Sears, not the internet's fault

It's the same story as a lot of other old-line businesses. Reminds me of Southwest Airlines and how they took a lot of market share by innovating. Nice organized web site. You buy each leg of a trip separately, you pick your times and prices each way. You can do one way or multi stop trips without any price penalty. You can cancel a trip and get 100% of the cash back to use later for up to a year, no penalty. Lots of flights on smaller planes so you have a lot of options. No assigned seats, just boarding groups depending on when you checked in. Still two free checked bags when you fly. Planes are mostly all the same plane so it's easy for passengers, crew and cheaper for maintenance. The older airlines struggled to keep up and had to consolidate, but SWA chugs along.

Someone said the Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos types don't go to work for old fossilized companies. I think that's the deal. You almost can't prevent this kind of thing happening, sad as it is.
Generally, they stop being hungry, they start getting lazy, and they stop thinking innovatively.

The only major US company I can think of that has successfully maintained its innovative hunger across generations of change has been IBM. Everyone was shocked when they abruptly exited the mass-market PC business last decade, to focus on infrastructure management solutions. But they were right, again. I remember when all they made were typewriters and big mainframes, and ate Sperry-Rand's lunch.
 
Fry’s Electronics will be next.

Fry's is a disaster that has so much potential. They opened a new one around here a decade or so back and it was so nice, clean and well organized. But it didn't last. Now it is run down and disorganized just like their other store in the area. The sound rooms are now just filled with piles of speakers that aren't hooked up. They have a 20 seat theater to show off the top of the line stuff that isn't used. Their rows of speakers and amplifiers rarely work. The shelves are a mess, things are not in the spot that they belong so it is hard to tell what is what price. Their salespeople seem annoyed if you ask them anything. The employees just stand around instead of cleaning up their areas. They will have only 2 registers open for the entire store on a Saturday afternoon. And don't even get me started on trying to find something on their web site.
 
How is Target doing?

Of the 4 Targets around us 1 is terrible, 1 is great and 2 are okay. These corporations really need to look at their store management on a regular basis. The one that is terrible we've had the manager on duty walk past the register after the clerk called for help with an issue and when we called out to her she snapped "I'm on break" and kept walking. I've watched cashiers that were friendly and super fast slowly have the life and energy drained out of them over time from dealing with these managers. Employees at that store will stand in the isle talking and not move so you have to find a way around them.

The idiotic thing with companies is they could find out what was wrong if they would just listen to customers and employees. Undercover Boss always has the CEO going "I had no idea about..." Well, you could always go talk to your employees without a TV show if you want to know what is going on.
 
If abandoning their catalog distribution infrastructure on the eve of the Internet was Sears first foot in the grave, abandoning their exclusive house brands was the second. That started before the 1990s. And Radio Shack made the exact same mistake.

I'm old enough to remember walking into Sears stores in the 1950s and 60. Back then, you had full-line stores and hard-merchandise stores (no soft goods such as clothing). The latter eventually morphed into Sears Hardware, without the electronics and furniture. But whenever you walked into one, nearly everything was Sears-branded. And I mean EVERYTHING.

And not just Kenmore and Craftsman. I'm old enough to remember Silvertone audio products and Coldspot AC and refrigeration products. When you walked into the electronics department, you many have seen a couple national brands, but 90% was all Sears. Sears TVs and radios. Sears stereos. Even early Sears "pong" games and other gizmos. Sears bedding and whites. Sears clothing. I wore a couple Sears suits. Sears-branded boots. Even Sears-branded underwear. I have relatives with ancient Sears steel sheds still on their property (held up by the rust at this point).

Later. when you walked into the auto department, it was not just DieHard batteries. It was RoadHandler tires and Spectrum lubricants. In the early 1970s, nylon string lawn trimmers became the rage. And while Weed Eater was the leading national brand, Sears outsold them regularly with their "Weedwacker" brand, that eventually expanded into other "wackers" across the lawn and garden department, right next to the Sears-branded lawn food and weed killers.

