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Some people even figured it out in the 80's. Sears founded and ran Prodigy, a large BBS and eventually ISP. They were trying to set themselves up to become A
by bryanlarsen 1y ago
Some people even figured it out in the 80's. Sears founded and ran Prodigy, a large BBS and eventually ISP. They were trying to set themselves up to become Amazon. Not only that, Prodigy's thing (for a while) was using advertising revenue to lower subscription prices.
Your "Netflix over dialup" analogy is more accessible to this readership, but Sears+Prodigy is my favorite example of trying to make the future happen too early. There are countless others.
- tombert 1y agoToday I learned that Sears founded Prodigy! Amazing how far that company has fallen; they were sort of a force to be reckoned with in the 70's and 80's with Craftsman and Allstate and Discover and Kenmore and a bunch of other things, and now they're basically dead as far as I can tell.
- htrp 1y agoBlame short sighted investors asking Sears to "focus"
- dehrmann 1y agoThey weren't wrong. Its core business in what is still a viable-enough sector collapsed. Or if it were truly well-managed, running an ISP and a retailer should have been enough insight to be Amazon.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- svnt 1y agoTiming is a difficult variable.
- KerrAvon 1y agoIt wasn't possible for them to be well managed at the time it mattered. Sears was loaded with debt by private equity ghouls; same story for almost all defunct brick and mortar businesses; Amazon was a factor, but private equity is what actually destroyed them.
- frmersdog 1y agoAnd, knowing Jeff Bezos' private equity origins, one could be forgiven for entertaining the thought that none of this was an accident. Just don't be an idiot and, you know, give voice to that thought or anything.
- ProjectArcturis 1y agoAre you suggesting that Jeff Bezos somehow convinced all his PE buddies to tank Sears (and their own loans to it) in order for him to build Amazon with less competition? Because, well, no offense, but that seems like a remarkably naive understanding of capital markets and individual motivations. Especially when it's well documented how Eddie Lampert's libertarian beliefs caused him to run it into the ground.
- chollida1 1y ago> And, knowing Jeff Bezos' private equity origins He doesn't have private equity origins as far as I know. He came from DE Shaw, a very well respected and long running hedge fund.
- andrew_lettuce 1y agoThank you for bringing this up. Sears really didn't have a choice, they were a victim of the most pernicious LBO, Gordon Gecko-style strip mining nonsense on the PE spectrum. All private equity is not the same but after seeing two PE deals from the inside (one a leveraged buy out) and another VC one with the "grow at insane place" playbook I think I prefer the naked and aligned greed of the VC model; PE destroyed both of the other companies while the VC one was already doomed.
- mikestew 1y agoThey weren't wrong. Evidence suggests that maybe they were. "Focusing" obviously didn't work. But at the end of the day, it was private equity and the hubris of a CEO who wasn't nearly as clever as he'd like to have thought he was.
- lotsoweiners 1y agoI worked at Sears at the time when Amazon first started becoming a household name. I for the life of me couldn’t understand why they didn’t make a copycat site called the Sears Catalog Online. But then I think about it and management wanted salesmanship because selling maintenance agreements was their cash cow. Low margin sales won in the long term hence we have Walmart and Amazon as the biggest retailers.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoLikely standard management failure. Sears got burned badly when it put its catalog online on Prodigy in the 80's, so obviously online sales were doomed to failure.
- dh2022 1y agoMy favorite anecdote about Sears is from Starbucks current HQs - the HQs used to be a warehouse for Sears. Before renovation the first floor walls next to the elevators used to have Sears' "commitment to customers" (or something like that). To me it read like it was written by Amazon decades earlier. Something about how Sears promises that customers will be 100% satisfied with the purchase, and if for whatever reason that is not the case customers can return the purchase back to Sears and Sears will pay for the return transportation charges.
- tombert 1y agoCraftsman tools have almost felt like a life-hack sometimes; their no-questions-asked warranties were just incredible. My dad broke a Craftsman shovel once that he had owned for four years, took it to Sears, and it was replaced immediately, no questions asked. I broke a socket wrench that I had owned for a year and had the same story. I haven't tested these warranties since Craftsman was sold to Black and Decker, but when it was still owned by Sears I almost exclusively bought Craftsman tools as a result of their wonderful warranties.
- mindcrime 1y agoFWIW, I bought a Craftsman 1/4" drive ratchet/socket set at a Lowes Home Improvement store last year, and when I got it home and started messing with it, the ratchet jammed up immediately (before even being used on any actual fastener). I drove back over there the next day and the lady at the service desk took a quick look, said "go get another one off the shelf and come back here." I did, and by the time I got back she'd finished whatever paperwork needed to be done, handed me some $whatever and said "have a nice day." Maybe not quite as hassle free as in years past, but I found the experience acceptable enough.
- tracker1 1y agoI think that's as much about Lowes as it is Craftsman... I don't think Craftsman tools have been particularly well build, just that they had and are able to have enough margins to have a no questions asked policy... it probably helps that a lot of the materials are completely and easily recyclable.
