" . . . a smaller version was opened which is called Sears Hometown. It’s a 5000 square foot store"
What do they sell there . . . ?!
The hometown stores are privately owned, not Sears anymore. The ones I’ve seen handle appliances, tools, lawn and garden equipment, etc. and that’s pretty much it. What used to be near the doors on the first floors of the big stores.
I’m not sure how they handle the service. I can’t imagine they aren’t all contracts but yet it sounds like they send people out to repair things like lawn tractors on warranty. Don’t know if they handle the service out of the hometown stores or not.
Like I said though, I think Sears is just outsourcing their whole retail business and hanging on to the real estate side of it. They own a lot of prime locations.
Darn, I think @“the same mountainbike” already said most of what I wanted to say, but more succinctly. I can’t resist adding my own thoughts though.
Agree with all businesses having a life-cycle. These companies get so successful for so long that the bureaucracy becomes big and unwieldy and they literally can’t get out of their own way. Sears should have owned the internet the way Amazon does. Sears had the infrastructure and distribution network via their catalog business for decades before there was any such thing as the internet, and they shut down the catalog around the same time the internet was just beginning to take off. D-oh! Nobody in the corporate bureaucracy could see what internet commerce would become, or if they did, they couldn’t get their ideas heard by the people at the top.
To keep it car-related, one could say the same thing, big unwieldy bureaucracies ultimately brought down empires like GM.
Cost cutting and downsizing can quickly become a vicious downward spiral. Management responds to decreased profits by reducing staff, reducing quality of merchandise. Customers notice poor quality merchandise, lack of staff, long checkout lines and do not return. Management sees further loss of sales & profits and responds by further reducing staff. . .
A little surprised to read the posts about Sears reducing the size of the clothing departments. When I worked for a now defunct discount store called Caldor, I was always told that clothing and soft goods had the highest profit margins, yeah, we sold toys, sporting goods, televisions, etc, but they were REALLY hoping you’d buy some clothing, bedding, towels, etc while you were there.
I’d say that aside from the rise of first Wal-Mart and then the internet (Amazon), there just weren’t so many stores back in the day. Harbor Freight, Best Buy, TJ Maxx, Ross, Costco, and on and on, they either didn’t exist or were bit players. I know in my household, growing up, most everything came from either Sears or Montgomery Ward, which were basically across the highway from each other in adjacent malls, making price shopping easy in the era before the internet. My parents were more Montgomery Ward’s shoppers than Sears shoppers though, as they usually had lower prices than Sears. Of course Montgomery Ward’s has long since bit the dust.
P.S.- This is really wandering off-topic here, but up until a few years ago, I’d keep getting credit card offers from Sears. Why would I take a Sears card at 23.999% interest that’s only good at Sears when I already had a Visa card at 7.9% interest (not that I ever carry a balance anyway). Just for the privilege of getting “special access” to “special sales”? ( Kind of like those Fingerhut catalogs, something you can just go buy for $69.99 Fingerhut will sell you for just $4.00 a week for the rest of your life.)
Since I started this thread, it’s time for my 2 cents.
I think people tend to be short sighted. They’ll be more likely to buy a cheap, but poor quality item, rather than a better quality but more expensive one.
Sears had a high hurdle for their Craftsman and Kenmore products - which were all made by leading manufacturers. My area is tires, and the company I worked for struggled to get Sears business - the quality needed to be extremely high and the price needed to be low - a tough combination to deal with. This resulted in Sears items being higher cost than the discount stores - and people flocked to the discount stores when they first appeared. Sears responded by cutting costs - and quality.
Sears also suffered from poor management, but they were not alone. Most US companies went after short term profits - and still do. Asian manufacturers have a much longer term vision than most US companies. First it was the Japanese, then the Koreans, now the Chinese - and still US management hasn’t figured out that we have a global economy and need to think longer term and more strategically. (This could lead to a similar discussion of politics, but I’m not going there!)
And to end this on an automotive theme - I think you can see the above in many areas of the automotive industry: Car manufacturers, tire manufacturers, parts manufacturers, retail and service outlets (Pep Boys comes to mind!), etc.
The internet killed Sears. Amazon, Tire Rack, and Harbor Freight are businesses that ate Sears’ lunch as consumers flocked to the internet where they could see product reviews and get low prices with the convenience of home delivery. Sears was slow to respond to the internet threat and compounded things with poor customer service and the automotive service scandal previously mentioned where they were ripping off customers with unnecessary repairs.
I was once a Sears customer but only set foot in their stores now to use them as easy access to the mall since their parking lot is never full and the store is empty enough to walk through no matter how busy the mall is.
I could see the beginning of the end for Sears when I took my 6 month old Craftsman 1/2 ratchet in for a replacement. It stripped out internally and all they did was to hand me a plastic bag with new internals for my ratchet. I even had to replace them myself.
There was this thing called ‘Fair Trade Law’ that virtually eliminated discounting prices on many products for years. The MSRP was by law the minimum selling price. But then there were regulations on a great many businesses that seemed to pick winners and losers by protecting those that were established early on. Until the mid 1970s only 2 truck lines could leagally deliver freight that had crossed a state line into the small town I lived in.