And Sears spent decades and untold millions of dollars carefully cultivating these brands and sub-brands. In the early 70s, a commercial for an NFL game consisted of a DieHard commercial, followed by a RoadHandler commercial for winter. And Sears was the ONLY place you could buy these, and many other great products.

Sure, most of the stuff was made by someone else. Maybe White-Westinghouse or Whirlpool made it. But Sears was very careful to specify some additional styling, feature or specification to their product, nearly always something that made theirs a little extra, a little nicer. And always enough to differentiate it from the manufacturer's own product. Sears' products were unique then.

And when something had the gold "Sears Best" label on it, you knew you were getting a near top-of-market item that was well made and a fair value. I still have a "Sears Best" automotive tester and dwell station from the early 1970s, with that little gold seal on the box. Still works.

But the most important thing was you could only buy these things at Sears. They were unique. They had built an entire marketing universe of their unique products, with a complete monopoly on them. Oranges vs. apples, so no one else could really compete on price. When they gave them up, one by one, it turned the entire shopping experience into a price comparison. Because they are all just apples. There was no way they were going to compete on price with Walmart and the other modern "five and dimes" of the late Century. When they bought K-mart, they were acknowledging they had lost their biggest marketing advantage and were losing the price war, too.

And they "Service(d) what we sell". I always knew that whatever Sears product I bought, Sears would always have parts and service for it, conveniently. Sometimes for decades. Try walking up to a Walmart customer service desk to get your four year old LG TV repaired, and see what happens.

They gave up their competitive advantage, one they had spent decades building, and then died on the price battlefield. And they did it willingly. Again, complete executive management malpractice and a betrayal of an untold investment over generations.

Radio Shack did the exact same thing with their Realistic, Archer and Tandy brands and all the little sub-brands under them. The day RS started selling RCA-branded boom boxes in their stores, I know that they too had crossed the rubicon. There was no way that RS was going to successfully sell national brands against the Walmarts and Best Buys of the market. By the end, they were selling cell phones and expired batteries and a handful of odds and ends. All the old RS products were gone.
Nailed it perfectly! You’re absolutely correct!
 
Of the 4 Targets around us 1 is terrible, 1 is great and 2 are okay. These corporations really need to look at their store management on a regular basis. The one that is terrible we've had the manager on duty walk past the register after the clerk called for help with an issue and when we called out to her she snapped "I'm on break" and kept walking. I've watched cashiers that were friendly and super fast slowly have the life and energy drained out of them over time from dealing with these managers. Employees at that store will stand in the isle talking and not move so you have to find a way around them.

The idiotic thing with companies is they could find out what was wrong if they would just listen to customers and employees. Undercover Boss always has the CEO going "I had no idea about..." Well, you could always go talk to your employees without a TV show if you want to know what is going on.
Today’s mentality is that one never solicits input from employees. They’re all replaceable anyhow. Let’s hire a consultant ...
 
Later. when you walked into the auto department, it was not just DieHard batteries. It was RoadHandler tires and Spectrum lubricants.

My family used DieHard batteries for years, and RoadHandler tires, which were made by Michelin, excellent tires but much cheaper than Michelins.

My '72 Sears riding mower (ST-16, single cylinder 16 hp with a cast iron block, it was a tank) was made by Ariens I think.

Kenmore washers and dryers, a lot of them were Maytag.

Good stuff. :thumbsup:
 
Today’s mentality is that one never solicits input from employees. They’re all replaceable anyhow. Let’s hire a consultant ...

def4d2709b7b012f2fe400163e41dd5b


I worked at a company that was paying a consultant thousands of dollars a day to tell them how to improve things. One of his ideas was completely impractical and I was arguing against it when the manager of another store took me aside and said "You won't win. Just say 'That is a great idea, we will look at implementing it' the consultant will move on and the boss will think you've acted on it and will forget about it" Part of me died that day.
 