- esaym 1y agoThere were quite a few small ISP's in the 1990's. Even Bill Gothard[0] had one. [0]https://web.archive.org/web/19990208003742/http://characterlink.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/19990208003742/http://characterl...
- hollerith 1y agoProdigy predates ISPs (internet service providers). Before the web had matured a little in 1993 the internet was too technically challenging to interest most consumers except maybe for email, and Prodigy was formed in 1984 -- and although it offered email, it was walled-garden email: a Prodigy user could not exchange email with the internet till the mid-1990s at which time Prodigy might have become an ISP for a few years before going out of business.
- tombert 1y agoAt a previous job I worked under a guy who started his own ISP in the early 90’s. I would have loved to have been part of that scene but I was only like four when that happened.
- jstgunderscore 1y ago[dead]
- kens 1y agoOn the topic of how Sears used to be high-tech: back in 1981, when IBM introduced the IBM PC, it was the first time that they needed to sell computers through retail. So they partnered with Sears, along with the Computerland chain of computer stores, since Sears was considered a reasonable place for a businessperson to buy a computer. To plan this, meetings were held at the Sears Tower, which was the world's tallest building at the time.
- NordSteve 1y agoBought my IBM PC from Sears back in the day. Still have the receipt.
- zenonu 1y agoWorthy if its own hacker news post. Would love to see it.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoYup I agree GP. today is the first time I heard of sears and the comment about the sears towers and ibm literally gave me goosebumps.
- duderific 1y agoWow, I hadn't thought about Computerland for quite a while. That was my go-to to kill some time at the mall when I was a teen.
- gcanyon 1y ago:-) Then it's going to blow your mind that CompuServe (while not founded by them) was a product of H&R Block.
- matthewn 1y agoFor more on this -- and how Sears had everything it needed (and more) to be what Amazon became -- see this comment from a 2007 MetaFilter thread: https://www.metafilter.com/62394/The-Record-Industrys-Decline#1742245 https://www.metafilter.com/62394/The-Record-Industrys-Declin...
- fragmede 1y agoThe untold story, is the names of individuals fighting office politics that lead to that (not) happening.
- outside1234 1y agoNewton at Apple is another great one, though they of course got there.
- platevoltage 1y agoThey sure did. This reminds me of when I was in the local Mac Dealer right after the iPod came out. The employees were laughing together saying “nobody is going to buy this thing”.
- cyanydeez 1y agothe problem is ISP became a Utility, not some fountain of unlimited growth. What you're arguing is that AI is fundamentally going to be a utility, and while that's worth a floor of cash, it's not what investors or the market clamor for. I agree though, it's fundamentally a utility, which means theres more value in proper government authority than private interests.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoSears started Prodigy to become Amazon, not Comcast.
- cyanydeez 1y agoThe product itself determines wether ita a utility, not the business interest. Assuming democracy works correctly. Only a dysfunctional government ignores natural monopolies.
- tracker1 1y agoOn the flip side, they didn't actually learn that lesson... that it was a matter of immature tech with relatively limited reach... by the time the mid-90's came through, "the internet is just a fad" was pretty much the sentiment from Sears' leadership... They literally killed their catalog sales right when they should have been ramping up and putting it online. They could easily have beat out Amazon for everything other than books.
- djtango 1y agoThis is a great example that I hadn't heard of and reminds me of when Nintendo tried to become an ISP when they built the Family Computer Network System in 1988 A16Z once talked about the scars of being too early causes investors/companies to get fixed that an idea will never work. Then some new younger people who never got burned will try the same idea and things will work. Prodigy and the Faminet probably fall into that bucket along with a lot of early internet companies where they tried things early, got burned and then possibly were too late to capitalise when it was finally the right time for the idea to flourish
- mschuster91 1y agoReminds me of Elon not taking a no for an answer. He did it twice, with a massive success. A true shame to see how he's completely lost track with Tesla, the competition particularly from China is eating them alive. And in space, it's a matter of years until the rest of the world catches up. And now, he's ran out of tricks - and more importantly, on public support. He can't pivot any more, his entire brand is too toxic to touch.
- platevoltage 1y agoLucky for him, the US government is keeping him from being eaten alive in the USA at least. I remember that one time we tried to drastically limit Japanese imports to protect the American car industry, which basically created the Lexus LS400, one of the best cars ever made.
- nebula8804 1y agoI dont know, you could argue that maybe GM with the EV1 was the 'too early' EV and Tesla was just at the right moment. Same goes for SpaceX, The idea of a reusable launcher was not a new idea and studied by NASA. I think they did some test vehicles.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoSpaceX is an excellent example of this phenomenon. Reusable rockets were "known" to be financially infeasible because the Space Shuttle was so expensive. NASA & oldspace didn't seriously pursue reusable vehicles because the mostly reusable Space Shuttle cost so much more than conventional disposable vehicles. Similar to how Sears didn't put their catalog online in the 90's because putting it online on Prodigy failed so badly in the 80's.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoMy cousin used to tell me that things works because they were the right thing at the right time. I think he gave the idea of amazon only. But I guess in startup culture, one has to die trying the idea of right time, as sure one can do surveys to feel like it, but the only way we can ever find if its the right time is the users feedback when its lauched / over time.