Thanks for this.
The decades of silence in mainstream media about the rape of Sears ends too late, but is still informative.
Greed knows no limits. America is in much the same situation Sears has been in for the past few decades.
8
every penny given to Amazon or Sears or any company is given voluntarily. More people voluntarily decided to give their money to (ie, shop with) Amazon or Home Depot or someone else than Sears. This isn’t rocket science
I've come around to accepting the dissolution of companies much the same as the extinction of species, as long as they are not triggered by manipulations.
In America, I've also come to prefer online shopping, as there is less chance of being shot, intentionally or otherwise.
1
I was never attracted to Sears by low prices but by the quality of their merchandise and the ease and surety of getting parts for any of the appliances and electronics they sold many years later. Long after integrated circuits replaced cathode ray tubes I could use sears tube testing machine at their parts counter to determine which one needed replacement. That company use to love their customers as much as their mother's did.
9
So Steve Mnuchin just spent 10 years on Sears board before joining WH! I just read the other article regarding Sears, and the last paragraph was very telling, as Trump only hires the BEST: "Mr. Trump blamed the retailer’s decline on poor management, saying the company was “improperly run for many years.” The president did not mention that his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, was on the Sears board for about a decade before stepping down to join the White House administration." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/business/sears-bankruptcy-plan.html?e...
12
This is a real shame. It was a good company. And the real depressing thing is it probably could have been avoided. Eddie Lampert knows nothing about retail. He's a hedge fund Goldman Sachs creator of nothing person. His great pal is 'let them eat cake' Steve Mnuchin. Read about what he did after he acquired the company. How he is making out after every little sell off. It eerily reminds me of the way Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street sells off Bud Fox's Blue Star airlines. It's like Lampert slowly did it on purpose.
Over the years my family and I did plenty of shopping there and used the automotive service. Even Al Bundy in one of the Married With Children episodes when he needs an attorney says '' I'm gonna get me one of those high priced Sears Lawyers " A bit of levity because at one point they were known for, and you could get a competent, but budget priced attorney... Another nice symbol of the American Landscape goes away.
15
What ultimately killed Sears was the unbridled greed of Edward S. Lampert, who, by the way, is still positioned to reap a handsome profit profit from the destruction and looting of Sears.
12
The KEY to it all... in the headline under comment: 'and greedy owners, arrived.'
A Pox on Lampert and his ilk. Someone commented 'Vulture Capitalists' a phrase I intend to borrow without shame.
7
In 1918, my Great Grandfather Julius made #Forbes’ first rich list, as one of the 30 richest persons in America.
As president of the company from 1908 to 1924, J.R. turned @Sears into a mail order phenomenon. More importantly, he was one of the greatest philanthropists ever.
Fun factoid: “He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand.”
“Although the expression was coined by Hubbard, many modern authors attribute the expression to #DaleCarnegie who used it in his book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.
Carnegie’s version reads: “If You Have a Lemon, Make a Lemonade.” Carnegie credited Julius Rosenwald for giving him the phrase.
In 1912, he partnered with #BookerTWashington and #Tuskegee University to build more than 5,000 schools in the Jim Crow South, for #AfricanAmericans. Why did he do this?
“The horrors that are due to race prejudice come home to the Jew more forcefully than to others of the white race, on account of the centuries of persecution which they have suffered and still suffer.”
-Julius Rosenwald
So, as a Jew, he empathized with the black man’s plight The man had empathy. The polar opposite of what feeling is ruling these United States today. During WWII, Julius took charge of requisitioning supplies for the Army. As president of #Sears, which was already supplying America with everything, this new job gave Julius, a civilian, the nickname “General Merchandise.”
18
@laurie rosenwald I am aware of and have visited Tuskegee, a fine, historically black institution in Alabama. Also the home of the great botanist, George Washington Carver. You sound very proud of your great grandfather, as you should be.
7
Makes me nostalgic sad. I remember the excitement in our house when the Christmas Wish Book would arrive - my brother and I would earmark pages and hope Santa was paying attention. When my grandfather passed away, we auctioned off his household and farm - there was a lot of Craftsman and Kenmore in the lot. And then I remember my surprise when my realtor mom gave me a tour of Sears houses in the Chicago burbs. I never even knew that Sears had sold house kits. It's a tribute to the company that many are still standing today.
9
I remember Montgomery Wards. We had one of their catalog stores as well as a Sears catalog store in my hometown of 4,000. These were just store fronts with freight rooms in the back where you could go and pick up your packages-- but they provided several local jobs.
Every Christmas we'd all look forward to the arrival of those two catalogs as well as J.C. Penny's and Spiegel-- all with page after page of toys though we were more likely to get clothes.
We also had a thriving Main Street about four blocks long on both sides of the street which I'd probably give one of my pinky fingers for a ride in a time machine back to see one more time. You never know what you have until it's gone.
I really liked the small Sears stores you could usually find back then in about every town of 20,000 or so as well, almost all on the main drag in the business district. Clothes, hardware, toys, housewares, and a couple of full service mechanic's bays around the side where they sold about the best car battery you could find, the legendary DieHard, literally guaranteed as long as you owned the car.
Well, enough about me. What's your face glued to on that phone again?
11
I remember when Sears stopped it's catalog business...just as the internet opened its huge doors to shoppers sitting at their computers. How could they have missed this? A potent example of lack of insight.
9
Personally, Sears lost my customer dollars during the Sears World Trade global arms shipping thing during Iran Contra. It gave a new meaning to "surprisingly Sears".
Frank Carlucci aside, The "greedy owners" demise is more like Woolworths/WoolCo Also-ran than Amazon, but the corporate Pump and Dump is also a story far too familiar in our Corporate Complex - from Whirlpool to Enron. We used to have corporate citizens. If the management and board saw the writing on the wall the business model was obsolete and there were too many commitments for a re-calibration (a-la KMart, Carter Hawley Hale, and Taxicab medallions), they should have publicly cashed out. There's nothing wrong with closing a business after it had its run and when you're ahead - doing so is the role of a fiduciary. Pretending all is fine and imposing a secret sell-off strategy that enriches insiders while an uspeakable bankruptcy lurks on the horizon is a disservice to all stakeholders.
8
Sears was not exactly the Amazon of its day.As the country emerged from the Great Depression the Sears catalog promised that goods would be available for reasonable prices.People were needing basics that had been too expensive during the depression.Also, during the glory era of the Sears catalog there were very few retail outlets, maybe one or two small department stores and a Woolworth.There were no such things as strip malls full of shops.Sixty years ago we were not awash with consumer goods, people did not pay for purchases with credit cardsWe shopped happily and frugally with the Sears Catalog.
6
We have a friend who has a home which was from the Sears catalog, and we know of another which is now an Allstate Office; the latter is of interest as Allstate is an offshoot of Sears!
Sears used to the gold standard for quality tools, appliances, and virtually all things they sold. Good example of corporate lack of imagination and putting executive pay ahead of company interests. Very sad.
7
It was the late 1960's when I got a call from a Sears employee asking me if I'd like to apply for a Sears credit card. I explained that my husband and I had credit cards and she asked if any were in my name. I thought for a moment and realized that, no, they were in my husband's name. The caller said "every woman should have a credit card in her own name." I took her advice and applied for my first credit card. Over the years, we have bought Kenmore appliances, gas grills and garage door openers, Craftsman tools and patio dining sets among countless other Sears products. The demise of some other companies have left a hole in our day-to-day lives, but none like this bankruptcy of Sears. The market crash of 2009 exposed the naked greed of those who used high tech innovation to cash out big time and leave ashes in their wake. It used to be that healthy competition in business benefited everyone. As the saying went, success favored the man who "built a better mousetrap." The rule of today is no longer "beat the competition" but "kill the competition." How can startup companies have a chance if there are no laws protecting them from the vultures?
8
Sears once dominated retail the way Amazon does now. Amazon will eventually suffer the same fate as Sears. That’s the beauty of capitalism, there always new ideas presented to the consumer who votes with dollars to determine which ideas are better and thrive
2
My father worked for Sears from 1964 to 1989, ending his career as a general manager of the Vancouver Sears store. He predicted that Sears would come to an end because they never changed how things were being done. Although the internet hadn't made its impact yet, brand names had, and Sears was already a fashion joke because they didn't go after brand name goods. They could have been the pioneers of e-retailing, but squandered the opportunity because they had no vision.
6
@Jonathan Walford
Sears should have stayed out of the clothing business, for one thing. The numbers should have told them where their strengths and weaknesses were in merchandise.
2
@eduKate There's a lot of margin in the clothing business. That's why the clothing section of Walmart stores is front and center.
I had a summer job at the giant sears on the corner of Bedford Ave. and Beverly Rd. in Flatbush, Brooklyn. It was just one block from the main shoping street of Flatbush Avenue. It also had a large parking lot.
I worked in the booth that sold nuts and candy by the scoop, the men's work clothing department, the woman's cosmetics department and the boy's show department. It is a great department store. I can't imagine it ever closing.
5
As one day we will say Amazon was the ??? of its day. Not surprisingly the lifespan of the average successful corporation is about the same as a human - 75 years. Sears was above average, but no less mortal than Amazon or you and I. It may be similarly hard to imagine the demise of Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google, but let's hope they look to their "estates" better than Sears did.