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def4d2709b7b012f2fe400163e41dd5b


I worked at a company that was paying a consultant thousands of dollars a day to tell them how to improve things. One of his ideas was completely impractical and I was arguing against it when the manager of another store took me aside and said "You won't win. Just say 'That is a great idea, we will look at implementing it' the consultant will move on and the boss will think you've acted on it and will forget about it" Part of me died that day.
Vintage dogbert!
 
At my brothers camp we have a repo of a 1908 sears catalogue.You could buy an entire house literally from them!Love looking though that book ,its about 500 pages of history.As a kid in the sixties the Christmas wishbook was to die for!
 
The idiotic thing with companies is they could find out what was wrong if they would just listen to customers and employees.

We, as a society of consumers and employees, have kind of brought this on ourselves. Why would you expect companies to even care about what customers and employees think about them (until the impending 12th hour disaster), when all they get is "hate mail"? Watch the news, social media, and the internet. When was the last time you saw employees holding a rally to support their employer? All you see are angry mobs "protesting" or a picket-line of pissed-off employees disparaging their employer. Not defending all employers for their practices, but anything potentially "positive" doesn't make the evening news--just the "negative".

When was the last time you saw anyone post about taking the time to send a letter to "corporate" to thank them for a great experience, or pass on a "kudos" regarding a particular employee/manager/location/product?--RARELY. When things go "right", everyone just expects and accepts it and moves on. The minute that things go "wrong", everyone (and even on-lookers that have no specific "horse in the race") immediately "pile-on" the band-wagon.

If 99/100 letters/e-mails/social media posts that I read every day were from people bitching about something (relevant or irrelevant), why would I feel motivated to even bother to look at them?

There's a big difference between "I have a squeak in my door hinge on my new car, and I'm pissed", and "My wife was just killed by air-bag shrapnel in my new car", and "I want to be able to earn a living wage and get health care for my family", and "I think we should get longer breaks and a Keurig machine in every break-room". Unfortunately, people don't necessarily "discriminate" between which ball they choose to pick up and run with.
 
At my brothers camp we have a repo of a 1908 sears catalogue.You could buy an entire house literally from them!Love looking though that book ,its about 500 pages of history.As a kid in the sixties the Christmas wishbook was to die for!


If you ever want to see a slice of history, look at the Sears Christmas Catalog during the height of the Second World War.

To celebrate, mainly all that was available were various smaller containers of candy or nuts. It was a very serious time.
 
<snip> There's a big difference between "I have a squeak in my door hinge on my new car, and I'm pissed", and "My wife was just killed by air-bag shrapnel in my new car", and "I want to be able to earn a living wage and get health care for my family", and "I think we should get longer breaks and a Keurig machine in every break-room". Unfortunately, people don't necessarily "discriminate" between which ball they choose to pick up and run with.

True, there is a lot of chaff to separate from the wheat but watching huge company after huge company fail should put the fear into them to at least go out and shop their own stores and strike up a conversation with the workers. Our local Target has employees that will literally walk into you if you don't get out of their way going down the rows. At the Target in the next town they will go out of their way to ask you if you need anything.

Another company I worked for had one of their business fail and had to sell it off. Once that happened there was a big scare as they went through the rest of the businesses and looked at how things were running and where the money was going. I was shocked, I would have assumed they'd be doing that on a regular basis. And since all the businesses were very similar how did they not compare everything about them on a regularly and have meetings where ideas and methods were shared between them as to what worked and didn't work for increasing sales?

I try to always fill out any surveys they have if I get really good service anywhere. I don't really bother with negative feedback as I figure they get a lot of it and much of it is probably over silly things so mine will end up grouped with those. If it really stands out I may give them some feedback. I did email Home Depot after a visit there where every employee I encountered was looking at their phone the entire time I was there. The person at the self check out did look up long enough to go "thanks" as I left.
 
They killed one of the big brands - I grew up with my Daddie's Craftsman tools
- Sears offshored them and turned the quality to junk.
They killed the car shops when they ruined Diehard batteries.
With no tool and no batteries, I had no need to go there anymore!
Exactly, what else was Sears good for other than maybe finding a pair of Levi's the right size that JC Penney's was out of?
 
