4 ms·

Honestly, I think you underestimate how much of a distribution and fulfillment network Sears had at their peak. It is easy to imagine way for them to have trans

by jsight 7y ago

Honestly, I think you underestimate how much of a distribution and fulfillment network Sears had at their peak. It is easy to imagine way for them to have transitioned to the internet, offer similar delivery speeds to Amazon. But to do so would have required a lot of forethought and vision. They would have needed to recognize the significance of online retail, free shipping, trustworthy customer service, and their fulfillment way back in the early or mid 90s. I remember startups back then that didn't really recognize that, and I'm certain that old retail didn't.

hinkley 7y ago
I think the turning point for Amazon and thus for Sears was when Amazon's logistics could deliver a product faster than Sears. I'd really like a refresher on what the retail climate was like at that time that lead Sears into thinking getting rid of their catalog was a good idea. And why didn't Penny's jump into that vacuum? Although I expect I already know that answer. I was warned by the oldest worker at my first tech job never to work as a software developer for a manufacturer. They don't understand where the uncertainty and the QA effort lives in the dev process and they keep trying to force it to look like what they know. Probably working for a retailer, even one with supply chain chops, would have been awful in that era.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  I wonder how much of it was learning the wrong lessons from the relatively quick decline of Service Merchandise [1]. While a more "regional" competitor to Sears, Service Merchandise remained in the catalog game longer than Sears, was possibly the most successful catalog merchant of the 80s and 90s (depending on who you ask, and again some regional biases), and was also relatively active on the early internet (making millions apparently in internet sales in the early 1990s, ahead of Amazon). Every article I see about Service Merchandise's decline blames the catalog business (despite doing well in internet sales) as being "too old fashioned" and the root cause, and certainly that's what people seemed to be thinking in the 90s (again, wow how they ignored those internet sales looking at the quoted figures). I'd love to see a better retrospective on the company's 1990's management given we saw Amazon succeed. Maybe more so than Sears, the fact that Service Merchandise didn't compete better with Amazon is fascinating. Service Merchandise and Sears thought they were competing with Circuit City (dead), Wal-Mart, K-Mart (bought by Sears, dead), Target, rather than each other in the 1990s, and Amazon was left almost entirely uncontested to eat Sears and Service Merchandise's original core competencies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise

by jsight 7y ago

hinkley 7y ago

I think the turning point for Amazon and thus for Sears was when Amazon's logistics could deliver a product faster than Sears. I'd really like a refresher on what the retail climate was like at that time that lead Sears into thinking getting rid of their catalog was a good idea. And why didn't Penny's jump into that vacuum? Although I expect I already know that answer. I was warned by the oldest worker at my first tech job never to work as a software developer for a manufacturer. They don't understand where the uncertainty and the QA effort lives in the dev process and they keep trying to force it to look like what they know. Probably working for a retailer, even one with supply chain chops, would have been awful in that era.

WorldMaker 7y ago
I wonder how much of it was learning the wrong lessons from the relatively quick decline of Service Merchandise [1]. While a more "regional" competitor to Sears, Service Merchandise remained in the catalog game longer than Sears, was possibly the most successful catalog merchant of the 80s and 90s (depending on who you ask, and again some regional biases), and was also relatively active on the early internet (making millions apparently in internet sales in the early 1990s, ahead of Amazon). Every article I see about Service Merchandise's decline blames the catalog business (despite doing well in internet sales) as being "too old fashioned" and the root cause, and certainly that's what people seemed to be thinking in the 90s (again, wow how they ignored those internet sales looking at the quoted figures). I'd love to see a better retrospective on the company's 1990's management given we saw Amazon succeed. Maybe more so than Sears, the fact that Service Merchandise didn't compete better with Amazon is fascinating. Service Merchandise and Sears thought they were competing with Circuit City (dead), Wal-Mart, K-Mart (bought by Sears, dead), Target, rather than each other in the 1990s, and Amazon was left almost entirely uncontested to eat Sears and Service Merchandise's original core competencies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise