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Sears's History Predicts Almost Everything Amazon's Doing
- reacharavindh 9y agoThe Adblocker blocker made me block the article and read something else.
- mfoy_ 9y agoJust like complaining about paywalls, complaining about adblocker-blockers is pretty pointless. Relevant C&H: http://explosm.net/comics/4729/ http://explosm.net/comics/4729/ Except instead of $1, they just want to be able to display ads.
- ashark 9y agoIf we must use that analogy, it's more like they answer "yes!" to "are they free?" but then a stalker follows you with binoculars, a camera, and a notebook for months because you took the cupcake, and if you show up with private security guards and ask for a cupcake they say they're free but only for people without private security because they want to have a stalker follow you around, which is obviously a weird and concerning thing for them to require and would tend to make one turn them down for being such creepy/threatening weirdos, and then tell other people that they're creepy/threatening weirdos so those others don't take their cupcakes and get followed around by a stalker as a result. It would also tend to make one hope the business model of being creepy weirdos is outlawed or otherwise destroyed.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoBut for some reason comments complaining about paywalls never get down-voted to grey.
- michaelt 9y agoI read an interesting forum post about Sears a few years back [1] TLDR: In 1985 Sears had vast mail order experience, co-founded an ISP (Prodigy), and had their own credit cards (Discover). All the components they'd need to dominate online retail. In 1993 they closed their mail order division. In 1995, Amazon launched. [1] http://www.metafilter.com/62394/The-Record-Industrys-Decline#1742245 http://www.metafilter.com/62394/The-Record-Industrys-Decline...
- xigency 9y agoI've read this point in a few places as well, but it doesn't really explain why they closed the catalog. Here I found an article from 1993 describing the move: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/26/business/sears-eliminating-its-catalogues-and-50000-jobs.html?mcubz=0 http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/26/business/sears-eliminating... This was the same time the company was leaving the Sears Tower. I think Sears faced a number of bad decisions over the decades leading to its early and later decline. Edit: Here is another article of the decision to cut the catalog - http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-01-26/news/9303172240_1_catalog-sears-auto-centers-big-book http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-01-26/news/930317224... It ends with the extremely ironic, "Sears on Monday wasn't interested in the past. It was positioning itself for the future."
- CydeWeys 9y agoWhy was leaving the Sears Tower a bad decision? What ramifications did it have?
- xigency 9y agoBuilding the Sears Tower was a bad idea. It ended up being a waste of money. Reading those articles it's clear that they were hemorrhaging money in 1990, compared to being profitable 20 years earlier.
- adventured 9y agoThey weren't hemorrhaging money at the time. Sears was profitable from 1980 to 1990, including fiscal 1990. 1990 is approximately the year when their earnings started to plunge toward losses. Earnings nearly got cut in half from 1989 vs 1990. At the time Walmart was still the #2 retailer, having just passed Kmart (for the curious, Walmart went from $32b in sales for 1990 to $485b by 2015; now Walmart is in a position where their earnings are falling and sales growth has been flat for years as Amazon starts to eat into them). This NY Times article from January 1991, describes the atmosphere well: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/28/business/big-change-is-expected-for-sears.html http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/28/business/big-change-is-exp...
- gorpomon 9y agoI often wonder what the story of Sears means for Amazon. I think at first, my thinking was that what did Sears in was not noticing the shift to e-commerce like Amazon did, and that to unseat Amazon, it will take another shift that an upstart sees that they don't. Then however, I start to wonder what shift might that be? Voice assistants, it seems like Amazon is leading the way, not that it will be taken by surprise. Logistics? Seems like they are a logistics first company. I guess I can't see the future though, like everyone else. I think for now I've settled on that the similarities are just that, similarities. Two things with some common history don't have to share the same fate. And looking for lessons in the history of one to apply to the other might be more of a false equivocation than we think. The times are fundamentally different, so perhaps though their stories echo each other, they are fundamentally different companies.
- mercer 9y agoYeah, I'm usually pretty quick with my upvote, even for articles that appear interesting at a glance, or articles that might spark interesting conversation, but I didn't do upvote this article. While I found it okay to read, the comparison between Amazon and Sears, fundamental to the whole thing, just feels like too much of a stretch to me. I think the comparison between car insurance and AWS was the breaking point for me.
- germinalphrase 9y agoProbably reliant on a fundamentally new platform(?). If we do end up with a rich AR world (a la Rainbows End), perhaps it will simply be an instant purchase based on lived context (e.g. Run out of something? Instant order. See something you like? Instant order.) That said, seems surprising that Amazon would miss that boat.
- angus-prune 9y agoI think you're right that Amazon won't miss this boat (but someone might be able to do it better than them). Amazon are already looking at printing instant-order dash buttons directly on products. I think the things that could threaten amazon's core business one day are: 3D printing. Whether the designs are free or paid for, its not a given that you'll buy the designs through Amazon. You might get the filament through them, but that's a fraction of the value they currently capture. Sharing, rental and communal ownership. Many of the things I buy from Amazon are never used full time. Whether at a local or national scale the norm could shift to communal resources rather than private ownership. Particularly as city apartments get smaller and have less storage. Direct ordering from China or other producers. Amazon have already lost this to alibaba. If we started ordering more everyday things direct, this could hit Amazon. Full AI Ascension. If we completely leave corporeal existence behind, it would put a dent in Amazon's business. Although, on second thoughts, we'd probably be running on AWS...
- rando444 9y agoSo is Amazon going to start getting into the housing buisness next? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home
- shidoshi 9y agoMuji in Japan does this. I would not be surprised if there's at least one 6-pager in Day One on housing in some shape or form.
- astrange 9y agoI was impressed to see how small a space Panasonic/PanaHome could build you a house or apartment tower in Japan. The apartment itself was made from nice material and pretty livable for being 50 ft^2. (Meanwhile in California, no way to escape beige carpet and 80F interiors with no A/C.)
- c3534l 9y agoI think it's funny the author referred to Sears' "everything store" was a "genius marketing move." Back in the day, they used to call those "general stores."
- justherefortart 9y agoYou could buy a home from Sears, you don't do that at a "general store".
- shimon 9y agoThis does sound ironic, but the scope of what Sears Roebuck offered was staggeringly greater than what you could get at any brick and mortar store. For a time you could even order a house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home
- c3534l 9y agoWell of course they did. We live in an industrialized society and they had an industrial offering of products. Actually, we live in a digitized society now and that's where Amazon stepped in. General stores existed in an era before branding, before supermarkets, before everything was made in a factories halfway across the planet.
- wavefunction 9y ago>Well of course they did. Somebody has to do initially remarkable things first. You act like it's no big deal!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- shimon 9y agoYeah - it's hard to imagine a world where rail shipment, parcel delivery, industrial warehousing, and efficient processing of mail orders are recent technological developments. But they were! And bringing tech into the domain of consumer retail has been profitable throughout history.
- crispyambulance 9y agoSear's, unfortunately, has become a sad shadow of its former self. In particular their CEO, Eddie Lampert, has enjoyed a nightmarish rein-of-power based on "Ayn Rand" principles that have been driving the once mighty store into the ground. (see http://www.businessinsider.com/how-eddie-lampert-set-sears-up-to-fail-2017-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-eddie-lampert-set-sears-u... and http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/column-this-is-what-happens-when-you-take-ayn-rand-seriously/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/column-this-is-what...)
- wavefunction 9y agoThanks for those excellent links. The descriptions of applied Randian Objectivism in Honduras are particularly... noteworthy: "The greatest examples of libertarianism in action are the hundreds of men, women and children standing alongside the roads all over Honduras. The government won’t fix the roads, so these desperate entrepreneurs fill in potholes with shovels of dirt or debris. They then stand next to the filled-in pothole soliciting tips from grateful motorists. That is the wet dream of libertarian private sector innovation."
- DINKDINK 9y ago>They then stand next to the filled-in pothole soliciting tips from grateful motorists. That is the wet dream of libertarian private sector innovation. Probably a more apt 'libertarian utopia' would be an entrepreneur buying land from consenting property owners (Converse to the government forcing people to move and not respecting their property rights via eminent domain), build a road (via a decentralized, competitive bidding process rather than a single point of economic co-option opportunity such as a state) and then charging access to the road (with guards in low-tech community, Toll-payment box in medium tech community, and a Bitcoin Lightning-Network payment channel in a high-tech society.) ;]
- sjg007 9y agoRoads are built by competitive bids.
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- ArchReaper 9y agoTitle should be "Sears' History Predicts Almost Everything Amazon's Doing" (or "The History of Sears Predicts Nearly Everything Amazon Is Doing" - the actual title of the article)
- sandover 9y agoI'm ready for my Amazon house kit!
- zeep 9y agoGetting close: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Cottage-Company-10x16-GPM-WPNK/dp/B003VNXX2K/ https://www.amazon.com/Little-Cottage-Company-10x16-GPM-WPNK...
- SubZero 9y agoI think this article ignores some of the other tenants of Amazon's corporate strategy. While Amazon is an online shopping behemoth, they are also expanding in to AI, web hosting and Platforms as a Service, financing, robotics, logistics, and lord knows what else. I think if you want a more accurate foil to Amazon, you should look at Alibaba.
- flyinghamster 9y agoDon't forget the real estate shenanigans. 1. Slowly but steadily run the retail operation into the ground. 2. Sell the real estate to your own REIT, and use the proceeds to prop up the stores - but now they're on the hook for rent. 3. Continue running the stores into the ground, and when they inevitably can't make the rent, shut them down. Your REIT now holds a lot of prime real estate that can be sold or rented to others.
- btian 9y agoWhy would they do that? If they want to run stores into the ground, they would have closed them all by now.
