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They just picked up a guy from Amazon and are building their data science team. Should be interesting to read the same article next year. Edit: I think this is

by fixxer 11y ago

They just picked up a guy from Amazon and are building their data science team. Should be interesting to read the same article next year. Edit: I think this is going to have zero impact on their biz. I got a recruiter solicitation earlier this week and started laughing. Additionally, "PhD is a firm requirement."

ninjakeyboard 11y ago
Implementing Hadoop isn't going to fix their position in the market. http://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/why-sears-is-going-all-in-on-hadoop/d/d-id/1107038 http://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/why-sears-is-go...?
ajross 11y ago
The time to have done that was 15 years ago. At this point it's too late. Really, Sears was the Amazon of the past century. They built an empire on selling "everything" to anyone they could reach with a package. They drove innovation in shipping and inventory management to the extent that virtually no one could even try to compete with them during their dominance. And then they sat on their comfy chairs as this "Bezos" guy with nothing but some computers and investment cash walked through and did everything they were doing better. At this point, what does Sears have that even counts as an asset in that competition? Amazon has bigger and more warehouses and a ten year lead in optimization of their supply chain.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  Agreed, except I would extend those numbers to 20 years. I loved receiving the sears catalog as a kid, especially the xmas edition. I bet a lot of it was tracked through computers even in that day.
Zigurd 11y ago
It's decades too late. Sears owned "clicks and mortar" since before there were clicks. How do you fuck that up? It takes a perversely incompetent bordering on sociopathic management to turn such dominance into terminal decline.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Stupid MBA, stats and excel driven management is capable of destroying everything. Sears literally shuttered the catalog operation right before ecommerce was a thing. They literally had a 100 year lead on the market previously and had moderate success with selling stuff on pre-Internet online networks like Prodigy.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    >Sears literally shuttered the catalog operation right before ecommerce was a thing. The catalog operation hadn't been a big part of sears in a long time--maybe decades. Amazon's success didn't result from having the bide idea to be "the everything store." It was executing on it--and, by the way, making losses along the way that shareholders would likely never have tolerated in a mature retail chain. I'm not convinced that Sears had any particular unfair advantage as a retailer to dominate in ecommerce just because they had once been known for their catalog. >stats and excel driven management I think you can be pretty certain that any successful retailer is highly number-driven from picking sites to handling supply chains.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      I'm not suggesting that it's advisable to run a Fortune 50 company by gut instinct. I am suggesting that if you owned a major retailer with an established catalog model, plus a network of stores and storefronts to deliver catalog orders, PLUS a cash cow insurance company (Allstate), PLUS a broadly established payment network (Discover) in 1993, divesting yourself of those assets at that time is a particularly untimely thing to do. It's also reflective of not seeing the big picture.
    - Zigurd 11y ago
      You woud be surprised by how bad K-Mart, which merged with Sears, is at keeping things you need in stock. If you want to buy something commonplace, like a particular model of Crock Pot or a particular Corelle dish, odds are about10% that the nearest K-Mart has it vs about 90% that Wal Mart has it. Clearly there is still a big difference enabled by Wal Mart's IT and business processes. Especially since once the odds of wasting time and a car trip go up just a bit the backstop is to order the thing from Amazon.
cableshaft 11y ago
The recruiting company they use for hiring people is a joke. The guy who contacted me I could barely understand, got angry when I had to ask him to repeat himself, and didn't confirm that he had set up an interview for me until the NIGHT BEFORE at 7:30pm (and I was working three hours away, so I was going to have to take a sick day at my job in order to go).
- fixxer 11y ago
  What got me was the PhD requirement. I've worked for some big names in a range of industries and to think that they only had "PhD preferred" while Sears is requiring for a large team (~15 people) strikes me as a bit odd (and indicative that they don't know wtf they are doing in this space either). Full disclosure: I'm a PhD dropout. Hasn't hurt my salary; probably has helped since I got 3+ years work experience by dropping after quals.
MrTonyD 11y ago
I do consulting - and I spent some time with the Sears data science team. Don't get your hopes up. A broken culture is hard to change. They seemed pretty "downtrodden". (I should add that they were all good people. I would work with any of them again.)
- fixxer 11y ago
  I know a few people there and no, my hopes are nonexistent. I'm honestly amazed they still exist.
- gogopuppygogo 11y ago
  I know a few people on the management team. It's basically a sinking ship with no one trying anymore. They'd do better spinning the brand into it's own entity under a licensing agreement with a competent ecommerce company like Newegg. In fact that should probably be their strategy if they want to survive. One entity for the real estate, one for the brick and mortar then another for online commerce. Then have Newegg acquire the majority share of their ecommerce business and rebrand as Sears. It'd be like lightning growth hit them since the Newegg guys know what they are doing in online commerce. But that'd never happen.

