[Wathen1955]

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

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