The Vette Barn - Who/How/What killed Sears?

The Vette Barn (https://www.thevettebarn.com/forums/index.php)

- Off Topic (https://www.thevettebarn.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=38)

- - Who/How/What killed Sears? (https://www.thevettebarn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123726)

Who/How/What killed Sears?

Interesting read on Sear's rise and fall. From this story, it looks like Walmart was the nail in the coffin.

https://www.investopedia.com/news/do...edium=referral

Quote:

The Bottom Line
It would be easy to read this story as a triumph of ecommerce, or to reflect on the irony that Sears was a first-mover when it came to online shopping, with its proto-Internet joint venture Prodigy. But even recently, Sears has been ahead of the curve in that area. According to Bloomberg, Lampert "showered" the online division with resources while the rest fought over a shrinking pie.29

Nor did competition with Amazon alone precipitate Sears' decline. When sales and profits began to fade, in the mid-2000s, other big-box retailers—particularly Walmart—were thriving. In 2011, the year Sears lost over $3.1 billion, Walmart made $419 billion.42

Perhaps the might-have-been next Warren Buffett should have listened to the original, who told University of Kansas students in 2005, "Eddie is a very smart guy, but putting Kmart and Sears together is a tough hand. Turning around a retailer that has been slipping for a long time would be very difficult. Can you think of an example of a retailer that was successfully turned around?"43

Walmart, and then Amazon, murdered a lot of bricks and mortar stores. :yesnod:

Harbor Freight took their tool business and their cheapening the Sears appliances drove us away. The last thing we bought from Sears was our LG washer dryer combo.

Wow, lots of reasons I stopped shopping there..

I used to buy all of my tools there, but once they started outsourcing their tools to china and the quality went down, there was no point in paying a premium for them... I have some older craftsman tools (some at least 40 years old) and you can feel the difference in those to the new ones...

And when we would go into the store, it was difficult to find anyone who knew anything (if you could find someone)...

The last time, we went in to buy a bedding set... we waited for 10 minutes at a cash register and no one came to check us out... we left it at the counter.. left and have not been back since..

Remember those tacky first Amazon “books” (only) TV commercials around the late 1990-something holidays , “Mitch Miller” style with all- male choir, ball bouncing on the song lyrics, hawking books. Never dreamed of their amazing, and ever-improving success. Must admit that I REALLY miss having the same access to healthy brick and mortar stores, including healthy malls. VERY much. Sears was the benchmark, go-to for many items for years (though, their relevance when we were newly-weds in the late-80’s began to taper off 80’s. But, now, I can’t give up the value that Amazon now delivers, seemingly effortlessly.

Sears was such a big part of our lives in the 60s and 70s. Their toy displays around Christmas were something else. Such magical times now gone forever. There are advantages to living in the 21st century, but I’m not so sure we’re any happier.

Anyone remember the catalog sales and the dedicated area for pickups?
Sears killed themselves with little help from outside. The auto departments (ones i delt with) with the worst around also.

Walmart.

This killed Sears.