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Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, che

Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check. They threw it all away, ending catalog operations in 1993 a year before Amazon.com opened in 1994. They owned part of Prodigy in 1984! Yet somehow thought it was a better move to expand into bigger box retail. Anyone remember The Great Indoors from 1997? It was going to have huge potential. What a waste.

Tsubasachan 8y ago
Those who are first will later be last for the times are changing... Is there anything people don't buy online these days?
- ghaff 8y ago
  >Is there anything people don't buy online these days? Tons of stuff. [ADDED: e-commerce is 10% of retail in the US.] Ironically, especially in the categories that Sears was best known for selling. Major appliances, lawn equipment, home improvement generally, (to a lesser degree) clothes.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    All my major appliances were bought online. Amazon delivers home improvement services now (via partners) in some markets. These may be things that move online slower, but they to move.
  - tjr 8y ago
    A few years ago, the ancient (circa 1998) microwave in my house failed. I merrily trundled off to the local appliance store and bought a new one, and had them install it. Seemed to work, but eventually I realized it must be drawing too much electricity. Like something out of Green Acres, I had to limit what lights and other appliances were on in the kitchen if I wanted to use the microwave. I had an electrician come out and look at it. He opined that, due to the way the house was wired, it would be a pretty major undertaking to fix the underlying problem. So I just went along with turning lights off when I cooked. I finally sold the house, but couldn't pass this problem off to the next owner. The only place I could find that still sold a microwave so old and feeble that it wouldn't overload my circuit, was Sears. Thank you Sears! Hopefully I will never need that again, but I am thankful for your help.
    - samfriedman 8y ago
      I'm curious, do you remember what the difference in power draw between the old and new microwaves was?
      - deleted 8y ago
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      - rhino369 8y ago
        Standard microwaves are 1100 watt, but there are also 700 watt microwaves. Those extra 3 amps must have set off his circuit breaker.
        tjr 8y ago
        Sounds about right. Also, this was an above-stove unit, limiting possible choices. Probably could have more easily found a standalone unit that worked.
        jandrese 8y ago
        Especially if it was an odd size. The downside to built-in microwaves is that it took many years for the industry to decide on what sizes they would support, so older installs are always a crapshoot. If you have a weird one it can be hell finding an appropriate microwave. My parents had a very old microwave (1980s era) built into their house that was much bigger than almost everything on the market today, finding a replacement for it was impossible, they ended up having to buy a smaller one and making a custom shim to fit it in the old cavity.
    - steelframe 8y ago
      > I finally sold the house, but couldn't pass this problem off to the next owner. As someone who's had his share of problems passed on to him when buying a house, I'd like to know (1) how the next owner found out about the problem and (2) how they managed to strong-arm you into fixing it.
- ams6110 8y ago
  There's a lot of stuff I don't buy online. Clothes -- I like to try them on first. Tools -- I like to see if they are well made and how they feel in my hand. Photos on a website don't provide this. Food -- I want to check produce and meat before I buy it. And it's easier to stop at shops I'm passing on my way home anyway. Household supplies -- I don't want to deal with disposing of shipping boxes, styrofoam peanuts and air pillow packs for stuff I can just grab off the shelf at the local Target. Big-ticket items (appliances, furniture, etc) -- I want a local business standing behind the product and the warranty. Stuff I buy online are typically things like books (no local bookstores anymore) and odd items that are hard to find locally (like the mic/audio splitter cable my kid needed for his X-box controller).
  - excalibur 8y ago
    Pretty much in agreement here, although I do find it more convenient to buy appliances through the big box store's website than to go in person and spend an hour guiding an associate through the options in their arcane inventory system.
    - xnyan 8y ago
      Also you get to avoid most of the 99% profit-for-them "warranty" hard sell. I try not to hold it against the salesperson as I've done that kind of job and I know they don't have a choice but it's still incredibly annoying.
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    - kalleboo 8y ago
      For our last 2 appliances (fridge, washing machine) we went to the store and found last year's model on sale at a steep discount to anything online. Also managed to haggle a little.
- tracker1 8y ago