2
Sears basically over extended itself in areas where people could care less. If they had stuck to hardware, tools which they were known for.they would have stayed put. They started selling clothing, jewelry, car insurance, credit card. That was their demise. They could have taken a clue from Home Depot and changed their business. It was the most trusted hardware and tool shop. They refused to believe that Sears brand is not invincible.
3
@Eraven
At one time, they got into selling stocks, too.
But they had been selling all of the other stuff for years - only the model for clothing and accessory selling changed. Trends speeded up, people wanted more fashion ( and fashion is greatly in the aura concocted around clothes), and there were multiple competitors with better advertising. Discounters stole away buyers who might have shopped at Sears, by offering name brands for lower prices; high end customers wouldn't buy there anyway.
And I think they slighted their large appliance business: after buying a badly made washer and dryer, and having an incompetent Sear repairman not fix them, like others , I went elsewhere ( but actually to local stores).
"Certainly, Amazon looks unassailable in its current form. So did every retailer that became the biggest dog on retail’s porch. They were all innovative. They all pushed the boundaries on pricing, sourcing, marketing, regulation, employment, expansion and tax breaks. They all ultimately lost their way. Sears is the latest chapter in that story. And probably not the last."
Exactly. Which is why we really don't have to worry about Amazon, or anyone else. History teaches us that nothing lasts forever, including these seemingly invincible companies. All one has to do is look at the companies that make up the Dow or the S&P 500. There is remarkable turnover in both indices, as companies come and go.
2
Does anyone remember Montgomery Wards?
Retail history marches to the same drummer annually.
1
@Gerry Whaley
|Did you read the article?
Which is why Amazon workers should stop whining about getting a raise instead of stock options. Wages are real and stock values can change rapidly.
In lamenting Sears just remember they did it to themselves. Sears once held the record for the number of discrimination lawsuits and arrogantly never thought there would be another source shoppers could turn to. Shoppers denied credit due to their zip code, shoppers followed in a store, shoppers asked for multiple IDs to make a $20 credit card purchase, shoppers stopped by security wanting to search their bags, shoppers treated rudely by customer service....are having the last laugh. They can order from the comfort of their home with a wider selection and without the above harassment.
There are still many people who would like to go to brick and mortar stores to see merchandise up close or try clothes on. The market exists but the market wants better service and treatment. Either stores like Sears recognize this and change are they completely disappear. Their choice.
4
Sears was doomed once Amazon started to sell essentially the same items. Truthfully for the last 30 years Sears has been 10 steps behind every other major retailer. To make matters worse the store was neither competitive on price or quality. Greedy owners had nothing to do with their demise. Terrible business practices did.
5
In the fifties I lived on a few farms here and there, mostly in the south. Running water was scarce for the most part so I recall the outhouses. One prominent feature of each of the outdoor toilets was the Sears Catalog.
Don't recall ever reading one though.
3
A few years ago, I attended the Hamvention in Dayton, Ohio. It was at Hara Arena in those years. Because the Hara parking lot was full, those of us attending usually parked at the nearby Salem Mall and rode a shuttle bus to Hara.
I lived in Dayton for 17 years and remember the Salem Mall as a premier destination. Sears was one of the anchor stores.
As I drove into the now vacant and demolished ruins of the mall, one building was still standing...the Sears Auto Store. Boarded up but still wearing its Sears signage.
After pausing to gaze upon once was, I sighed and realized how far we have come.
2
So, will the lifetime unconditional guarantee on my Craftsman tools (mostly bought in the seventies) be honored?
2
@John Hall
Stanley Black & Decker bought the Craftsman "brand" - over a year ago. They sell in Lowes and elsewhere. As for the guarantee on hand tools -- it's not clear.
2
@John Hall ---By whom??
When I was little, paper dolls and their many clothes were the rage. My friends and I built homes for them out of shoe boxes and pasted old Sears catalog beds, curtains etc to the sides of it.
Living on a farm in GA, the Sears catalog was not just a Wish book, but a source of almost everything we needed in the way of clothes and household items.
Woolworth's is another memory. My poor mother and our school teachers probably could have bathed in all the
Evening in Paris perfume that was a Woolworth staple at Christmas time.
8
My first job while I was still in high school was working for Sears. It was a highly structured place to work and taught me a lot about the real world. I remember working in different departments and ending up in the credit department. Back then having a Sears charge account was an indicator of good credit and was highly valued among customers. Sears enjoyed a top notch reputation back then and met a need for every type of customer.
8
My grandparent's home (in the US) was a prefabricated house from Sears. They had some dig the basement and pour a concrete foundation. Then Sears delivered the house, which was put on top of the foundation.
It was a modest, but solid, home, consisting of a kitchen, one bathroom, two bedrooms, and a living room. I remember the house fondly as a child, and still view it as a good home as an adult. It is in excellent condition, 65 years after installation.
11
Back in the long-ago 60s nothing was more anticipated than the yearly holiday arrival of the Sears Wishbook. Every page would be carefully scrutinized, especially the magical 'Sears Best' offerings.
So many great memories.
11
Home Depot has recently gained a strong foothold in appliance sales and can match Sears on lawn and garden equipment as well as tools, without luxuriating in a showroom atmosphere. Sears did have much better home delivery service than Home Depot does today, and Home Depot gets away with that too, without customer complaints. Home Depot seems to know how razor thin they can cut customer service, as well as working aspiring employees hard, with lots of part time fill ins. Home Depot seems to have stayed away from online parts supply for Lawn and Garden, which Sears had in good detail. Should also include Lowes in the up and coming retailers, with online presence.
6
Forty years ago, we purchased a house that had to be totally renovated, as it never had running water, had to be rewired, bathroom, and kitchen put in, plus paint, flooring, and carpet. Sears, was the place to get all of that, including Kenmore appliances, which are still some of the best. About 15 years ago, someone decided that Sears wasn't going to sell paint, and I knew that it was the beginning of the end of Sears at that time, as I was their loyal customer. Then, the lawn mowers and tools went, and it became about clothes, which was the worst business decision as every other store in every mall was about clothes. If the management had understood this, and been able to convey this to the CEO, and the top, they could of charged a dollar or more for every item, and still been in business. For almost 50 years, we have purchased tires from Sears Auto Center, as they had free alignment, and because we traveled extensively, being able to go into any Sears across the country was necessary. Sears should still be thriving, not in the current form, but in the old fashioned form. Younger people are making all the decisions for companies in America, don't understand the business model that they are charged with dealing with, so they usually drive them into the ground, and bankruptcy. So, no more appliances, tires, paint, carpet, lawn mowers, etc. I will miss them, as you could depend on the quality of paint, the quality of Kenmore products, and everything else they sold.
15
No doubt there are many reasons for Sears' downfall, but if a lack if inventory and a lack of knowlegable staff was the problem, why is Home Depot still in business?
7
@JR Home Depot's staff is a lot of things, but knowledgeable" is not one of them. Usually, if they don't know the answer, they will make one up. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
8
@FRONTINE LeFEVRE
Every time I've needed help at the Home Depot here in Round Rock, I've been beyond happy. Really competent, courteous men and women.
Different store management? Luck?
@JR I agree, one can seldom find help in Home Depot and if one does, they frequently don't know much enough the products and sometimes start reading the instructions.
2
Yep, even as a kid in the early 1970s it was a cool Christmas gift my dad got my mom and I read...the 1906 Sears & Roebuck catalog, with elixers and everything...been a long time since I thought of that. That was very cool, and yeah, very much like Amazon of its time.
7
My 1969 Sears catalog inherited from my grandparents is one of my prize possesions. A true slice of Americana.
8
When I went to Peru for research in 1965, Sears was the most elegant store in the capital Lima. On my return in 1973 to the provincial city of Ayacucho,Peru, our housekeeper asked us to get her the Sears catalogue. A dressmaker, she used the catalogue for clients to select pictures of clothing that she would then make for them.
My wife and I continued to send her the annual catalogue into the early 1980s when we lost contact with her during the Shining Path war that ravaged Ayacucho and much of Peru.
Sears, of course, is no longer Lima’s most elegant store and I doubt that even the catalogue would have any value as a source for clothing styles.
7
The decline and shrinkage of the Sears store and auto center at the Natick Mall here in Massachusetts, a store which was by far and away the largest in that mall, has been sorry to watch. Half out of sentiment I bought a set of Michelins from them this past summer; figured I've give them a $1000. sale. Their price was competitive and the installers knew their trade. They told me that over the past couple of years the gross in the auto center was down by about 2/3. Shelves in the store proper, which had recently shed its upper floor, were still poorly stocked. It'll close soon; it can't be making its rent let alone a profit at that location. I'll keep my mint 1993 catalog, the last one published and still in its paper wrapper, as a memento.
7
Not everything has to do with politics. Sears, much like Montgomery Ward, was in decline for 40-50 years. It was still the number one retailer in the country in sales volume until the late 1980's. Since that time, it was passed by numerous competitors even prior to the ESL takeover. All Eddie Lampert did through his hubris was to accelerate the decline. He shrewdly saw value in Kmart when no one else did in the bankruptcy proceedings in 2002-3. The value was in the real estate, not the retail business. Through that acquisition, he bought an already weakened Sears. Combining two weak retailers into one larger weak retailer was a recipe for failure. And a failure it was. Retail is a business of image, and image of both Sears and KMart is abysmal. ESL repurchased Sears shares at over $100/share (shares that will soon be valueless). That was money that could have been spent on modernizing the business.
