Sears was "too big to fail", an "American Institution", Sears catalogs were used as toilet paper in the old west (once you had bought your year's supply of ammu

Sears was "too big to fail", an "American Institution", Sears catalogs were used as toilet paper in the old west (once you had bought your year's supply of ammunition, a new home to build, canning supplies and seeds). It may have felt like they could do no wrong so why focus on continuing to do right? Why push for excellence when you're already the best? And once one manager started thinking like that, then another did, and another did, and another... It's easy to see in the aftermath what factors caused them to fail, but the spirit of the event itself was plain to everyone not caught up in it. They thought they were invulnerable, and like a teenager wearing a t-shirt on a motorcycle they eventually found out the hard truth.