  Clothes are probably one of the bigger things. General grocery items, especially produce. Things that are a pain to return (large appliances). Things you usually need now (hardware/auto store parts). I will say, I try to never buy monitors online... I've just experienced too many that die prematurely and would rather have someplace I can take back to the same day. My current monitor is actually a 42" UHD TV. I had bought a monitor in that size (40") but it was DOA, and didn't want to wait the round-trip for a replacement. Not the first time I've had monitors die young either. At least they don't weigh over 70 pounds anymore.
- VBprogrammer 8y ago
  I know other comments are pointing out reasons this is not true but honestly it feels that way to me too. All of my Christmas presents this year were bought on Amazon and delivered direct to my family who live 400 miles away within a day of me ordering them. Even some of the categories of things other people have listed as things people don't buy online are things I do buy online. Tools for example, if I'm buying something to get a job done I'll pick up something from the catalogue type stores (Screwfix / Toolstation in the UK). On the other hand if I'm buying a decent tool to last I'll pick it out online, usually after reading and watching reviews, and then looking around to find the cheapest price for the exact model. I was buying a pair of trainers for my partners Christmas. She picked them out on a big department stores website. I went to the store and they didn't keep them in stock. I tried 3 other stores in one of the UKs largest shopping centres and they didn't have them in her size. I tried another shop in a different part of town which didn't have them and finally gave up and ordered them on Amazon. They arrived 2 days later (this only a week before Christmas).
mondo9000 8y ago
The other point is Sears Catalog was empowered by the railroads, then along comes the Internet and they miss the analogy.
- daotoad 8y ago
  The internet was billed as the "Information Super-Highway" not the "Information Super-Railroad". That's why they didn't see it.
Zigurd 8y ago
There was an enormous Sears near where I grew up. It always felt shabby and badly run. They had lost the recipe even then, when they still had the catalog business. I get the impression from Sears and other big companies that lose their way that they become the playgrounds of big management egos that want to leave a mark and get written about in business publications, whether or not their ideas work.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Same experience. Sears was an anchor tenant at the local mall for decades. In that time they never did a significant rehab. When they finally closed a few years ago, it was still like stepping into the 1970s to shop there.
- rhino369 8y ago
  My guess is that they got their lunch eaten by Wal-Mart and Target. Wal-Mart beat them on cost and margin. And you can't operate a mega-chain on premium customer service since the average customer shops on price or convenience. Department stores have been dying for a long time.
  - Zigurd 8y ago
    I should have made clear just how ancient I am. When I was a kid, it was still the heyday of department stores like Lytton, Goldblatt,and Marshall Field which had their own candy shop selling their own candies, and a department called "millinery." Some of these stores were notably stuffy and seemed to cater to my grandmother's generation. But they were still prosperous. I had never seen a Wal Mart.
  - spiralx 8y ago
    The dysfunctional Randian management model imposed by their CEO had more to do with their failure than any external woes: https://outline.com/dnb2UK https://outline.com/dnb2UK
tracker1 8y ago
I remember them being in the single best position to do what Amazon did half a decade before Amazon was even a real thing. Even if they got their catalog online, searchable with images, and call in to finalize their orders, they'd have been ahead of the game. They could well have done more optimizations with time... but they had no interest in the internet, and felt the web would be just another fad after Prodigy failed. I knew it was the beginning of the end for Sears when they shutdown their catalog division and call centers. Just as the internet was ramping up and mail order was going to become huge.
reaperducer 8y ago
Name recognition This can't be understated, and is something a lot of new companies don't understand. If people know your brand and trust your company, they will hand you money. Anecdata: My parents were massive Sears loyalists. When they bought an appliance, my father researched the various GE models, then bought the Kenmore version. When he wanted a video game console, he researched and decided he wanted an Atari 2600. Then he went out and bought the Sears Tele-Games version. Half of their house addition was built with Sears products. If Sears had a lumber yard, it would have been closer to 90%.
- ben1040 8y ago
  >If Sears had a lumber yard In a way, they did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home
  - 1123581321 8y ago
    I own one of these. It was built in 1935 and unlike Sears, it has a good chance of surviving another century because it’s made of solid brick. It’s a Craftsman-style Bungalow that apparently was build extra wide (or at least wider than other homes in our neighborhood), so the upper bedrooms are more spacious than it might appear from the outside.