Sears was a victim of the wheel of retailing. They came in and undercut their competition (and had wider product selection). But, they stayed stagnant in the 1970's and 1980's, and companies with lower overhead undercut them on price.
No tears should be shed for Lampert. He will still be a wealthy man. One should shed tears for the remaining Sears and Kmart employees who will soon be unemployed. Be kind to them if you shop the liquidation sales, and remember that they are not responsible for shady dealings by the liquidation firms.
11
When will we all wake up and hold vulture capitalists responsible for the destruction of America? Their evil fingerprints are everywhere and we just keep letting it happen. Destroying an iconic company from within by raiding pensions, selling off all valuable assets, purchasing the companies with incredibly leveraged debt, and walking away personally with millions is blatant theft and destruction of the public good. I’m still just sick at what Sam Zell and the hedgefunders that followed did to the Los Angeles Times. Why are these men (and they’re always men) still walking free? Where is the outrage?
12
Why did Sears need Kmart?
1
@APO It didn't. Kmart purchased Sears, not vice versa.
2
Lampert is nothing but a parasite.
There is something terribly wrong with an economic system that allows a single man to destroy the livelihood of 175,000 people in order to further enrich himself a few of his partners.
30
At least Sears had one thing Amazon will never have: actual functional purpose. I remember as a kid visiting one of my parent’s relative on a farm somewhere and telling them that there was no toilet paper in the outhouse. Their response: oh , the Sears catalogue is all gone. Try doing that with a tablet.
8
Sears died, not because of Amazon or Walmart, but because the Corporate suits running it saw "cutting payroll" as a way to make the balance sheet look good for the stockholders. They got rid of the skilled, trained, long-term pensioned employees who knew their merchandise and how to sell it. In the 1970's, the first thing a newlywed couple did was sign up for a "Sears Revolving Charge." Kenmore Appliances were sold by knowledgeable salespeople, delivered and installed by Sears employees, who also came out and repaired them. Baby supplies, clothing, shoes, vaccuum cleaners...everyone went to Sears for everything needed to raise a family. 15 years ago, I went to Sears to buy a vaccuum. In the old days, a salesperson would have known every detail of the ten machines carried, shown me how it worked, and helped me carry it to the car. Instead, I waited 15 minutes for an employee to show up. She came from another department and knew nothing about the vaccuum cleaners. I left in disgust and ordered from Amazon, who provide thorough descriptions, hundreds of customer reviews, delivery to my doorstep, and easy returns. Retail loves to make Amazon the scapegoat, but their problems are of their own making. When stores offer no service, why not order online and save yourself the aggravation of understaffed, overstuffed, hard to find parking retail.
32
@Joanne M Truer words were never spoken!!!
4
Strange coincidence: Last night I dreamed I found myself in a Land's End outlet store. As I was going through the store, I commented, this was a great store until Sears ruined it.
4
The amazing thing about Sears is, it was able to offer tens of thousands of items through mail order sales and efficiently process the orders a hundred years ago. That was an era without computers or other information processing technology. How they were able to do it boggles the imagination even today.
As a kid around 1960, I loved reading the Sears catalog. To a curious kid, it opened my eyes to what kinds of products exist, and what they cost. Even if you did not buy it from Sears, it gave you a good idea of what a fair price would be.
In the days before the JFK assassination when firearms could be bought mail order, with no background checks whatsoever, I remember you could buy a war surplus Argentine Mauser rifle for $15. These rifles were, at that point in time, leftovers from the World War One era. Today, if you can find one, they go for more like $650.
Sears even sold a compact car, built for them by the Kaiser motor car company. It was called an "Allstate", their trade name for automotive products.
And if you wanted a real bargain, you headed off to a Sears Surplus store. Sears had a policy of refunding money on returns, no questions asked. So there were a lot of returned items that had nothing wrong with them other than maybe a small dent or scratch. I bought a high efficiency front loading washer in the early days of low suds HE detergent. There were dozens to choose from. It was actually made by Whirlpool, and I have 15 yrs service.
10
I don't know why capitalist commerce in the U.S. favors monopolies so much. I guess it's a combination of factors, but I always dislike the biggest company that pushes all others aside. Nonetheless, in the past, I've found it too easy to always buy from Amazon -- the easy Web shopping, the quick delivery. However, I've recently discovered it can be just as easy to shop other retailers through e-commerce. Almost all of the large chains have e-commerce and in-store pick-up. So now I don't always buy Amazon but make it a point to also shop Best Buy or Target or Lowe's or JC Penney's -- they also have efficient e-commerce and products are available quickly. Or small specialty web companies, who don't always deliver as quickly as Amazon Prime but make up for it with much bigger selection and very good quality of their specialty product.
4
Monopolies and oligopolies arise naturally in unregulated capitalism. The markets creates them, in the endless pursuit of greed without regard to actual human needs.
7
@Dora Minor
I guess that's true -- I don't know much econ but I read an article once that Adam Smith said as much. My post was more about personal responsibility on the part of consumers. For awhile, I've felt uncomfortable about always shopping the big bully Amazon and only recently (don't know why it took so long) had the revelation I don't have to. It's just as convenient to shop elsewhere via e-commerce.
I'm hoping it can be a bit of a movement -- a kind of patriotism. As consumers, we don't have to fall into the mindless trap of empowering one giant retailer.
@Katie
I have learned that buying from the companies that produce the item is just as easy and often with free shipping.
Having broken the Amazon habit, shopping at the sites you enumerated has, in the long run, been the best choice I have made lately.
3
I see the Sears shortsightedness of closing the catalog business down just as the internet was becoming public as a huge misstep. They already had the warehouses, distribution and in-store pickup in the 70s/80s that are seen as leading edge today (i.e. Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes are pushing this now) Sears had it 40 years ago and as easy as a phone call. But before that mistake, the stores were already in decline. They lost their knowledgeable sales staff, while merchandise was laying at the bottom of shelve and not rehung on the display. When they then sold off the two cash cow credit card businesses they had it showed the end was coming and yet they hung on for quite a long time. I used to shop there regularly, but as the stores declined I stopped. I can't remember when I was last there. The tool business changed, Home Depot, Lowes, and Best Buy took the appliance business, they diluted the value of their store credit card so lost clothing sales. They like IBM were rock solid companies with top notch products. I can't say that of the Sears of today.
6
@Matt
According to a fellow I knew who worked there. The current distribution system was utterly ancient and impossible to convert to ecommerce.
They wanted to be on the cutting edge but it required replacing everything.
1
There are likely many stories about the Sears decline. I have one example: In 2002, I bought a house that needed new a new washer & dryer. I bought Kenmore appliances at Sears. Within 6 years, the dryer needed $300 of repairs which exceeded the cost of a new dryer. Not long after, I moved to a different house with Kenmore appliances from the 1970s. They are still operating decades later, with spare parts easily available. The stuff that Sears sold years ago was high quality. But Sears got away from that model. No wonder the company has failed.
And, by the way, I remember Montgomery Wards.
21
My Craftsman lawn mower turned 31 this year, my Craftsman snow blower 20, both still running well with a few new parts along the way. And anybody in the service business knows, it's all about the parts and any thing bought from Sears the parts were easily and readily available.
I sure do miss the old Sears.
28
My great grandparents bought a pre-fab barn from Sears. It arrived by rail in their very little town in southern Indiana. Great excitement!
My grandparents called it Sears and Sawbuck. Once the catalog was out of date, it ended up in the out house. It was a fat catalog.
My parents always bought their appliances from Sears. Not to mention all of Dad's tools. Farewell to Kenmore. Farewell to Craftsman.
So sorry to see this American classic go. So angry to see it go. It has been one of four anchors at my local mall-- now three of four have gone out of business and Penny's is holding on by its fingernails. Say farewell to local retail, America.
11
@L. L. Nelson, my neighbor’s hundred year old 800 s.f. house was a Sears kit. Now on the same lot it still sits today with a 4,000 s.f. Cancerous tumor added to it. The original doorbell still works.
6
What a sad day.
Part of Americana leaves us.
Sears made America the envy of the world.
6
The "sliminess" referenced here, plundering "overfunded pensions" for operating expenses, wasn't confined to the corporate sector. During Christie Whitman's tenure as Governor of New Jersey, the then-solvent teachers' pension fund was raided to meet "expenses" elsewhere. The money was supposed to be repaid but wasn't. Now the pension fund is in danger of being unable to make payouts to retirees. This is bad enough. What's worse is having the problem blamed on teachers' "greed" rather than on politicians' mismanagement.
15
@Linda
As EPA Administrator, she told the 9-11 recovery workers that the air was safe to breathe. She was and is a vile person.
I used to call her "Nit" Whitman.
7
@Linda
There are far more of these larcenous corporate hollowing out of employee pension fund instances than you can imagine. A whole book was written about them: “Retirement Heist”, very well researched, accepted and written. Major major blue chip corporations did this too, not just slimy third-rate unknown schemers. Far from it.
http://www.retirementheist.com
4
@RM
I do have to say in her favor that she has publicly criticized Trump's policies and called for reform in the Republican Party. I'd like to think her very wrong assessment of the dangers to 9/11 workers was due to ignorance rather than lack of caring. Of course, the workers are just as sick, or worse.
The old K-mart is now re-opening as a powerhouse ethnic asian supermarket, Lotte.
1
Blockbuster Video killed the mom and pop rental store, only to be overtaken by Netflix, which now faces a crowded playing field with Amazon, HBONow, etc.
