Sears on verge of fading away after closing more than 3,000 stores

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

There was a time when Sears was as big as it gets in the retail game in the United States, and having the store’s catalog in hand … well, 30 years ago that was about like hoping on Amazon or any of today’s modern online mega retailers.

But times have been changing fast for Sears.

Earlier this year, the one-time giant was down to just eight locations, and now eight is down to five, according to a new report from The Street.

To put that in perspective: Sears once had 3,500 stores, making it the largest retailer in the country.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/iconic-retailer-verge-fading-away-101539914.html

That's what vulture capitalists do to companies.

[hlthe2b]

1. I find it incredibly sad.

Those who think it is an arcane and outdated notion to have physical stores anymore better wake up.. Buying on the internet via the megalopolis, Amazon is not a given.

Not to mention, venture capitalists (vulture capitalists) are soon buying every damned house they can find, leaving normal people out in the cold and when they buy up all the rentals, we really WILL be out in the cold.

[UpInArms]

2. I loved the sears catalog

And they were such an imbedded part of history

Vintage Mail Order Houses That Came from Sears Catalogs, 1910s-1940s



In the early 20th century, companies such as Sears, Roebuck and Co., sold tens of thousands of mail-order kit houses.

Available in a variety of styles and at a range of price points, these DIY kit houses would arrive via railroad boxcar as precut and then the buyer would have them assembled.

From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company’s count. Sears Modern Homes were purchased primarily by customers in East Coast and Midwest states, but have been located as far south as Florida, as far west as California, and as far north as Alaska and Canada.

[msongs]

11. one bathrm in house, yikes!

[Keepthesoulalive]

3. Sears was a victim of bad management

Before the vultures started picking at its carcass.

[moniss]

4. I worked for Sears when I was

in high school. Great time and I loved all the different specialty catalogues in addition to the "big catalogue". I clearly remember how excited everybody was to get the Christmas catalogue every year.

[Vinca]

5. When we were first married (dinosaurs still roamed the earth), Sears was where you went to get everything.

I remember paying off appliances for a few bucks a month on a Sears card. The first place you ever looked for anything was Sears. Their downfall started when the ended their Sears credit cards. Suddenly, brand loyal people were forced to get VISA or MC and started to look around. They must have had the dumbest management on the planet. The stores started closing soon after.

[MichMan]

6. The acquisition by K Mart was not a very good idea

The K Mart CEO made some very poor decisions. Seldom when two struggling entities merge does it end up being the saving grace.

Never in my lifetime would I have ever guessed that Sears and General Motors would have gone bankrupt.

[bucolic_frolic]

7. Was Kmart sandbagged with a goal in mind?

https://www.reddit.com/r/kmart/comments/1f4zgw9/my_opinion_on_the_demise_of_kmart/

I have often asked myself.. what went wrong? This question, for me, this question goes all the way back to the 2002 bankruptcy filing. I was happily employed at Kmart when that bankruptcy happened. I remember thinking it all started with Chuck Conaway, the CEO at the time, brining Mark Schwartz on board. That, in my opinion, is the point in time where Kmart began falling apart.

Schwartz had been a Walmart executive for 16 years when Conaway brought him on board. He immediately instituted those ridiculous price wobblers as part of the "Bluelight Always" program, and those things were a complete eyesore. The customers hated them. We hated them. They were always in the way, and would often fall off the peg hooks and shelves when stocking merchandise or even when customers were going through items. I found out later on that Walmart had previously had a program that utilized similar wobblers, and that was at a point when Schwartz was still with Walmart.
_______________________________
https://www.carrcommunications.com/clips/kmart-published2001-12.pdf This is an ultimate in depth look at Kmart, 2001, when Conaway was appointed.

_______________________________

Eddie Lampert was chairman and CEO of ESL Investments. It was HQ in Greenwich, CT.

Conaway was COO of CVS immediately before he joined Kmart. His home base was Woonsocket, RI.

[UpInArms]

17. General Motors

Rick Wagoner

The General Motors CEO who killed the original electric car is now in the electric car business

Rick Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors who resigned under pressure in 2009, is back in the car business, joining the board of ChargePoint, which maintains a network of charging stations for electric cars.
This would normally be an uneventful appointment—industry veterans often advise promising startups—save for Wagoner’s history as the executive who killed GM’s first electric car.

In 1996, GM rolled out the EV1, an innovative battery-powered car. It was introduced in response to a 1990 California law requiring car makers to produce zero-emissions vehicles in order to continue selling conventional automobiles in the state. GM produced 1,117 EV1s, but made them only available for lease.

While limited by their small size (just two seats) and a range of less than 100 miles, the car was popular among environmentalists and celebrities like Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson.

As GM was promoting its foray into renewable vehicles, it was simultaneously lobbying to weaken the California law. When the auto industry succeeded in watering down the regulations in 2001, GM, under Wagoner, soon after terminated the EV1, citing limited demand.

But GM just didn’t stop making the cars, however; it recalled the vehicles and destroyed them, over the objections of their drivers, who offered to buy them from GM. In the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?, released in 2006, director Chris Paine contends GM sabotaged the EV1, fearing electric vehicles would undermine its conventional business. GM denied that accusation.

[Kaleva]

8. Some of us may remember using a outhouse with a Sears catalog

[bucolic_frolic]

9. Sear grew into a marketing suburban powerhouse after WWII

It really didn't make anything. The products, American state of the art, were made for Sears and sold through their stores with various brand names. That entire system has melted down with foreign competition.

[Greg_In_SF]

10. Sears should have been looking

at online shopping back when Amazon only sold books. They let themselves get passed by.

[misanthrope]

15. Yep, they had everything in place to give them a leg up on it

They suffered from a lack of vision.

[Aristus]

12. Wasn't it Sears that had the Ayn Rand-worshipping dickhead CEO

who forced the various divisions of the company to compete with each other, instead of marshalling those divisions to compete with other companies?

One wonders where the board of directors digs up these fuckbrains. One would think a complete inability to run a major corporation would be a disqualifying factor in the hiring process.

[JI7]

14. That's makes no business sense to me

[Aristus]

19. Or to anyone else with a functioning brain.

n/t

[JI7]

13. Didn't they go out of business a few years ago ?

[B.See]

16. I sure thought so. News to me.

But then again I I buried them way down deep on my s-list decades ago.

[SWBTATTReg]

18. Sears did themselves in. I recalled when I worked for JCPenney's, that Sears, the opposite anchor store in our local

mall, was already experiencing the thralls of dying slowly. They dominated back then (in 70s), but that was when Walmart's, and other store chains started going. Sears was already seen as arrogant, didn't have a good attitude. Kind of did themselves in.

[Norbert]

20. The Sears Christmas Catelog was the boomers Google

I would page through it from the time it arrived to December 24th. For a kid like me, this was the motherlode.

[Danmel]

21. Sears holiday portraits were a tradition

Sad.