  - i_feel_great 8y ago
    There are links at the bottom of the page to the catalogues. Looking at the 1908 catalogue - my goodness those houses are gorgeous. I wonder if there is some sort of design trademark on them. I would love to build a house like these in Australia.
- wvenable 8y ago
  And Sears, like Walmart now, was big enough that they could go to manufacturers and get special versions of products to makeup the "Kenmore" brand. I remember looking at fridges back in the day and the Kenmore version had just minor differences that made it slightly better than the 'same' model from the actual manufacturer. The difference between Walmart and Sears through is that Walmart pushes manufacturers to build the cheapest possible product so their versions are worse rather than better then the manufacturer's own branded products.
xigency 8y ago
I thought this as well until I heard a counter-point [0] which was very convincing. The reason Amazon is successful is not because you can shop online (from a catalog) and receive items in the mail. The reason Amazon is successful is because you can do those things and receive your items within two days. Before Prime existed, Amazon had very quick fulfillment, and after Prime two-day it became even better. The Sears catalog ended in 1993 but the Sears Wish Book continued to exist after that. In 1999 I remember ordering something from the Wish Book required 3 weeks to receive the item. If they didn't have the desire to improve that, then they would never have become Amazon. > If anything, Sears was the worst positioned to become Amazon. What they had was just completely wrong and more of a burden than a benefit. Had they tried to retool with their massive catalog it likely would have been a disaster. Amazon had a real benefit starting small with just books which let them learn the ropes on the cheap. [0] I think this is especially relevant here on HN because it shows how startups are required to solve problems. For many problems, a behemoth company has no reason to improve, and a lean startup can rush to a solution faster in many cases. [0] https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/a6nwj7/sears_bankruptcy_court_oks_25_million_in_bonuses/ebwphf4/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/a6nwj7/sears_bankruptc...
- encorekt 8y ago
  Yeah, I think you're completely on point. Sears has been on verge of folding for at least a decade, and they've done little to nothing to implement any innovation that would give them another swing. It left plenty of opportunity for smaller startups to swoop in and stay ahead of the market Sears lost out on.
- mceldeen 8y ago
  So what I'm hearing is "so big they had to fail".
  - artursapek 8y ago
    I wonder if Amazon will ever get to that point. It's hard to imagine.
    - 8y ago
jandrese 8y ago
IMHO this is one of those cases where the idea is pretty simple: move our catalog online, but you can't do it because it would undercut your existing business. The idea that someone else is just going to do it instead is always lost on these big businesses. They always want to protect the old way of doing business because it is tried and true, but that is only safe if the world never changes. That said, Sears could have stuck around for many more years with better management and not being sucked dry by wall street.
bksenior 8y ago
Eddie Lampard's ego tour was the real nail in what could maybe have been a salvaged niche success story.
openloop 8y ago
Some bookseller with a bunch of land and rich friends is putting everyone out of business. You’re probably next. Enjoy Armageddon.
etrautmann 8y ago
My childhood home was purchased in a kit from Sears in the early 1900's. Such an interesting and expansive catalog operation, and a model that's starting to come back around with modular homes from Blu and other companies offering kit homes 100 years later.
- cliffwarden 8y ago
  Had to throw in the 99PI link for anyone interested in learning more about Sears homes. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the-mail/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-i...
deleted 8y ago
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Alex3917 8y ago
> They owned part of Prodigy in 1984! Widely considered one of the worst-run businesses of all time. No wonder they thought expanding into bigger box retail was a better move.
codereflection 8y ago
In some alternate universe, we're all using Sears Web Services and no one has heard of Amazon.
b3b0p 8y ago
I did not know about Sears owning part of Prodigy. I bought Blades of Steel on NES through Sears on Prodigy. Back then delivery was weeks and not days.
twblalock 8y ago
Sears would never have been able to compete with Amazon on prices because Sears needed to fund operations for a large number of retail stores and Amazon did not.
- Marsymars 8y ago
  The Chapters Indigo approach to this has just been pricematch Amazon online, and charge more for the same items in their retail stores.
fireattack 8y ago
>Global supply chain I know you said "supply chain", but do Sears really have much presence outside the US? I'm asking because I never heard of Sears before coming to the US. Might not be zero (I find there is Sears in Mexico at least), but definitely not strong compared to Walmart, Carrefour, etc.
- Marsymars 8y ago