Who knows if big guys like Amazon can really have their future secured.
6
So much of my past is now gone with the oh-so-slow death of Sears. I remember almost 50 years ago how S & R was the only game in town in our suburb outside of Sacramento. The new washer, dryer, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, and even our kids play clothes were there for our and all families just starting out. My gosh, we could also buy all our yard supplies, home furnishings, and even affordable custom-made window coverings and carpets. And that magnificent catalog...it was like Christmas every season of the year to peruse and dream of buying so much stuff! (Btw, I remember its main competitor Montgomery Ward's, too. Yes, I am a bit up there in years.)
I have to say, however, I find it a bit chilling if the future of Amazon is as inauspicious as the above. My new "dependency" right to and through Whole Foods is Amazon Prime. But, heck....I'm sure it will be hanging around for the rest of my life time anyway if not for 132 years.
4
Amazon shares little blame for this. Costco, Target, Walmart, and many others run brick-and-mortars fine and dandy thankyouverymuch.
Lampert the sludgefunder robbed and murdered Sears. End of.
11
Eddie Lampert, while rearranging the Kmart purchased deck chairs on his Titanic, posted this utter nonsense last month:
“The Company has been working hard to transform its business and unlock the value of its assets. This includes a paradigm shift from traditional retailing to a member-centric company. Through that lens, we have integrated capabilities that leverage our physical store footprint, our unique service businesses and the Shop Your Way ecosystem to constantly define an integrated retail experience for our members. We continue to evolve our Shop Your Way 5-3-2-1 credit card, and our amended deal with our partner, Citi, should only make our efforts stronger.” Explain this.
A few paragraphs later he had the ‘billionaire by hedge fund secondary manipulator’ audacity to blame pension obligations rather than years of incompetence and a bad bet at a bad table.
Was expecting him to end by announcing a ‘wonderful new partnership with my new friend Elizabeth, and her revolutionary home blood testing machine, now sold under the Kenmore brand.’
10
Always Amazon?
I just purchased a New Microwave
Oven
At a retail Store
LESS THAN HALF THE AMAZON PRICE
pays to
Shop Around
6
Beware the money changers. Few, if any companies survive leveraged buyouts and debt loading. Increasingly poor management always seeking the quick return (the real estate, insurance, the credit card operation) and raiding the pension plan which is ALWAYS under funded.
5
Sears lost e commerce business to Amazon because Sears' customer service after Lampert took over became totally deficient.
Skimping on customer service may in the short run save money but poor customer service will motivate customers to abandon Sears for other vendors.
I was a Sears customer who abandoned Sears for that reason.
5
@david---Sears "customer service" in the last few years has been long on "attitude" and short on service. I went to a Sears to buy a water filter for a refrigerator prominently displayed on the sales floor. They didn't have it and they wanted ME to order it from their national parts service and pay the extra shipping and handling. No "mom + pop" store would have done that. It wasn't the money; it was the "attitude".
2
@FRONTINE LeFEVREAnd the attitude came from the top.
@FRONTINE LeFEVRE
This summer, we had a freezer fail on a weekend and we needed service. Internet search turned up Sears Home Service, which was touted to be 24/7. Yes, they will answer the phone (after you wait for 20 minutes) any time of day, but to imply the *service* was 24/7 was a joke...they couldn't get there until Wednesday! I called the local guy on Monday morning and they were there by 10:30am.
Customer service is where its at, Big Box. You should look at Sears as a monument of what NOT to do.
I started working at Sears as a teenager in high school. From temporary christmas cashier help up to credit authorisations. I learned retail and it was a valuable education. I now am a physician, however, it was a good experience in my youth.
The one thing occuring at that time was unrealistic expansion. Sears thought themselves as invincible, too big to fail. They began buying or pairing with corporations that in no way related to what they excelled, which was retail. Caldwell Banker, Dean Whitter, Allstate... on and on. From my naive perspective I felt it was too much, too fast, to unrelated, and it was. Management lost focus and control long ago.
When the Craftsmans brand was sold last year I knew it was the begining of the end. Thank you Sears for the experience... all things must come to an end.
11
This was the history lesson. What is needed is the finance lesson that describes how hedge funds also controlled by vulture capitalist, Lampert, used Sears debt to accumulate the valuable real estate that Sears occupies in prime locations across the countries. Thousands of people may lose their jobs, but Lampert, through his double dealing, will still make a fortune.
9
I remember well, as a youth in the late 1950’s, riding my balloon-tired bike up to the local Sears emporium, a stand alone, then dazzling, modern brick structure with its very own enormous parking area. With some modest coinage in my dungaree pockets, I would purchase some circular, colored reflectors to affix at home to the mud flaps on that bicycle. Wandering around the well-stocked aisles was always an adventure in “just looking”. Riding endlessly on the store’s captivating escalators was another memorable part of the special trip to Sears.
7
I hope Jeff Bezos reads this report before Amazon implodes. SEARS was big and strong until it turned on its customers and began taking them for granted. Amazon has injected new life into Walmart by encouraging Walmart to beat the Amazon 30 day return policy. The 90 day return window for Walmart makes them superior to Amazon's 30 day. Walmart online sales are UP. I am not a Walmart in store fan BUT I shop them online increasingly.
2
Excellent survey of the history of the retail industry.
3
“I want that Frosty!” I screamed as my bewildered parents tried to pry me out of the garishly decorated Sears Store in Louisville during the 1952 Christmas Season!
I was 4 years old, and it was in the massive candy counter area with its candies, popcorn, and roasted nuts that I saw, atop the candy case, the plastic Frosty with small lollipops sticking from its backpack. I totally lost it!
Santa did bring it to me for Christmas, but it wasn’t so exciting then as it was in the store. I guess timing is everything!
8
When I was a child in the 1940s in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the biggest thrill of the fall was the arrival by the postman of what I called "Santa's Catalog," which in fact was the Sears Roebuck catalog. Running into the house with the huge catalog was so exciting. Of course I immediately searched for the toy section. All my toys at Christmastime, whether a doll or a bicycle, came from the Sears catalog. As an adult a few years ago, however, I went into a Sears store in Little Rock and couldn't find an employee to help me with what I was looking for. I never went back to a Sears store. Walmart became my go-to store after that experience.
2
Yup, Lampert wants to gut the company for whatever it has left and then walk away a lot richer. That seems to be the standard these days.
11
It’s sad how large American cities had at least one major department store that was owned and operated by a founding family. Eventually Wall Street arranged for these family businesses to be sold and consolidated into national and international conglomerations. The uniqueness of each store would be lost to the same products sold at each store. Macy’s became a big player selling mid level stuff at previously upscale stores. Where previously a buyer could work with manufacturers in the garment district acquiring truly unique stuff stores looked to offshore locals that produced similar items my the millions. Payed little, didn’t have to worry about retirement or healthcare. What was the trade off? Cheaper goods but nothing unique. Truly middle class families becoming managers. The wealth of thousands became concentrated into the hands of a few. Like the Waltons.
The only way to prevent the world from being swallowed up by a small group of people is electing people who fight for working people. We need to make it harder for companies to merge. Consolidating thousands of retailers into the hands of a few people is no different than a communist government controlling businesses from a centralized location.
8
I want to think that today Jeff Bezos, one year younger than me, might have something of an ache in his heart.
It's a 20th century thing. Can't explain it.
Like Trump, running the organization was never the objective. Raiding it for every last cent was the only goal.
Other comcompanies figure out the future as best they can and try to grow an enterprise that provides broadly expansive prosperity.
Sears and Trump offer mirror images of selfishness, legitimized self-dealing, and dishonesty masked by false bravura.
Sadly, they too will have their adherents, long after their social crimes have faded.
11
Rise and fall of the Sears empire that lasted over 100 years. The Amazon empire and its founding emperor Jeff Bezos is on the rise some day it will also fall. Such is life and its uncertainties.
1
Lampert is the principal reason for the death of Sears. It was salvageable til he came on the scene and once he had, fixated on real estate values rather than commerce, its doom was inevitable. It ranks among the most disgraceful episodes in the history of commerce in the U.S.
17
Sears employed so many people in its heyday. My Thoughts are with those workers whose world collapsed today.
8
There is only one comparison that comes to my mind when I read about what Eddie Lampert did to Sears. It's what King Leopold II of Belgium did to the people of the Congo region of Africa starting in 1885. In Congo, Leopold didn't see people. He just saw a source of wealth extraction ripe for the taking. Seems Lampert viewed Sears and its employees in the same way.
The similarities don't end there. Although held responsible for the monstrous crimes against humanity committed by Belgian and other European merchants and traders against the natives of the Congo region, Leopold II in fact never visited the Congo. Lampert, meanwhile, sounds like a secretive recluse. I honestly wonder if he's ever set foot in a Sears store.
This is not really a valid excuse, but I suppose one can point out that Leopold II was a bigoted white European who could rationalize subjecting Congolese to the most unspeakable and awful human rights abuses (it was horrible beyond all words; read "King Leopold's Ghost" by Adam Hochschild for the sickening details).
What is Lampert's excuse for what he did to Sears? Why would a native-born white American and graduate of Yale set about to systematically destroy one of the great companies synonymous with the "American century" and strip Sears and its employees of all their wealth? Would a foreign-born immigrant in charge of Sears have done the same thing?
It's really time for people to rethink the question of who exactly hates America and its people.
