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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 busin
by 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 agoSame 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 agoMy 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 agoI 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 agoThe 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