  > I know you said "supply chain", but do Sears really have much presence outside the US? Depends how you count it. Sears Canada had about double the number of stores per capita as Sears USA. By the end, they were mostly a separate corporate entity from Sears USA, and shuttered all their stores over a year ago.
  - fireattack 8y ago
    Guess I should say outside North American.
    - Marsymars 8y ago
      As far as I can think of, the number of retailers with significant worldwide operations is very small. Costco and Walmart both have about 20% of their operations outside of North America. Uniqlo is 40% Japan, 30% PRC, 30% elsewhere. No real others come to mind.
      - NamTaf 8y ago
        IKEA is the big one that springs to mind for me.
      - fireattack 8y ago
        Fair point. Not sure Uniqlo should count though, lots of similar brands in fashion have massive global operation (H&M etc.).
      - kalleboo 8y ago
        How about Carrefour (53% outside of France), Aldi (owns Trader Joe's in the US)? edit: 7-11?
JKCalhoun 8y ago
Not disagreeing with you, but where is Wal-Mart, a big box store that kicked Sears ass, in your calculus?
heurist 8y ago
One day, Amazon, Google, and Apple will also die. It's the circle of life. Sears operated for 126 years - astounding in our era.
- MichaelMoser123 8y ago
  maybe they will turn into world government, like in Wall-E.
  - heurist 8y ago
    Any organization has a lifecycle, governments included. There are thermodynamic constraints ensuring this. See Geoffrey West's "Scale" for elaboration.
roenxi 8y ago
But as a counterpoint, why would anyone build this business? Compare Amazon's profits [0] to Walmart's [1]. Assuming I've got the right chart, and recalling that the profits are coming from AWS (ie, unrelated to the catalog business), is it obvious that a sane management team would want to replicate Amazon? We're talking two decade of basically no profits. Risk free rate of profit (ie, bonds) was something like 5% for a lot of that period, although there is obviously a lot more to consider. This is longer than long term from an investment standpoint - compare it to jobs who took Apple from "return the money to shareholders" to "most profitable company in the world" in a bit more than a decade. [0] https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin
sixothree 8y ago
Sears is where I got my Pong game as a child that started me down this path. To be specific it was a Coleco Telstar Marksman.
bouncycastle 8y ago
The difference is at the heart: Amazon is really a software company. Sears was not. Software is eating the world.
- bouncycastle 8y ago
  Can't edit, but for those who didn't understand that comment, see what it was referencing: https://www.quora.com/What-did-Marc-Andreessen-mean-when-he-said-that-software-is-eating-the-world https://www.quora.com/What-did-Marc-Andreessen-mean-when-he-...
fnord77 8y ago
and the people responsible for throwing it all away will never be punished. They all probably got nice packages over the years.
johnvanommen 8y ago
> Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check. I've never understood this line of thinking. I worked in engineering at Sears, and I left the company in 2000. So I was there when Amazon was getting big, and I quit Sears to go work for a company in Redmond Washington. Sears just didn't have the engineering manpower. When I'd wander around the Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, I saw tons of people working on marketing, clothing, and advertising. There weren't a whole lot of people working on the Sears website. From my perspective, in 1999 our engineering team was mostly concerned with whether the cash registers worked (Sears was ahead of the curve when it comes to the sophistication of their registers) and whether customer service worked (we had over five thousand customer service representatives working out of a series of Regional Credit Card Operation Centers AKA RCCOCs.) Competing with Amazon isn't trivial; even in 1999 Amazon employed thousands of people. More importantly, Amazon lost a ton of money to get where it is today. In 1999, Amazon lost something like thirty cents on every dollar that they sold. As someone who actually worked at Sears, it's inconceivable to me that Sears could have stomached the idea of losing that kind of money. And I don't see any scenario where they'd make the kind of investment in people, even if they could find them. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/business/amazon-s-risky-christmas.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/business/amazon-s-risky-c...
jamisteven 8y ago
"Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check." At that time in the industry sure, but they failed to pivot. This supply chain by todays standards would be laughable.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
Sometimes having parts of a business already in place actually makes it harder to do something new. The same way tearing a house down and building new is often easier than trying to remodel. This is why I’m so fascinated to see which carmakers can transition to electric. Lots of people think it’s easy the automakers just don’t feel like it. I’m curious if that’s true or if there’s an inertia thing going on.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

