In the late 70s, when I was a boy, my father (quixotically) bought land in Western North Carolina with the intent of building vacation homes and striking it rich. We had a loyal builder and carpenter, named Alvin, who was in his late 60s, who worked on every build. Salt of the earth, and he became, essentially, an honorary grandfather to me through the years.
He had an ancient set of tools in pristine condition that he used for every task. My Dad was quite taken by the beauty of an excellent, manual squaring saw that Alvin had, and treasured. One day Dad said, “Alvin, what make of saw is that?”
Alvin simply, but proudly, said, “It’s a Roebuck.”
Yep, Sears’ catalog was the Internet shopping of its day (its day being the early 20th century.) They offered a new shopping experience and radically expanded retail universe not just to African-Americans, but to anyone living in a remote or under-served area. Which, back in the day, was most of the US. (You could even order yourself a house out of the catalog.)
Sears spent about 40 years being an innovator, 40 years being an institution, and 40 years in decline. Let’s see if Amazon can do as well!*
And their failure to foresee the internet shopping wave. I’m sure I said it in this thread … if Sears’ catalog business was still intact, they would likely have been Amazon. They had the logistics down.
The remarkable thing is how common this story is internationally. Germany’s dominant, very old mail order company went bust in 2009. The UK’s, once one of the largest companies in Europe, was sold off and then drastically downsized in the early 2000s. I
It stinks of fat cat executives not wanting to adapt so they can pull down an easy paycheck. That baloney about all CEO’s deserving such high pay… gah.
By the way, were you going to say something else? You left off with “I”…
Sears could not have become Amazon because that would have taken revenue away from their bread and butter brick and mortar business and the good ol’ boy network / internal politics / groupthink would never allow that to happen.
Very true. It would have required an internal revolution.
Like Blackberry - they could not adapt to the touchscreen until it was way too late… I’m sure all their managers and leadership never believed people wouldn’t want a physical keyboard on their phone…
This is such a common mistake that they teach it in every business class ever. There are numerous case studies like Kodak inventing the digital camera but shelving it out of fear, but when you’re in the trenches I imagine it’s harder to see clearly. But Sears for sure missed numerous opportunities to keep up and I’m sure one of the big reasons was not wanting to cannibalize brick and mortar.
Oh well. I’m sure the brand will live on. They’ll slap it on something dumb.
Not necessarily. You integrate those big brick and mortar locations into the Internet business.
Sears had warehouses all over the country to ship their Internet orders from (or allow for in-store pickup) and they never figured that out.
Hard to believe, but the Service Merchandise model is actually closer to the real best way to do things in 2019, except you also run each location as a store and not just a catalog showroom.