by fixxer 11y ago

ninjakeyboard 11y ago

Implementing Hadoop isn't going to fix their position in the market. http://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/why-sears-is-going-all-in-on-hadoop/d/d-id/1107038 http://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/why-sears-is-go...?

ajross 11y ago

The time to have done that was 15 years ago. At this point it's too late. Really, Sears was the Amazon of the past century. They built an empire on selling "everything" to anyone they could reach with a package. They drove innovation in shipping and inventory management to the extent that virtually no one could even try to compete with them during their dominance. And then they sat on their comfy chairs as this "Bezos" guy with nothing but some computers and investment cash walked through and did everything they were doing better. At this point, what does Sears have that even counts as an asset in that competition? Amazon has bigger and more warehouses and a ten year lead in optimization of their supply chain.

mixmastamyk 11y ago
Agreed, except I would extend those numbers to 20 years. I loved receiving the sears catalog as a kid, especially the xmas edition. I bet a lot of it was tracked through computers even in that day.

Zigurd 11y ago

It's decades too late. Sears owned "clicks and mortar" since before there were clicks. How do you fuck that up? It takes a perversely incompetent bordering on sociopathic management to turn such dominance into terminal decline.

Spooky23 11y ago
Stupid MBA, stats and excel driven management is capable of destroying everything. Sears literally shuttered the catalog operation right before ecommerce was a thing. They literally had a 100 year lead on the market previously and had moderate success with selling stuff on pre-Internet online networks like Prodigy.
- ghaff 11y ago
  >Sears literally shuttered the catalog operation right before ecommerce was a thing. The catalog operation hadn't been a big part of sears in a long time--maybe decades. Amazon's success didn't result from having the bide idea to be "the everything store." It was executing on it--and, by the way, making losses along the way that shareholders would likely never have tolerated in a mature retail chain. I'm not convinced that Sears had any particular unfair advantage as a retailer to dominate in ecommerce just because they had once been known for their catalog. >stats and excel driven management I think you can be pretty certain that any successful retailer is highly number-driven from picking sites to handling supply chains.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    I'm not suggesting that it's advisable to run a Fortune 50 company by gut instinct. I am suggesting that if you owned a major retailer with an established catalog model, plus a network of stores and storefronts to deliver catalog orders, PLUS a cash cow insurance company (Allstate), PLUS a broadly established payment network (Discover) in 1993, divesting yourself of those assets at that time is a particularly untimely thing to do. It's also reflective of not seeing the big picture.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    You woud be surprised by how bad K-Mart, which merged with Sears, is at keeping things you need in stock. If you want to buy something commonplace, like a particular model of Crock Pot or a particular Corelle dish, odds are about10% that the nearest K-Mart has it vs about 90% that Wal Mart has it. Clearly there is still a big difference enabled by Wal Mart's IT and business processes. Especially since once the odds of wasting time and a car trip go up just a bit the backstop is to order the thing from Amazon.

cableshaft 11y ago

The recruiting company they use for hiring people is a joke. The guy who contacted me I could barely understand, got angry when I had to ask him to repeat himself, and didn't confirm that he had set up an interview for me until the NIGHT BEFORE at 7:30pm (and I was working three hours away, so I was going to have to take a sick day at my job in order to go).

fixxer 11y ago
What got me was the PhD requirement. I've worked for some big names in a range of industries and to think that they only had "PhD preferred" while Sears is requiring for a large team (~15 people) strikes me as a bit odd (and indicative that they don't know wtf they are doing in this space either). Full disclosure: I'm a PhD dropout. Hasn't hurt my salary; probably has helped since I got 3+ years work experience by dropping after quals.

MrTonyD 11y ago

I do consulting - and I spent some time with the Sears data science team. Don't get your hopes up. A broken culture is hard to change. They seemed pretty "downtrodden". (I should add that they were all good people. I would work with any of them again.)

fixxer 11y ago
I know a few people there and no, my hopes are nonexistent. I'm honestly amazed they still exist.
gogopuppygogo 11y ago
I know a few people on the management team. It's basically a sinking ship with no one trying anymore. They'd do better spinning the brand into it's own entity under a licensing agreement with a competent ecommerce company like Newegg. In fact that should probably be their strategy if they want to survive. One entity for the real estate, one for the brick and mortar then another for online commerce. Then have Newegg acquire the majority share of their ecommerce business and rebrand as Sears. It'd be like lightning growth hit them since the Newegg guys know what they are doing in online commerce. But that'd never happen.