Those who are first will later be last for the times are changing... Is there anything people don't buy online these days?

ghaff 8y ago
>Is there anything people don't buy online these days? Tons of stuff. [ADDED: e-commerce is 10% of retail in the US.] Ironically, especially in the categories that Sears was best known for selling. Major appliances, lawn equipment, home improvement generally, (to a lesser degree) clothes.
- vidarh 8y ago
  All my major appliances were bought online. Amazon delivers home improvement services now (via partners) in some markets. These may be things that move online slower, but they to move.
- tjr 8y ago
  A few years ago, the ancient (circa 1998) microwave in my house failed. I merrily trundled off to the local appliance store and bought a new one, and had them install it. Seemed to work, but eventually I realized it must be drawing too much electricity. Like something out of Green Acres, I had to limit what lights and other appliances were on in the kitchen if I wanted to use the microwave. I had an electrician come out and look at it. He opined that, due to the way the house was wired, it would be a pretty major undertaking to fix the underlying problem. So I just went along with turning lights off when I cooked. I finally sold the house, but couldn't pass this problem off to the next owner. The only place I could find that still sold a microwave so old and feeble that it wouldn't overload my circuit, was Sears. Thank you Sears! Hopefully I will never need that again, but I am thankful for your help.
  - samfriedman 8y ago
    I'm curious, do you remember what the difference in power draw between the old and new microwaves was?
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    - rhino369 8y ago
      Standard microwaves are 1100 watt, but there are also 700 watt microwaves. Those extra 3 amps must have set off his circuit breaker.
      - tjr 8y ago
        Sounds about right. Also, this was an above-stove unit, limiting possible choices. Probably could have more easily found a standalone unit that worked.
        jandrese 8y ago
        Especially if it was an odd size. The downside to built-in microwaves is that it took many years for the industry to decide on what sizes they would support, so older installs are always a crapshoot. If you have a weird one it can be hell finding an appropriate microwave. My parents had a very old microwave (1980s era) built into their house that was much bigger than almost everything on the market today, finding a replacement for it was impossible, they ended up having to buy a smaller one and making a custom shim to fit it in the old cavity.
  - steelframe 8y ago
    > I finally sold the house, but couldn't pass this problem off to the next owner. As someone who's had his share of problems passed on to him when buying a house, I'd like to know (1) how the next owner found out about the problem and (2) how they managed to strong-arm you into fixing it.
ams6110 8y ago
There's a lot of stuff I don't buy online. Clothes -- I like to try them on first. Tools -- I like to see if they are well made and how they feel in my hand. Photos on a website don't provide this. Food -- I want to check produce and meat before I buy it. And it's easier to stop at shops I'm passing on my way home anyway. Household supplies -- I don't want to deal with disposing of shipping boxes, styrofoam peanuts and air pillow packs for stuff I can just grab off the shelf at the local Target. Big-ticket items (appliances, furniture, etc) -- I want a local business standing behind the product and the warranty. Stuff I buy online are typically things like books (no local bookstores anymore) and odd items that are hard to find locally (like the mic/audio splitter cable my kid needed for his X-box controller).
- excalibur 8y ago
  Pretty much in agreement here, although I do find it more convenient to buy appliances through the big box store's website than to go in person and spend an hour guiding an associate through the options in their arcane inventory system.
  - xnyan 8y ago
    Also you get to avoid most of the 99% profit-for-them "warranty" hard sell. I try not to hold it against the salesperson as I've done that kind of job and I know they don't have a choice but it's still incredibly annoying.
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  - kalleboo 8y ago
    For our last 2 appliances (fridge, washing machine) we went to the store and found last year's model on sale at a steep discount to anything online. Also managed to haggle a little.
tracker1 8y ago
Clothes are probably one of the bigger things. General grocery items, especially produce. Things that are a pain to return (large appliances). Things you usually need now (hardware/auto store parts). I will say, I try to never buy monitors online... I've just experienced too many that die prematurely and would rather have someplace I can take back to the same day. My current monitor is actually a 42" UHD TV. I had bought a monitor in that size (40") but it was DOA, and didn't want to wait the round-trip for a replacement. Not the first time I've had monitors die young either. At least they don't weigh over 70 pounds anymore.
VBprogrammer 8y ago
I know other comments are pointing out reasons this is not true but honestly it feels that way to me too. All of my Christmas presents this year were bought on Amazon and delivered direct to my family who live 400 miles away within a day of me ordering them. Even some of the categories of things other people have listed as things people don't buy online are things I do buy online. Tools for example, if I'm buying something to get a job done I'll pick up something from the catalogue type stores (Screwfix / Toolstation in the UK). On the other hand if I'm buying a decent tool to last I'll pick it out online, usually after reading and watching reviews, and then looking around to find the cheapest price for the exact model. I was buying a pair of trainers for my partners Christmas. She picked them out on a big department stores website. I went to the store and they didn't keep them in stock. I tried 3 other stores in one of the UKs largest shopping centres and they didn't have them in her size. I tried another shop in a different part of town which didn't have them and finally gave up and ordered them on Amazon. They arrived 2 days later (this only a week before Christmas).

