have stuck around for many more years with better management and not being sucked dry by wall street.