18
I went into a Sears store in Mexico City about a year ago and the prices were not competitive with other retailers. Everything was way to expensive...
— We Service What Sell, Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Money Back, Where America Shops — no more...!
Reading the related article by Ms.Hsu on Sears’ Glory days as the king of retailers, a few important milestones were not mentioned. When they expanded into financial service to try to become the “one stop to do all you shopping needs” from stocks to socks, that included Dean Witter Reynolds which would later spin off Morgan Stanley and Discover Card.
I completely forgot or missed the reference to Caldwell Banker. But also they also held vast commercial real estate holdings in the malls that they anchored. I believe it was in part thru Vornado REIT.
Back then, before IRA’s and 401k’s came into vogue, Sears like many other big corporation’s incentive to retain employees were in the form of a pension based on a the purchasing of company stock, that they would increasingly match, depending on years of service. They would match 1:1 for beginners, and up to 4:1 for old timers with 25+ years service. I can’t think any retailer, let alone any Fortune 500 company today that gives you $1k for every $1k you buy, let alone $4k for every $1K just for working for them.
My guess is when the bankers came to Sears’ rescue, they saw all that money going to the lowly employees and figure out a way ‘funnel it away’ to keep it for themselves! Word had spread throughout the corporate/banking world and now a full time gig can hardly provide for a family and savings for college in these times.
8
The Times speaks of "Eddie Lampert, the chief executive of ESL Investments, who bought Sears in 2005 figuring, wrongly, that he could reinvigorate it."
Was reinvigorating Sears really Mr. Lampert's motive? Stating this as fact gives far too much credence to a very debatable proposition.
8
Readers should check out Matt Taibbi's story on Romney that was published in Rolling Stone some years back. Gives one very insightful look at how executives, accountants, lawyers and financers leech the marrow of any remaining value from struggling companies like Sears. This is the legacy we leave our children: "globalized" profit-sucking, hollowing out of the core of institutions that used to provide us not only a localized market place, but a means to earn an honest living. Now I guess we can convert the local Sears buildings to automated, drone operated wharehouses to store the mountainous piles of rubbish manufactured in China, temporarily stored there on the way to our living rooms. Because we don't make (or apparently sell??) things anymore in this country. Our great measures of productivity are how to create accounting tricks, financial prestidigitation and profit engineering for investors.
Sad days are upon us, and scarry ones ahead.
8
Well said. History does not repeat, it rhymes.
2
So much for the "softer side of Sears".
2
The failure of Sears is, quite simply, a failure of imagination by its management. Sears was uniquely positioned to take advantage of online retailing. Instead, all Lampert could think about was cutting costs and shedding valuable assets.
12
I'm mid 50's and vividly remember looking through and dog earring things I craved from the Sears catalogs my parents received. In high school, I applied to work at my local Sears, Montgomery Ward, and JC Penney. I interviewed with Montgomery Ward and JC Penney and got the job as a sales clerk in men's workwear. Although happy to be working retail to save for college I was so upset I never even got an interview with Sears - which was my top choice. Funny the things you remember. I'm really sad for them and their employees.
5
Hey NYTs, you’ve done deep reporting series on Apple and the Donald. How about more than a cursory glance on the Business page towards Sears abs Lampert? How the bankruptcy purchase of KMart was spun into a buy-in of Sears then the death by a thousand cuts plan to shred it if it’s parts that were amazingly snatched up by ESL? Who likes Bluestar???
16
There is something deeply, and fundamentally wrong with our economy and country when "going broke" enriches somebody. And of course the symbol of that "success" is our President who has mastered the "Art of the Steal", declaring bankruptcy, defrauding the U.S. Treasury, and stiffing thousands of employees and contractors. Yet honest workers who put in a good days effort fall farther and farther behind.
This is not sustainable. When the consumers - a.k.a. workers - cannot afford to buy things, our consumer driven economy will collapse as it nearly did in 2008. Given how Trump and the Republicans have raided the Treasury to reward themselves and their wealthy friends up the debt that under Obama they claimed was "disastrous", there will be no bail outs next time, and the financial carnage will make the Great Depression look like a small "correction".
35
Another of the Sear's many failings was the lack of investment. Reportedly, Lampert believed that retail stores spent too much money on improvements, displays and the like. Unfortunately for Sears, the competition didn't agree and outspent them by 5x or more on a per-square foot basis. Customers noticed the increasingly dreary interiors and went elsewhere.
19
@Barry Short
Sears faced trouble anyway, in this new age, but Lampert didn't have a clue and thought he was a savior.
1
Sears is where my grandfather made his career after fleeing Europe to make a home in this country in 1945. He worked at Sears for decades. His salary allowed him to educate his children, buy a home and enter the middle class.
Sears wasn't just a store, but an institution. Growing up, one of our traditions was to look through the Sears catalog and pick out the things we wanted that year, like millions of people, going all the way back to the 1800s. Sears was the only way of getting things stores didn't normally carry. So, in that sense, it was the Amazon of its day for well-over a century.
What killed Sears is the exact same thing the current oligarchy-GOP alliance is perpetrating on our nation: a gutting from within.
Sad.
---
'Things Trump Did While You Weren’t Looking' https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2ZW
37
In the late sixties me and my siblings couldn't wait for the Sears Christmas catalog to arrive. It was the catalog equivalent of the North Pole. Sad to see you go Sears. Success is never permanent.
11
Sic transit instauratio magna -- So passes a great establishment.
This is to me one of the unbelievables, the others are the US dollar becoming cheaper than the Swiss frank and the disappearance of Howard Johnson on the highways.
Perhaps there is less to blame the Sears management, than the changing tastes and shopping habits of the public, driven by the media. Personally, I mistrust online shopping, but trips to shopping malls, the long hikes from the parking to the stores, and searches there for what I seek, all this is no fun either.
2
@Tuvw Xyz: "trips to shopping malls, the long hikes from the parking to the stores, and searches there for what I seek, all this is no fun" It's both a death spiral and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stores stock less because people buy online, then customers buy even more online because stores stock less. I suppose eventually stores will become showrooms. See/try it on in the store, then they ship from their distribution center. I'm old enough to want to walk out of the store with my purchase and stubborn or principled enough to patronize small merchants when I can. Computer stuff is a perfect example. Other than Apple/Microsoft stores the choices around here are Best Buy, Staples (sort of) or the one remaining full-stock geek heaven place, the Micro Center in Cambridge, MA. CompUSA and all the others - gone.
1
Plunder on a massive scale has been going on since the Studebaker board emptied its pension funds nearly 60 years ago.
21
This is a very light treatment of Lampert's self-dealing and looting of the company. Previously advised in his financial engineering chicanery by none other than Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
This is America today, the United States of Grifters. The Reagan Restoration has been consummated.
47
Sic transit gloria. Here in the hog butcher of the world we see a lot of 20 the century commercial skeletons.
What's not told here is the incredible civic ethos that continues to fuel our city's cultural institutions today. The Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry (Rosenwalds opus) were all built by the fortunes of these Catalog Kings.
And let's not waste this moment and fail to remember the incredible generosity of Mr Rosenwalds education mission for black Americans in the South. Many decades ahead of his era : https://savingplaces.org/places/rosenwald-schools
Mr Bezos, as you dabble in rocketry and act coy with even giving away half your enormous coffers: It is a good moment to reflect on what your true legacy will be.
10
Sears would have continued to be the Amazon of this day had management been focused on doing something other than stopping unions and getting out from under its pension obligations (which has just shifted to you and me via the PBGC). This has been the end of a 60 year war to finally destroy the unions and the pensions. You are either wealthy or you are to work until you drop. People live longer if they can quit working. Social Security and any type of medical care are then remaining targets of this 60 year war. Trump has made it completely clear they are going to go after the next election. Talk about deep state... conspiracy? It exists it is right wing (the best defense is a good offense, right?), white and focused on returning slavery, forget the middle class.
15
This is capitalism's creative destruction at work. Capitalism cares not for structures, companies or leaders. It just wants efficient allocation of resources in the servicing of free market demand.
We know that the US has at least 25% too much retail space. Many retailers will fail and this Chapter 11 filing is a mere six months delay in the inevitable liquidation so as to get better prices for inventory in the pipeline that would otherwise go in a fire sale.
4
Retailers come and go, but Sears really was built for the 20th century, and they were never ready for the 21st.
1
There ought to be a law against Eddie Lamperts. A hedge fund manager with no background in retailing, he ruined Sears by selling off its brands, many to his own company, and created more successful companies from spun-off pieces of Sears. Those revenue streams could have helped cross-subsidize Sears until its board, chaired by Lampert, could buy a clue and reinvent the company.
But maybe it’s for the best. While Lampert was experimenting with financial boondoggles that eviscerated Sears, which failed again and again, the retailing world, already dramatically changed, changed even further; and Sears clearly lost any merchandising innovative genius a LONG time ago. To be successful at this racket today, you need to be continuously reinventing yourself, as Bezos does regularly at Amazon. If your leaders can’t cut it, it’s really time to call it a day and cede the battlefield to doughtier warriors.
They’re not the only ones. Unisys, a technology company formed in 1986 from the merger of the venerable Burroughs Corp. and Sperry-Univac, travelled the same road, although less disastrously. Their board basically contracted catalepsy, and others passed them by. At the merger, they employed 120,000: they now employ less than 20,000. In the late 1970s, Burroughs was thought to have the potential to eclipse IBM – IBM today employs over 380,000 people.