mondo9000 8y ago

The other point is Sears Catalog was empowered by the railroads, then along comes the Internet and they miss the analogy.

daotoad 8y ago
The internet was billed as the "Information Super-Highway" not the "Information Super-Railroad". That's why they didn't see it.

Zigurd 8y ago

There was an enormous Sears near where I grew up. It always felt shabby and badly run. They had lost the recipe even then, when they still had the catalog business. I get the impression from Sears and other big companies that lose their way that they become the playgrounds of big management egos that want to leave a mark and get written about in business publications, whether or not their ideas work.

ams6110 8y ago
Same experience. Sears was an anchor tenant at the local mall for decades. In that time they never did a significant rehab. When they finally closed a few years ago, it was still like stepping into the 1970s to shop there.
rhino369 8y ago
My guess is that they got their lunch eaten by Wal-Mart and Target. Wal-Mart beat them on cost and margin. And you can't operate a mega-chain on premium customer service since the average customer shops on price or convenience. Department stores have been dying for a long time.
- Zigurd 8y ago
  I should have made clear just how ancient I am. When I was a kid, it was still the heyday of department stores like Lytton, Goldblatt,and Marshall Field which had their own candy shop selling their own candies, and a department called "millinery." Some of these stores were notably stuffy and seemed to cater to my grandmother's generation. But they were still prosperous. I had never seen a Wal Mart.
- spiralx 8y ago
  The dysfunctional Randian management model imposed by their CEO had more to do with their failure than any external woes: https://outline.com/dnb2UK https://outline.com/dnb2UK

tracker1 8y ago

I remember them being in the single best position to do what Amazon did half a decade before Amazon was even a real thing. Even if they got their catalog online, searchable with images, and call in to finalize their orders, they'd have been ahead of the game. They could well have done more optimizations with time... but they had no interest in the internet, and felt the web would be just another fad after Prodigy failed. I knew it was the beginning of the end for Sears when they shutdown their catalog division and call centers. Just as the internet was ramping up and mail order was going to become huge.

reaperducer 8y ago

Name recognition This can't be understated, and is something a lot of new companies don't understand. If people know your brand and trust your company, they will hand you money. Anecdata: My parents were massive Sears loyalists. When they bought an appliance, my father researched the various GE models, then bought the Kenmore version. When he wanted a video game console, he researched and decided he wanted an Atari 2600. Then he went out and bought the Sears Tele-Games version. Half of their house addition was built with Sears products. If Sears had a lumber yard, it would have been closer to 90%.

ben1040 8y ago
>If Sears had a lumber yard In a way, they did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home
- 1123581321 8y ago
  I own one of these. It was built in 1935 and unlike Sears, it has a good chance of surviving another century because it’s made of solid brick. It’s a Craftsman-style Bungalow that apparently was build extra wide (or at least wider than other homes in our neighborhood), so the upper bedrooms are more spacious than it might appear from the outside.
- i_feel_great 8y ago
  There are links at the bottom of the page to the catalogues. Looking at the 1908 catalogue - my goodness those houses are gorgeous. I wonder if there is some sort of design trademark on them. I would love to build a house like these in Australia.
wvenable 8y ago
And Sears, like Walmart now, was big enough that they could go to manufacturers and get special versions of products to makeup the "Kenmore" brand. I remember looking at fridges back in the day and the Kenmore version had just minor differences that made it slightly better than the 'same' model from the actual manufacturer. The difference between Walmart and Sears through is that Walmart pushes manufacturers to build the cheapest possible product so their versions are worse rather than better then the manufacturer's own branded products.