Of course the public took it for granted that “That’s just the way it is” at that time regarding protecting certain industries just as they do today.
Back in the '80s, one of my co-workers was carrying a bag bearing the new slogan that Sears was using at that time. Do you recall…Sears has everything?
I amused most of the people in the office when I modified that slogan as…
Sears has everything…but you wouldn’t want most of it.
The competition from cost cutters like Walmart and the internet are tough for any retailer to weather. It didn’t help Sears to be managed by a hedge fund corporate raider with no retail experience. He ended up doing to Sears what he did to Kmart.
Once you start down the morale-killing death spiral of cost-cutting, layoffs, and selling assets, it’s very difficult to recover.
What happened to Sears happened to many companies over the years.
The MAIN reason is the stock owners.
People use to invest in companies for the long term…They saw companies like IBM, Sears, GM as long term investments where their money is safe.
Now people who invest want to see a 10% (or higher) growth each year. It was easy for Sears to grow back in the 50’s thru 70’s because the company was expanding. By the 80’s there wasn’t too many other places they could expand to…but the investors still wanted that 10% growth.
So the only way to achieve that is to cut costs. First labor. In the 80’s more then50% of the people who worked in the Sears stores were full-time employees. Now it’s less then 20% who are full time. Some stores only have 1-2 full-time employees…the rest are part-time.
Next came goods. find cheaper goods and sell at the same price. Tools was an obvious target. Use to be made in the US. Their power-tools use to be made by Porter Cable or Milwaukee. Not sure who makes them now…but for a few decades they were made by Singer Sowing machine.
"I find the garden hoses to be a great deal."
I have the black rubber Craftsman hoses. I’ve left them outside year-around for literally decades. I don’t even drain them in winter. They have been through sun exposure and temperature ranges of 120 degrees, plus. They don’t kink easily. The only drawback is that they are heavier than some. Who cares?
CSA
In the 60s a credit card was a status symbol and Sears may have been one of the easiest to get. And they offered the Easy Payment or EP account that brought the customers in on a regular basis to make payments and conveniently pick up a few things to add to the account. Sears led the way into the “minimum payment due” credit strategy. The price of a new refrigerator didn’t matter. All that mattered was the weekly or monthly minimum payment. And who paid any attention to the 24% APR on the balance?
I.ve had a Sears credit card since 1965, but have not used it lately. Agree in the sixties I was only able to get a Gulf credit card and a Sears. The Gulf credit cars was good for car expenses and Holiday Inns which we used for travel and dining out. As newly marrieds we were also able to get a K-Mart credit card and used it to get household stuff and baby items. We never bough expensive items at K-Mart.
When Sears stated to use other credit cards, I started using my airline points cards to get travel rewards.
Bundle all the comments made so far and ALL of them are why Sears/K-Mart is dying. Many many examples of the same thing… Penny’s anyone? I have seen Penny’s mentioned but Montgomery Ward can be tossed in there, too. Sears catalog competed with Wards for years until Ward’s went under. Its all related to the same thing; big, slow moving, companies being behind the changes around them, not in front. When the sales start to fall, the first reaction is to cut costs by reducing employees and cheapening the product. It is a spiral that is rarely reversible.
Think of all the things Sears used to sell that we now get at Lowes and Home Depot.
I.ve had a Sears credit card since 1965, but have not used it lately.
That’s funny…because I use to have a Sears credit card…but then Sears canceled my credit card and issued me a mastercard - which I just threw away.
I hope Penney’s doesn’t go under because that is the only place I know to buy underwear. Speaking of Sears, does anyone remember its lower line tools with the Dunlap name? My dad had an electric drill with the Dunlap trademark.
@MikeInNH Yes, I understand Sears is going to a regular credit or bank card. Like you, I’ve got enough cards already, and will just shred it.
Agree with @texases Between Staples, Home Depot, Lowes and some others to choose from, who needs Sears. For suits I go to The Wearhouse
I must admit they have some nice down filled parkas; my daughter just bought one for just over $100.
Too funny. I had a Sears card up until about 7-8 years ago. I went to use it and the guys says it’s no good. So I used one of my bank cards. Worried someone had scammed my identity or some such nefarious activity so called them up the next day and lo and behold, they cancelled my account because I hadn’t used it in 6 months. ??? Not even a letter or call to let me know. I asked if the person could see my buying history. Yep. See all that money I have spent there over the years? Kiss that goodbye. And I have a FICO well above 850. I haven’t bought one single item from them since then…They’re circling right behind the tidy bowl man…
I’m only in my late 30s, but Sears was a great place to go shopping when I was a kid. They had pretty much everything you needed, a true department store. The employees were actually knowledgeable about the products, and the products were of high quality.
The last time I went to a Sears, I was shopping for a new lawnmower. Apparently they only had 2 employees working the entire lower floor of the store… and both of them were helping 60+ year olds at the cash register. Oh, and they had urban/rap/hip hop music blaring from above. Total mismatch of customers and shopping atmosphere. I walked out and haven’t been back. What a shame.