I worked at Sears for 10yrs. up until 20yrs. ago. Boy I could tell you stories. Most of that time was in the automotive department. The wheels on the cart were getting wobbly back then. We started loosing business there when cars began going to electronics and they refused to invest in diagnostic equipment. One of their failings was management would not listen to ideas from anyone below their pay grade. Retail wise they let the competition beat them on prices unless they put something on sale. Who wants to wait for the three week sale cycle when when they can go down the road and get it today. I recently bought an upright freezer from Home Depot. The same one that was $100 more at Sears. I agree with whoever said "Suicide by Management".
 
I heard a news headline this morning talking about Sears being a victim of the internet. What a lazy way for the people to say "It isn't our fault"

Let's look back at Sears problems beyond the internet.

They bought Lands End for $1,900,000,000.00. Lands End was a company with a reputation for quality goods at much higher prices than Sears sold items for. Sears then dedicated large portions of their stores to Lands End; even making you buy the items from special Lands End checkout areas. Sears then went to their own suppliers to have them make the Lands End items at greatly reduced costs and lower quality but still charged the higher prices. They killed the reputation of Lands End all because some geniuses at Sears thought that Lands End was stupid for paying for quality products. But they still had the expense of changing the stores and lost space from their regular products and Sears customers had sticker shock at the prices of the Lands End items.

They cut a deal with the Kardashians for a clothing line and again designated a big chunk of their store for just that merchandise. All with the hope of proving that "You can't dress trashy till you spend a lot of money". Turns out fans of the Kardashians don't tend to shop at Sears and bad clothing styles didn't bring them into the store. It ended up being a second instance of alienating their regular customers.

I can see that they needed to improve their image. A lot of people that would have no problem saying "I bought it at Walmart" likely wouldn't admit to shopping at Sears. But come on, who in their right mind thought either of those two things would improve their image?
Maybe a little thought should have been given to actually getting some name brand shoes and other similar items into the stores.

They then took a statistic that said 70% of people that were members of their rewards program visit the store frequently to mean that everyone that they get to join their program will automatically start visiting their stores more often. They didn't even think for a second that the statistic was the other way around and that people who visited their stores frequently tended to be members of the rewards program. So they went militant on getting people to join. They would actually berate customers for not joining the rewards program. Stopping the checkout process to just stand and stare at the customer with statements like: "I just don't understand why you don't want to save money"

I'm sure some consultants told them that piling stuff in the middle of the isles would increase their sales and I'm guessing they did sell some of the piled up items. The problem is if you make it difficult to walk through a store I will just stop walking through it. Then there is no chance of finding things to buy. Even if I do walk through the store if I have to pay attention to winding my way through piles of junk and salespeople standing around then I'm not looking to the side where the real merchandise they want to sell is. That completely cuts down on spur of the moment purchases.

They tried to copy Amazon's marketplace with sears.com by adding multiple other vendors but it just ended up being a confusing mish-mash of merchandise from questionable sources. Then they wouldn't give you the Sears online price in the store unless you ordered it for pick-up. A recent purchase at a local store that was closing during its final 7 days ended up being 20% higher than if I'd ordered it online and picked it up at a store that wasn't closing. What genius doesn't think it is a good idea if a customer finds something on their site but still comes into the store to purchase it where they might find more things to buy.

Sears wasn't killed by the internet; Sears drove people to the internet.

Nice writing. Sears lost me when they stopped selling Peanuts and Pistachios. No one could walk past that.
 
So as they go into liquidation those shirt shelves might be bought and used as LP shelves. I'm looking into some 6 foot tall glass disp1ay cases for all my science fiction models.

They want too much and i as unable to talk them down. Pretty sure they were recycled.
 
Without pointing fingers at questionable business decisions, it's hard to see any retail business compete these days. Granted, Sears was the king of the "big box stores" and they had it covered long before Wallyworld came along. Times have changed, we want cheap and disposable. Sears used to stand for quality, or at least durable. Totally out of fashion for the masses anymore.
 
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