xigency 8y ago

I thought this as well until I heard a counter-point [0] which was very convincing. The reason Amazon is successful is not because you can shop online (from a catalog) and receive items in the mail. The reason Amazon is successful is because you can do those things and receive your items within two days. Before Prime existed, Amazon had very quick fulfillment, and after Prime two-day it became even better. The Sears catalog ended in 1993 but the Sears Wish Book continued to exist after that. In 1999 I remember ordering something from the Wish Book required 3 weeks to receive the item. If they didn't have the desire to improve that, then they would never have become Amazon. > If anything, Sears was the worst positioned to become Amazon. What they had was just completely wrong and more of a burden than a benefit. Had they tried to retool with their massive catalog it likely would have been a disaster. Amazon had a real benefit starting small with just books which let them learn the ropes on the cheap. [0] I think this is especially relevant here on HN because it shows how startups are required to solve problems. For many problems, a behemoth company has no reason to improve, and a lean startup can rush to a solution faster in many cases. [0] https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/a6nwj7/sears_bankruptcy_court_oks_25_million_in_bonuses/ebwphf4/ https://np.reddit.com/r/news/comments/a6nwj7/sears_bankruptc...

encorekt 8y ago
Yeah, I think you're completely on point. Sears has been on verge of folding for at least a decade, and they've done little to nothing to implement any innovation that would give them another swing. It left plenty of opportunity for smaller startups to swoop in and stay ahead of the market Sears lost out on.
mceldeen 8y ago
So what I'm hearing is "so big they had to fail".
- artursapek 8y ago
  I wonder if Amazon will ever get to that point. It's hard to imagine.
  - 8y ago

jandrese 8y ago

IMHO this is one of those cases where the idea is pretty simple: move our catalog online, but you can't do it because it would undercut your existing business. The idea that someone else is just going to do it instead is always lost on these big businesses. They always want to protect the old way of doing business because it is tried and true, but that is only safe if the world never changes. That said, Sears could have stuck around for many more years with better management and not being sucked dry by wall street.

bksenior 8y ago

Eddie Lampard's ego tour was the real nail in what could maybe have been a salvaged niche success story.

openloop 8y ago

Some bookseller with a bunch of land and rich friends is putting everyone out of business. You’re probably next. Enjoy Armageddon.

etrautmann 8y ago

My childhood home was purchased in a kit from Sears in the early 1900's. Such an interesting and expansive catalog operation, and a model that's starting to come back around with modular homes from Blu and other companies offering kit homes 100 years later.

cliffwarden 8y ago
Had to throw in the 99PI link for anyone interested in learning more about Sears homes. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-in-the-mail/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-i...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Alex3917 8y ago

> They owned part of Prodigy in 1984! Widely considered one of the worst-run businesses of all time. No wonder they thought expanding into bigger box retail was a better move.

codereflection 8y ago

In some alternate universe, we're all using Sears Web Services and no one has heard of Amazon.

b3b0p 8y ago

I did not know about Sears owning part of Prodigy. I bought Blades of Steel on NES through Sears on Prodigy. Back then delivery was weeks and not days.

twblalock 8y ago

Sears would never have been able to compete with Amazon on prices because Sears needed to fund operations for a large number of retail stores and Amazon did not.

Marsymars 8y ago
The Chapters Indigo approach to this has just been pricematch Amazon online, and charge more for the same items in their retail stores.

fireattack 8y ago

>Global supply chain I know you said "supply chain", but do Sears really have much presence outside the US? I'm asking because I never heard of Sears before coming to the US. Might not be zero (I find there is Sears in Mexico at least), but definitely not strong compared to Walmart, Carrefour, etc.