- jedberg 9y agoIt cuts the shareholders out. It leaves the valuable part of the business in the hands of a select few, and leaves the crappy part of the business in the hands of the shareholders.
- turk184 9y agoThat was a keen ploy to buoy the stock for a couple more years so the insiders could get out of their holdings. It was like a rear-guard holding action. It takes time to unwind large positions, then leave Mom & Pop holding the bag. It's an age-old Wall Street tradition.
- polskibus 9y agoThe difference is that nowadays, information and insight is propagated and digested much faster than it was in the 80s. It is much easier for Amazon to detect and react to threats than Sears was ever able to. In my opinion, there's a threshold of information absorption and digestion, beyond which a corporation can be sure to survive no matter what, as long as it doesn't cease to adapt.
- mgkimsal 9y ago> It is much easier for Amazon to detect and react to threats than Sears was ever able to. True, but the competition of the 70s and 80s was also playing at the same speed. Sears was able to react to 80s-paced threats just as fast as anyone else could. It might actually not be 'easier' today for anyone to keep up with and defend against as many potential threats as there may be today. Amazon, however, is mostly in a league of their own, and generally are the threat to other companies, not so much the other way around.
- vs2 9y agoYeah SWS (sears web services) was revolutionary in its day
- greggarious 9y agoSo does this mean Amazon will soon provide a section of the mall that always have parking close to the doors? ;) (In all seriousness, it does not bode well for Sears that my local mall, which seems to not be dead at all, always has spots 1-2 cars away from the doors outside Sears while people circle the lot out front)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- TheRealPomax 9y agoUnfortunately, The Atlantic doesn't work on the free web, where users control who gets to load content on _their_ computer, rather than having the website dictate who to sell out to before seeing the text requested. Is there a different source?
- jedberg 9y agoRead their ads, pay them money, or don't read their content. Seems like a pretty fair trade off.
- viridian 9y agoThe Atlantic doesn't actually provide the second as an option without interacting with JS. There's no way for someone to subscribe if they are running ghostery+noscript like I am.
- TheRealPomax 9y agoIt absolute is, but linking to "locked content when viewed with a normal browser that has sane security addons installed" on hacker news is always bad form.
- gotorazor 9y agoYou work at Mozilla, right? Use Pocket. Or, you can use CURL. Then, view it offline if you don't want to see ads that it links to. Or, turn on no javascript/images in your browser. Or, use a text base browser. I just tried it. It works great. Same content as what I saw on the open internet -- the one with ads.
- TheRealPomax 9y agoYou mean reader mode? I have no idea how pocket would solve this problem.
- Treblemaker 9y ago1) "In 1969, Sears, Roebuck & Co. was the largest retailer in the world, with about 350,000 employees. Sears executives decided to consolidate the thousands of employees in offices distributed throughout the Chicago area into one building on the western edge of Chicago's Loop. " [1] 2) "... Parkinson’s Law of Buildings. This he defines as follows; ‘a perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse… Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay. During a period of exciting discovery or progress there is not time to plan the perfect headquarters. The time for that comes later, when all the important work has been done.’" [2] 3) "Amazon HQ2 will be Amazon’s second headquarters in North America. " [3] Now this is not the beginning. It is not even the end of the beginning. But it is, perhaps, the beginning of the end. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Tower [2] https://johannesdeberlaymont.com/2016/06/10/c-northcote-parkinsons-law-of-buildings/ https://johannesdeberlaymont.com/2016/06/10/c-northcote-park... [3] https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17044620011 https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17044620011
- sdrothrock 9y ago> 2) "... Parkinson’s Law of Buildings. This he defines as follows; ‘a perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse… Perfection of planning is a symptom of decay. During a period of exciting discovery or progress there is not time to plan the perfect headquarters. The time for that comes later, when all the important work has been done.’" [2] It seems like this would apply more to Apple's campus than Amazon... but I haven't really seen anyone suggesting that.
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- c517402 9y agoMy Dad told me that the house he grew up in was ordered from Sears. They had to build a foundation to set it on, but everything else was shipped to them from Sears and they assembled it. That was about 90 years ago. I wonder if Amazon will start selling prefabricated houses? Go to Amazon and pick out the features you want in your converted shipping container. Pour a slab to set it on. Free 2nd-day delivery with Prime.
- turk184 9y agoI have a hard time imagining how crappy those houses must have been given how bad today's manufactured homes are and the companies that make them are really trying hard. Plus, the "house" you describe was just the outer shell of a house, Sears didn't ship the plumbing, toilet (assumably), fixtures, cabinets, etc. That all had to be built or otherwise accounted for. I lost track of what your point was. No, I don't think Amazon is getting into the low end of the housing market. I'd sooner imagine those kinds of houses getting "3D printed" out of concrete or something along those lines.
- Icedcool 9y agoThis is an interesting article, but it doesn't talk about the pitfalls of sears, or the failings that have lead sears to where they are at now.