When entrenched leadership cannot address a new competitive dynamic, for whatever reason, it’s time to sell or shut the doors.
12
I'm not sure Amazon is unassailable, but history suggests it could find its demise in an even more encompassing company (like Taobao). While few would see the appeal of a still greater retail giant stepping in to eclipse its profits, it's also possible that a crashing economy, the weighty reach of its own corporate greed, or a well-organized revolt could someday put a sizable dent in its profit-margin.
3
The day I knew Sears was doomed was when various California stores were caught cheating in their automotive department. They squandered their good will as the place where American consumers got value for their money and joined the ranks of sleazy merchandisers. And with that they sealed their eventual demise.
7
"The e-sales promotion company Groupon, itself once mighty and now clinging to life, occupies part of Ward’s former headquarters in Chicago."
And to think that Groupon, at its hubristic worst, turned down a $6 billion offer from Google back in the day.
8
Not all innovation is progress.
12
Sears, like lots and of retailers and malls, died of inertia. I wrote “ The (Un) Malling of America” (American Demographics magazine, 1990) which forecast self-imposed extinction. Industry leaders bridled. The story is still unfolding. I now forecast a steep national fall as we ignore the perils of climate change and the perils of massive debt. This time, I am not alone.
18
The big Sears in Hackensack, NJ was where my mother brought me for spring clothes in 1964 to make a trip alone by plane to see my grandmother in Florida when I was 7. I was so excited to try on summery outfits and go through the rounds of pedal pushers and matching tops with rick rack...
11
Isn't this 'creative destruction" the essence of good capitalism. An entrepeneur disrupts the market with a revolutionary idea, in Sears case it's catalogue. The resultant company grows until its reaches its natural level of complacency. Often the eventual owners many generations removed from the founder are simply milking the profits.
The sclerotic king is then toppled by a combination of market evolution, often through technology, and hungry young entrepeneurs who see a new gap in the market. And so the cycle start anew.
3
Retail brick and mortar is really taking a hit. With Bon-Ton closing all it's nameplates, including Younkers, Carson's and Elder-Beerman, over 200 stores this summer, the shopping landscape for bigger department stores is dimming.
3
You nailed it correctly. Lampert will walk away richer than he arrived. Lampert and others like him are cannibals posing as missionaries. Carrion capitalism is alive and well
24
Every company has a lifespan and a peak. The very best companies (not banks) can reign supreme for no more than 30 years. I can think of only a few companies in the Fortune 500 that have led or stayed a top 5 leader in their industry for over 30 years: Dupont, Coca-Cola... Amazon will be the next Sears, it is inevitable.
2
Yes, you can order couches and appliances through Amazon, but can you get a house? My grandparents ordered their farmhouse (big enough for a family of eleven) from Sears. The parts, nails and all, I've been told, were shipped in by train. Assembly required, however!
34
In smaller towns there was a catalogue order store. Order anything and pick it up in a few days.
Just like amazon. Substitute a computer screen for a 2inch thick catalogue and add UPS, same thing.
9
My favorite movie growing up was It's a Wonderful Life. Everyone became Potter, we're in Pottersville. We let Potter take over.
11
I will miss Sears. It was such a major part of my life growing up in 1970's New York. Dad was a truck-driver and Mom a housewife. It was a big deal to drive to the large store in Hicksville, LI. It's were we went for new shoes for school, new clothes for Easter and where my parents bought their first dishwasher.
Sears is gone to history in the same way my Dad was able to support a family of 4 on $19K a year. Never to be seen again.
52
"Certainly, Amazon looks unassailable in its current form. So did every retailer that became the biggest dog on retail’s porch". The same can be said about nations.
43
My neighbor two doors down has a Sears house and loves it (a bit small but very well built). I personally loved to buy Craftsman and Kenmore because of one key option... the ability to get parts! Today, if something breaks, people throw it out. My dad taught me the value of getting parts and fixing it yourself. Sears was always great for parts.
63
I owned a Montgomery Ward kit house in Ames, Iowa for some years in the 1980s. It was large, airy, and beautifully put together by the people who had ordered it, along with the instructions and all the nails, in the early 20th century. Wonderful panelling, a fireplace, beautiful floors and windows, a spacious front porch. I did look it up once in an old catalogue--$2700, all inclusive. Still standing, unlike some others built in later decades.
22
Amazon will eventually collapse not because of pay on the low end but because people just get sick of working for them. Innovation always finds its end, and Amazon's will be when high-paid workers decide they would rather work somewhere else. Everything has a cycle, and high-energy, high-tech workers get tired and/or old eventually. Meanwhile, all of the innovation will be absorbed by competitors. Perhaps they'll hit a $2 trillion valuation before that happens, but it will certainly happen.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we are afraid of fascism. It is a frightening prospect without totally unpredictable results for everyone. Nobody would be safe from the monster.
It would be wonderful if we had a viable voting option that could stave off fascism, but currently the people have a choice of accepting it outright or backing into it slowly.
So again, our family will not be voting in this election. If things get worse, don't be cowardly and blame people because of their votes or non-votes. Entering the door of fascism was very much the result of a 2-party dance.
Search 'Bugs Bunny's square dance' from the episode, 'Hillbilly Hare'.
3
@DudeNumber42 Hey Dude, I was following you up to to not voting part. It does not make sense.It might be a Bugs Bunny square dance but it is the only dance we have.
8
"It would be wonderful if we had a viable voting option that could stave off fascism, but currently the people have a choice of accepting it outright or backing into it slowly."
Well, backing into it slowly offers a better chance of stopping it. Not voting doesn't stop the creep of fascism ... it simply says that you don't really care about the future.
8
@DudeNumber42 Not voting does not make sense. And not all candidates are the same
6
Comparing Amazon to Sears is like comparing an e-mail to an old, wrinkled letter, or an e-text to a beautifully wrought book. I'm increasingly convinced the NY Times has hired people too young to have gained wisdom writing editiorials and news stories. And call me a Luddite, but in the rush to constantly cover the latest outrageous political controversy, I feel your coverage has neglected to track the incredibly sad (though not irreversible) changes that have left my children's generation berift of the cultural and social anchors that once rooted us as a nation.
47
Like the white shoe country club set an GM, the Sears executives care not about the company. Only about their status, money, and tee times.
11
The demise of Sears, Roebuck & Co. demonstrates, yet again, a fundamental principle: nothing lasts forever.
Think J.C. Penney, Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, Westinghouse, RCA, Kodak, Xerox, GE... former giants of American retail, industry and innovation, now gone or lingering at death’s door. And then there’s AOL...
How many remember, or even recognize, one-time Dow Jones Industrial Average companies like Nash Motors Company, Hudson Motor Company, F.W. Woolworth, Central Leather Company, Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, Studebaker Corporation? All came and went over the course of a century or less.
Please don’t try to convince me “this time is different.” No, it isn’t.
12
There are a myriad of reasons why household names collapse including those you on your list that fell to poor management, failure to innovate, obsolescence and more. But Sears and to some extent companies like Sports Authority, Hostess and Fortunoff were structured to eventually fail. The common factor is equity fund purchases.
12
A sad story but nice to see the stereoscope pictures at the beginning.
7
Yet another great American company going down under the weight of retired employee pension and health care obligations.
Get used to it. Walmart beat Sears et al, simply because it was no unionized and did not have defined retirement benefits plan.
Next on the list, over the next few decades, will be many US cities and states. Defined benefits plan bankrupted every airline, every automaker, every retailer that had them.
It is a cancer. No organization (other than those who can printi money at will) can successfully manage promising benefits for people many, many decades into the future. It should be illegal to do so.
1
@Baron95, that is nonsense. Companies have in fact thrived while providing defined benefit pensions. If planned for properly, they are a good tool for attracting and retaining the skills needed to sustain a company. They may not be fashionable today, but then employees are treated less as assets and more as disposable things.
This approach may help the Amazons in the short term, as they offer equity that vests over a few years. But in the long term, sustaining a company for a century requires some mix of new skills and experience. The executives in those companies have that protection. The workers don't.
12
Of course companies can offer defined-benefit plans. Where they run into trouble is when they skimp on adequate contributions as a cost-cutting measure for a couple of years and begin to fall so far behind that they can never hope to make good on their promises.
11
I’m no fan of unions or outsized benefits but your guzzling the Koolaid. Companies that plan ahead, look beyond the next quarter, appoint competent boards and retain/pay the c-suite based on continued solid results will do okay with benefit plans and decent wages and true customer service.
11
Weoffer: Wewe and Mkoo purchased all of the pet beds and other supplies for their little dog Pizda. They relate that the memory of the fragrances of roasting peanuts and popcorn in the entry area of their local Sears and Roebuck store is strong as ever and whenever similar fragrances are smelled, tears well-up. Shame, shame on Eddie Lambert for destroying a national treasure.
5
One of the great things about Sears catalog was that you got the exact price and never paid more. Shipping was based on Parcel Post rates, and if you figured the amount wrong chits for even a penny of overpayment were included with the invoice.
By contrast Amazon's Marketplace vendors often run shipping scams by advertising a product for a very low price, but tacking on shipping that costs more than the product.