Marsymars 8y ago
> I know you said "supply chain", but do Sears really have much presence outside the US? Depends how you count it. Sears Canada had about double the number of stores per capita as Sears USA. By the end, they were mostly a separate corporate entity from Sears USA, and shuttered all their stores over a year ago.
- fireattack 8y ago
  Guess I should say outside North American.
  - Marsymars 8y ago
    As far as I can think of, the number of retailers with significant worldwide operations is very small. Costco and Walmart both have about 20% of their operations outside of North America. Uniqlo is 40% Japan, 30% PRC, 30% elsewhere. No real others come to mind.
    - NamTaf 8y ago
      IKEA is the big one that springs to mind for me.
    - fireattack 8y ago
      Fair point. Not sure Uniqlo should count though, lots of similar brands in fashion have massive global operation (H&M etc.).
    - kalleboo 8y ago
      How about Carrefour (53% outside of France), Aldi (owns Trader Joe's in the US)? edit: 7-11?

JKCalhoun 8y ago

Not disagreeing with you, but where is Wal-Mart, a big box store that kicked Sears ass, in your calculus?

heurist 8y ago

One day, Amazon, Google, and Apple will also die. It's the circle of life. Sears operated for 126 years - astounding in our era.

MichaelMoser123 8y ago
maybe they will turn into world government, like in Wall-E.
- heurist 8y ago
  Any organization has a lifecycle, governments included. There are thermodynamic constraints ensuring this. See Geoffrey West's "Scale" for elaboration.

roenxi 8y ago

But as a counterpoint, why would anyone build this business? Compare Amazon's profits [0] to Walmart's [1]. Assuming I've got the right chart, and recalling that the profits are coming from AWS (ie, unrelated to the catalog business), is it obvious that a sane management team would want to replicate Amazon? We're talking two decade of basically no profits. Risk free rate of profit (ie, bonds) was something like 5% for a lot of that period, although there is obviously a lot more to consider. This is longer than long term from an investment standpoint - compare it to jobs who took Apple from "return the money to shareholders" to "most profitable company in the world" in a bit more than a decade. [0] https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin

sixothree 8y ago

Sears is where I got my Pong game as a child that started me down this path. To be specific it was a Coleco Telstar Marksman.

bouncycastle 8y ago

The difference is at the heart: Amazon is really a software company. Sears was not. Software is eating the world.

bouncycastle 8y ago
Can't edit, but for those who didn't understand that comment, see what it was referencing: https://www.quora.com/What-did-Marc-Andreessen-mean-when-he-said-that-software-is-eating-the-world https://www.quora.com/What-did-Marc-Andreessen-mean-when-he-...

fnord77 8y ago

and the people responsible for throwing it all away will never be punished. They all probably got nice packages over the years.

johnvanommen 8y ago

> Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check. I've never understood this line of thinking. I worked in engineering at Sears, and I left the company in 2000. So I was there when Amazon was getting big, and I quit Sears to go work for a company in Redmond Washington. Sears just didn't have the engineering manpower. When I'd wander around the Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, I saw tons of people working on marketing, clothing, and advertising. There weren't a whole lot of people working on the Sears website. From my perspective, in 1999 our engineering team was mostly concerned with whether the cash registers worked (Sears was ahead of the curve when it comes to the sophistication of their registers) and whether customer service worked (we had over five thousand customer service representatives working out of a series of Regional Credit Card Operation Centers AKA RCCOCs.) Competing with Amazon isn't trivial; even in 1999 Amazon employed thousands of people. More importantly, Amazon lost a ton of money to get where it is today. In 1999, Amazon lost something like thirty cents on every dollar that they sold. As someone who actually worked at Sears, it's inconceivable to me that Sears could have stomached the idea of losing that kind of money. And I don't see any scenario where they'd make the kind of investment in people, even if they could find them. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/business/amazon-s-risky-christmas.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/business/amazon-s-risky-c...

jamisteven 8y ago

"Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check." At that time in the industry sure, but they failed to pivot. This supply chain by todays standards would be laughable.

erikpukinskis 8y ago

Sometimes having parts of a business already in place actually makes it harder to do something new. The same way tearing a house down and building new is often easier than trying to remodel. This is why I’m so fascinated to see which carmakers can transition to electric. Lots of people think it’s easy the automakers just don’t feel like it. I’m curious if that’s true or if there’s an inertia thing going on.