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Suburban malls were really disruptive to the dry goods industry - in the sixties. Well-run stores adapted fast to needing have anchor stores at malls. I wonde

Suburban malls were really disruptive to the dry goods industry - in the sixties. Well-run stores adapted fast to needing have anchor stores at malls. I wonder how things would have played out differently if the generation that computerized their stores before the personal computer era and finessed the transition to malls had still been calling the shots at these companies during the dotcom boom.

ghaff 2y ago
There was a period where you had a lot of white flight from urban centers in the US and a lot retail moved out to the suburbs as a result. Retail pretty much follows the consumers. I'm not sure retail could have (or had the incentive to) keep the consumers in the cities. As anecdata, when I graduated from grad school in the mid-eighties, other than Manhattan financial people, pretty much no one I knew went to live in a major city. In Massachusetts, none of the computer industry jobs were in Boston any lony longer.
tivert 2y ago
> I wonder how things would have played out differently if the generation that computerized their stores before the personal computer era and finessed the transition to malls had still been calling the shots at these companies during the dotcom boom. A lot of it was bad luck. Sears shut down their catalog operation in 1993, because it was losing money, but if they'd held on for a few more years they'd have been in a prime position to be Amazon.
- buescher 2y ago
  Sears managed to miss both the opportunity to be Amazon and the opportunity to be Home Depot. At some point you have to wonder how much luck was really involved.
  - jewayne 2y ago
    The US financial system discourages mature companies from making the kinds of investments necessary to stay relevant indefinitely. Maybe in a Jack-Welch-free world Sears would have become Amazon, but in our world a mature company has to maximize this quarter's profits, over and above all concerns about the future.
    - buescher 2y ago
      Well, Amazon was a venture-funded startup, so sure, but Home Depot and Lowes? Other companies managed under similar constraints. Sears, on the other hand, introduced and successfully marketed the Discover card during that era, which is still plugging along. Probably to be more like GE, which used to have a big financial services division. There's nuance here.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    In the 80s, Sears was this sort of meandering store with no real identity that had some strong points (Craftsman) but had mostly mediocre clothing--they brought in Lands End but mis-managed. Were OK in appliances but big box vendors really out-competed them. And Walmart really outcompeted on discount. I did shop at Sears at one point especially after I bought a house but they became increasingly uninteresting relative to alternatives.
- bluedino 2y ago
  They would have just had to become Amazon (inventing/creating everything involved with that) while being saddled with the overhead of 350,000 employees and 1,500 dying retail stores. And no Jeff Bezos at the helm.
  - buescher 2y ago
    Well, Amazon did Amazon, right? So it's not impossible to be Amazon. They had had a catalog operation and by some accounts class-leading (for the time) information systems. They had Prodigy and more or less successfully pivoted into making Prodigy an ISP. Undoubtedly they knew a lot of things Amazon had to figure out from scratch. The notion that Amazon was a great invention rather than just great execution is kind of risible. Flip it around - what could Amazon have done with 1500 marginally profitable retail stores and a storied brand name? Sears kept the party going for a couple decades after the dotcom era, and still exists, so they weren't on the brink of folding back then. Note also that Sears' failure was not preordained: other brick-and-mortar retailers from the era have survived and even prospered.

ghaff 2y ago

There was a period where you had a lot of white flight from urban centers in the US and a lot retail moved out to the suburbs as a result. Retail pretty much follows the consumers. I'm not sure retail could have (or had the incentive to) keep the consumers in the cities. As anecdata, when I graduated from grad school in the mid-eighties, other than Manhattan financial people, pretty much no one I knew went to live in a major city. In Massachusetts, none of the computer industry jobs were in Boston any lony longer.

tivert 2y ago

> I wonder how things would have played out differently if the generation that computerized their stores before the personal computer era and finessed the transition to malls had still been calling the shots at these companies during the dotcom boom. A lot of it was bad luck. Sears shut down their catalog operation in 1993, because it was losing money, but if they'd held on for a few more years they'd have been in a prime position to be Amazon.

buescher 2y ago
Sears managed to miss both the opportunity to be Amazon and the opportunity to be Home Depot. At some point you have to wonder how much luck was really involved.
- jewayne 2y ago
  The US financial system discourages mature companies from making the kinds of investments necessary to stay relevant indefinitely. Maybe in a Jack-Welch-free world Sears would have become Amazon, but in our world a mature company has to maximize this quarter's profits, over and above all concerns about the future.
  - buescher 2y ago
    Well, Amazon was a venture-funded startup, so sure, but Home Depot and Lowes? Other companies managed under similar constraints. Sears, on the other hand, introduced and successfully marketed the Discover card during that era, which is still plugging along. Probably to be more like GE, which used to have a big financial services division. There's nuance here.
- ghaff 2y ago
  In the 80s, Sears was this sort of meandering store with no real identity that had some strong points (Craftsman) but had mostly mediocre clothing--they brought in Lands End but mis-managed. Were OK in appliances but big box vendors really out-competed them. And Walmart really outcompeted on discount. I did shop at Sears at one point especially after I bought a house but they became increasingly uninteresting relative to alternatives.
bluedino 2y ago
They would have just had to become Amazon (inventing/creating everything involved with that) while being saddled with the overhead of 350,000 employees and 1,500 dying retail stores. And no Jeff Bezos at the helm.
- buescher 2y ago
  Well, Amazon did Amazon, right? So it's not impossible to be Amazon. They had had a catalog operation and by some accounts class-leading (for the time) information systems. They had Prodigy and more or less successfully pivoted into making Prodigy an ISP. Undoubtedly they knew a lot of things Amazon had to figure out from scratch. The notion that Amazon was a great invention rather than just great execution is kind of risible. Flip it around - what could Amazon have done with 1500 marginally profitable retail stores and a storied brand name? Sears kept the party going for a couple decades after the dotcom era, and still exists, so they weren't on the brink of folding back then. Note also that Sears' failure was not preordained: other brick-and-mortar retailers from the era have survived and even prospered.