9
good point; it's a crowded field and modern retail I find is often sneaky
4
@Gene I have found in the age of e-commerce it is now very quick and convenient to order something online – but with many e-tailers, you face a brick wall if you have a problem with the merchandise or want to return it. Amazon excepted: anything sold/shipped by Amazon has been easy for me to return for refund. I suspect adhering to this one maxim of traditional retailers – "Goods satisfactory or your money cheerfully refunded" – has rapidly built trust in Amazon over many of their online competitors. Too bad Sears got all the other parts wrong and that in the end it was headed by a vulture.
1
My family only shopped from the Sears catalogs when I was growing up. When the Internet came along it was like old times for me, flipping through the pages to order; waiting for it to arrive and keeping or returning as needed. But where was Sears? There was no reason other than bad management for it to fail. They sold off assets until nothing was left. Sad.
11
When Sears added the ability to call in your order my mom continued to use the order slip from the catalog and send it via the Post Office. She refused to pay long distance to Chicago.
3
All the bad stuff later in Sears history aside, it was a great company to those of us starting out in married life in the 60's. We bought our maple playpen and highchair at Sears, it lasted through our three children and then we handed it off to our neighbors for their new ones. Then there were the Kenmore appliances, they were less expensive and longer lasting (a lifetime if needed). And oh those Craftsman tools and their return policy was just bring it back and we'll give you a new one or a credit.
The family would go there on a Saturday, and everyone had a favorite place in the store. For me it was the tool department.
A great, great store. Amazon is great too, but where can you window shop and dream, not there, but Sears was there, just down the street.
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Looking at the list of businesses that withered and died over the years, I see them as examples of what most Republicans would champion as examples of the free market in action, and I beleve they would be correct. Funny that they can’t see the same thing happening with, say, the coal industry. If there were to be a sizeable faction of voting buggy whip makers, Boss Trump would be blathering about them.
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If buggy whip makers could be counted on as a voting block, you bethcha!
3
You neglected to mention Sears participation of a venture in the mid 1980's called "Trintex" which was an internet portal along the lines of AOL. Its partners, I believe, were CBS and IBM. Sears left the joint venture which became Prodigy systems. Perhaps if they they stayed involved Trintex/Prodigy could have become what Amazon is today--or not.
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@Stephen This is absolutely right. Sears was a pioneer in the early years of digital media, initially with Trintex, as Stephen points out, then as a partner with IBM in Prodigy. The editorial gets this very wrong. Sears management recognized the potential of personal computing while Jeff Bezos was still in high school. By the early 90s, Prodigy fell victim to a young Steve Case and his America Online, which today is a basket case in Verizon's sad portfolio of Internet has-beens. But in its day, Prodigy was the big digital man on campus. Until it wasn't.
9
I worked for a small, 400 mil., business unit of Sears that provided IBM and Compaq computers, Novell networks, printers and installation, service and support to small and medium businesses. Sears then expanded computer sales as part of their Brand Central campaign. It worked pretty well at the local level, but unfortunately corporate didn’t know how to manage the shrinking margins of technology products. Eventually it collapsed. You can see their successor of retail computer sales at Best Buy, which is struggling.
3
The fatal mistake was getting out of catalog sales right before the advent of the internet. When I lived in Paris as a child 95% of the clothes my brothers and sisters and I wore were ordered through the Sears catalog. I spent hours poring over the Christmas Wish catalog trying to decide what toys to ask Santa for. When I lived in Venezuela as an adult in the late 1980's, Sears was no longer sending out catalogs. We ordered thousands of dollars of furniture, dishes, rugs, curtains, etc. from the JC Penney catalog, as did our fellow US government employees around the world. If Sears had stayed with catalog sales they might have been able to do an easy pivot to internet sales and become what Amazon is today.
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@MsQwerty As a child of the 70's part of the excitement of Christmas for me, my sisters, our cousins & friends was poring over the toy sections in the Sears & Penney's catalogues (never got everything we wanted but it was fun to wish).
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My mom would hide the Wish Book on top of the refrigerator until the weekend so my sister and me would have ample time to look it over, without fighting about it.
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Unfortunately I don't think this would have been the case. Sears Canada was independently run, and kept the catalogue going up until a few years ago, at the same time as they had e-commerce. It wasn't enough - Sears Canada closed operations last year.
1
Lampert acts like a victim but has enriched himself beyond the imagination of most if not all of the Sears workforce. He was a bully on shareholder calls whom resided literally in a mansion walled miles aways from his coworkers and investors. His name and tyranny should be noted in history books as the destroyer of an American staple.
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And a thorough look should be taken at what assets were bought by ESL, how they were identified for sale and how they were valued.
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What will happen to Lands End? Doesn't Sears own them?
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It has already been spun off. That was an acquisition that never made sense. Lands End buyers rarely buy their clothes in a Sear store.
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@Barry Short You're right, but it was sometimes convenient to pick up and return Lands End Stuff at Sears.
@Molly - Land's End was a subtenant in many Sears stores. Closest to me, Burlington, MA, when the Sears store closed, Land's End rented its own space in the mall as soon as a slot was available.
1
Robert Lampert, a hedge funder, merged Sears with K-Mart and ran up their debt then he used the debt to buy back stock to run up the stock price so he could enrich himself and his fund group. By raiding them, there wasn’t enough operating cash left to run Sears. Lampert is a vulture capitalist who has left 175,000 workers without their jobs. These vulture raiders are killing retail stores that are embedded in our American communities ... they destroy to enrich themselves. Why isn’t this illegal ? This is too close to the way the mafia would operate, it’s a stain on our country.
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Blue horseshoe loves Blue Star.
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@PattyI meant Edward Lampert not Robert ... jeez.
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@Patty
That's unfettered capitalism. Enjoy!
3
"But more important, the company could not summon the vision to anticipate the internet. By 1993, Sears had closed its national network of warehouses and exited the catalog business — which is basically e-retailing without the “e.” Amazon shipped its first book in 1995."
From your own words, they were already dying before the Internet and specifically the Web became a force in retail. The company lacked the necessary imagination long before Amazon became the huge retailer it is today.
Sears missed the reselling changes brought by Walmart. And it failed to keep its own brands (Kenmore, Craftsman, etc.) at the forefront of their fields, so that they, like Sears, began to lack cachet except to older generations who still had memory of when the brands were great.
My point is that Sears' failings were many. Not anticipating Internet and Web simply finished off a company that was already in steady decline. They were not the cause though.
8
Department stores thrived when manufacturers set retail prices. Stores competed on service and convenience. But when stores were freed to set their own prices 50 years ago, customers flocked to discounters. Walmart and Target, then big box stores like Best Buy, Home Depot and Toys are Us, then warehouse stores like Costco and finally Amazon. Each one took a big bite out of the department stores. Sears was one of the last of hundreds of department stores across the country.
7
Of all the companies best positioned to take full advantage of internet retail sales, Sears should be at or near the top of the list. Too bad they never saw it coming and, more importantly, never did a thing about it even when the writing was on the wall. Their story is a cautionary tale which should reverberate in every board room and business 101 course for decades.
1
Sears was systematically split apart and robbed by the hedge fund who swooped in so scandalously. NYT has published several stories on how Lampert and his ilk robbed Sears in a big real estate scheme. This is an iconic story of Wall Street robbing the American people. Lampert must know that.
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I can remember when the 'Computer' section of the average brick and mortar book store would contain two or three books on something called the Internet.
5
Amazon’s business model is to take out the competition by running at a loss. In the past the government would step in and declare it a monopoly. In the present though our politicians have been paid to not go after after business’ for things like monopolies. They also took advantage of not paying local taxes ( currently they pay taxes in some states but the damage has been done).
It seems just like the banks have gotten bigger after they were declared to big to fail, and should be split up, but were not. We now have Amazon which has eaten up its competition. How can companies compete, when Amazon can use their size to operate at a loss, until their competition is bankrupt. To bad for us that our politicians don’t address this, since their donors are corporations like Amazon. This doesn’t sound how Capitalism should work.
23
It's a shame that Sears didn't anticipate e-commerce. The Sears Catalog was essentially Amazon.com bound into a paperback book. They simply didn't anticipate the changes in the retail landscape, at least not in time.
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@Roger
Actually, they did try to go with online shopping.
1
I'm 64. I can remember each year waiting excitedly for the Sears Christmas Catalog to come in the mail so I could spend days looking through it. The beautifully decorated Christmas trees, the best Christmas decorations, the clothes, and especially the Toy section! Like yesterday...a great memory of my youth.
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@Debbie: Me too!
I spent much of my youth looking through the toys section. It was a great time to be an ordinary American with parents that had good enough jobs to house, clothes, feed, and educate the family.
21
I am 73, and grew up with Sears. A lot of our clothing was ordered from Sears. Dad’s tools, my parents washer and dryer, a 10-speed bike came from Sears. We trusted them and they provided a good product. When I was married, finished school as an engineer and had our first child on the way we went to Sears to buy a washer and dryer. We were 23 years old and my very good engineering job was paying $ 825 per month. We wanted to buy these on credit, so applied for Sears credit – and was turned down because no one my age could be earning $ 825 per month. The year was 1968 – never shopped at Sears for almost anything again – they have been going down hill since then.
4
@deBlacksmith
My horror story with Sears is from 1988... to buy a bicycle...was told the backlog for assembly was 3 months.......reluctantly bought the unassembled bike using a Sears credit card.......two days later had a horrible auto accident....six weeks later, had recovered sufficiently to attempt assembly....unsuccessful....lengthy reversal and reboxing.......did not have receipt....returned bike to store......should have received full credit refund, but received $ 20 less (although I could pinpoint the exact date/time of purchase {verifiable through their own credit records!}) on the basis of lowest advertised price within the past 90 days....cancelled the Sears card.....was billed by Sears for months thereafter for the phantom $ 20 plus interest.......when it eventually went to collections, I calmly explained the circumstances, and the matter was dropped.
I have not set foot in Sears since, and have probably told at least a thousand people the story.
1
When I hear about the demise of Sears, I think of the big stores of my youth, which seemingly had everything one could need, especially if one was willing to spend a bit more for something that worked properly and lasted a long time.
More often, I think of the people who spent most or all of their careers with Sears, providing good information, quality service and answering questions with real knowledge about the stuff they were selling. I knew some of these people.
The folks who worked for this company for decades have seen their benefits shredded and their pensions sharply reduced through no fault of their own.
What has killed Sears is not its retirees as Mr. Lampert states, it has been the decisions of its management over the years valuing diversification in their portfolios over caring for the core aspects of the business and their longtime employees.
This neglect became glaringly obvious to me when I would visit a Sears outlet in Moline to get parts to fix a Craftsman riding lawnmower years ago. The salesperson had to access the part number and location via a DOS-based program on a 6-inch CRT when other retailers had long since moved on to other operating systems and upgraded hardware.
It took decades to build brand recognition and reputation for names like Kenmore, Craftsman, et al. It only took a few years for self-styled Masters of the Universe to sell, cheapen and forever sully these brands to the point where they meant nothing at all.
138
What seems to be missed here is that Sears filed for bankruptcy, but the largest creditor is another company Mr Lampert is involved in. Behind that is probably some financial chicanery that serves a profit motive somewhere out of sight of the bankruptcy process.
I really do not think Mr Lampert ever intended to "save" Sears or K Mart or Sears Holdings. I think this is a slow motion process that has allowed the maximum amount of cash to be extracted from the hull of those companies.
152
Death by a thousand cuts before our very eyes.
6
Lampert was a very successful Wall Street guy: No doubt good with numbers. He has a b.s. in Econ from Yale which for all practical purposes is applied math. Like a lot of finance guys w such a track record he appears to believe that he could manage anything better than anyone.
But like most finance guys turned managers he managed by numbers. A bit like what happened @ GM where finance ran an otherwise engineering intensive company. In the case of GM in the case of the Chevy Corsica/Baretta (late 1980s, early 1990s a car that was essentially created to compete directly against the Honda Accord), the finance guys (cost accountants) found that you could do things like replace the metal floor plugs that hold the floor mats in place with plastic ones & save tons of money as plastic was cheaper. A friend of mine told me a story of how that plastic plug broke on the day the car was bought. There was no one strong enough in Engineering or Marketing to tell the Finance guys that they were decreasing revenues faster than costs.
There's only so much cost squeezing you can do in any company. I've read about Lampert's management of Sears off & on for years & if memory serves he was mainly about squeezing cost instead of increasing revenues. Invariably this means squeezing people/employees. Inevitably this means exiting the market. It takes passion, knowledge, imagination & experience in retail to increase revenue in a company like Sears was. He'd done better if he knew how to delegate.
26
Bean counters. Remember that the Chrysler K car and first gen minivans had their rear license plate light held on with double sided tape instead of body plugs.
4
@Tim Kane, two comments.
Business-school or economics grads running companies is very risky, for the very reasons you mention.
Econ is not for all practical purposes applied math. Part of econ uses a very small part of applied math. There is a thread in econ that thinks fancy math is economics, but they are largely mistaken.
6
When you opened the big glass door to enter, the first thing to greet one was the smell of new clothing, and there were huge selections of not only women's, men's and children's wear but a whole department devoted to men's work clothes--whether one was a farmer (bib overalls), a mechanic, a plumber, a house painter, a service station attendant (yes, they wore crisp white uniforms with black leather bow ties)), or some other work that a uniform would indicate specialization. No doubt there was a department for nurse's uniforms, too, but I can't recall it.
I remember that my aunt bought a new Kenmore washer from Sears & Roebuck in the late 1950s and it was still running well into the early 1980s!
You could furnish your entire house, buy select paintings done by the actor Vincent Price (an exclusive offering from Sears); there was a complete plumbing department, electrical appliances galore, fabric and sewing notions, too.
As a child I shopped for Christmas toys for my cousins in the "basement" Toy Department where the first glorious thing to greet my nose was the freshly-popped popcorn done in a movie theater corn popping machine with real fresh butter available.
The cashiers, all women, were smiling and friendly. The whole store was brightly lit, well-organized and easy to find things in. The sights, the smells, the serious people-watching one could enjoy doing--all of that was what made one happy to do some shopping at the big Sears and Roebuck store!
54
To me it sounds like Lampert basically raided Sears, extracting all its value to enrich himself and his fund, and leaving the remains for bankruptcy.
161
I can vividly recall a time when there wasn't one thing that I could not purchase at a Sears Roebuck and Company store. Now, I can vividly recall not being able to purchase one item I really want from a Sears Roebuck and Company store. After all of these years, I still kept my first credit card which was a Sears credit card. I was 18 at the time and the only kind of credit I could obtain was from Sears.
I will always have fond memories of perusing their colorful and enticing Christmas Wish Book immediately after every Thanksgiving, hearing the brown paper wrapping being removed from the many blue jeans my mother ordered from their catalog, smelling the worn and beaten down wooden floors of the various Sears stores I would shop at.
Sears was a farmer's best friend and most welcomed asset. Their Craftsman tools were guaranteed for life, their kitchen appliances and service were solid and dependable, snow blowers and lawn mowers flew out the door every winter and summer.
Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever - Sears, Marshall Fields, F.A.O Schwartz, or even A&P grocery stores.
I look upon those days gone by as being extremely fortunate to having been around to appreciate and experience the kind of service, product quality, and sincere customer guarantees that don't seem to hold up as firmly as they once did. I truly valued and appreciated what Sears offered back then. Sadly, a different mindset and greed replaced real integrity and honesty.
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@Marge Keller
One of the large regional Sears centers that kept accounts, took orders, shipped than and also functioned as a retail store in Memphis was redeveloped as Crosstown Concourse. The development took the abandoned 1920's building and converted it into an urban village that has become quite a success.
Apparently most of these buildings have been redeveloped in a similar fashion. The one in Memphis took an abandoned hulk and remade it into a LEED Platinum building and won an international award. https://crosstownconcourse.com/about/
A couple of years ago the building was a decrepit eyesore and is now a thriving place of commerce and community. The company that birthed it, however, seems to have started to circle the bowl.
3
Marshall Field is gone?! Dear me. My father-in-law must be rolling in his grave, as his favorite sweets were the store's proprietary brand.
5
Look at any conglomerate ( retail especially ) and you need only look at the generous (for said businesses) tax code to see how and why they have become so enormous.
It started in the 80's under St. Reagan/republicans with breaking of the unions, and changing the tax code to create a clear runway for corporate raiders. - ''...management scrapped and replaced the “overfunded” pension plan, plundering it for operating capital. ''
It continued on into the 90's with the imbalances in the minimum wage and right to work states. That allowed the big box store to pay workers extremely low wages and to have the state (you the tax payer) subsidize pay and benefits. It also allowed tax benefits for building and moving the large buildings/hubs to create the network.
Fast forward to the E-commerce era and no taxation (at least at first) to all transactions online. That gave a leg up for the biggest retail there is today. The ''new'' Sears.
All along the way, those that got to tax exempt status (much like the wild west in the time of Sears) first were the ones that gained the most market share and are where they are today.
The owners (the singular and the family) are the two richest blocks of people on earth. They hold enormous sway on the rising or declining of a massive amount of suppliers and communities. (that will or will not offer even more tax exempt status)
This is all that is wrong with the capitalist dream.
31
@FunkyIrishman
Yes, people forget that Amazon was built largely on a special tax exemption that was available to no ordinary store: they were not required to collect sales tax. All internet sellers had the same advantage. As we know, Bezos was the best at taking advantage.
7
I worked in the national advertising department at Sears -- Dept. 732A -- for five years back in the 1980s. I remember a board that would show the stock price of Sears and its leading competitors: Wards, JC Penny and K-Mart. Management never saw Walmart coming, and who could have even imagined the Internet back then? When I think of all the great people I worked with and how important Sears was to so many people ( it really was "Where America Shops"), I feel a profound sense of sadness. I think as a Chicagoan, I feel this even more profoundly, as we've seen great Chicago retailers like Wards, Marshall Fields, Carsons, and others disappear. Times have truly changed.
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@Sam Kirshenbaum
I hear ya Mr. Kirshenbaum. Also missing from the Chicago shopping scene are Wieboldt's, Goldblatt's, and McDades. All wonderful department stores gone forever.
Thanks for the work you did in the national advertising department of Sears. I'm sure I saw your end product and never knew it.
This final chapter in Sears' history must be personally painful for you. I'm so sorry.
7
@Sam Kirshenbaum: I worked at Sun Microsystems in the '80s. We imagined the internet, but we were in that business. Sears should have asked us :=)
5
@Sam Kirshenbaum Hey there's one great catalog retailer from Chicago that still thrives – albeit it's a long, long time since they operated bricks and mortar or sold anything other than women's fashion, which they once did. I live in Canada but still remember daily promos at the end of one 1970s American TV game show hawking catalog shopping at Spiegel's, "Chicago 60609". Operating since 1865, they're still there.
3