I haven’t been keeping track of Sears since we lost our last one years ago. But saw a blurb on the news - There are only 9 Sears stores left. Where I grew up (Central NY) - we had at least 5.
I file all my old product user manuals by where I bought it. The “Sears” section is the biggest. You can guess my age by this fact … lol
Keep thinking Sears jumped out of the mail order business too soon.
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Sears management screwed up this big-time. They didn’t understand on-line sales. Companies like LL Bean transitioned easily from catalog sales on-line sales. Sears screwed it up. If someone at Sears knew what they were doing Amason would probably not exist or be a lot smaller than it is today. Sears had everything in place to dominate the on-line market and screwed up.
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One of the closed Sears relatively close to me actually REopened several months ago
We visited and it doesn’t seem they’re being managed any better than before
Not surprising. The last one near us closed in 2019. At the time there were 3 others in Maryland still open.
Mail order was a bad idea until it wasn’t. Downtown department stores were a big thing until mass migration to the suburbs. Suburban malls were all the rage until people started asking for stuff they saw online. The stores could buy a lot of it but it was available online for less. Covid turned most people into online shoppers. Mrs JT never shopped online until we had to. Now it’s rare for her to walk into a store. She goes to Target at least twice each week. She orders before driving over and has them deliver to the car.
I’ve often said that Sears was basically Amazon 1.0 What they did at the beginning was similarly world-transforming, and probably even more remarkable as a feat given the state of transport and communications tech at the time. Bezos and co. had far more powerful tools at their fingertips.
I also don’t think about Sears much any longer as it’s store is long gone from my area, and it’s “death” seems like old news. The part of the mall that it used to occupy is currently being turned into a Home Depot after having sat vacant for…IDK - 10 years?
What tech did they have when they started that Sears didn’t have access to? The internet was at it’s infancy. Amazon invested in Tech and then built the infrastructure. Sears already had the infrastructure (warehouses, ordering department). All they had to do was invest in the on-line tech.
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I meant when they first started out. Like turn of the 20th century when they became a mail order behemoth. I didn’t mean where they were when Amazon first came “online.”
I wasn’t saying they didn’t f* it up for the internet age. Obviously they did.
But historically speaking they were “Amazon” long before there was an Amazon, and without an internet and whatnot. Think the year 1900.
There were more than just Sears with catalogs. JCPenny to name one. Also nearly gone.
And then we had the catalog shopping which could have been Amazon-like. Montgomery Wards and some specialty catalogs like JCWhitney, Autoworld, Performance Automotive Warehouse. Summit and Jegs figured out this internet selling thing.
A LOT of companies ignored that little online bookseller and failed to see the future.
But they did have a mail-order and call-up presence long before Amazon was even around. As I stated LL Bean did to and they transitioned nicely to on-line. 30 years ago, LL Bean was the second largest mail-order store in the country - only behind Sears.
I used to shop (occasionally) at Sears, and there were three of their stores reasonably close to my home. IIRC, one was about 10 miles away, and the other ones were probably a bit more than 20 miles away.
As of a couple of years ago, all 3 of them closed-down, leaving just one Sears store in the entire state of NJ. Then, last Spring, the remaining Sears was closed.
Bad management, followed by the “leadership” of a CEO who was determined to extract the value of their real estate and allow the chain to slowly die, caused their demise. In total, I think that they had at least 10 stores in NJ, as little as a decade ago. Now, there are none. I don’t even give any thought to Sears at this point.
That was done purposely. The CEO of the hedge-fund that owns Sears (Eddie Lampert) somehow ruined Sears and K-Mart into bankruptcy, yet increased his personal wealth to over $2 BILLION.
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The next major retailer to enter that territory might be Macy’s. The fact that their real estate holdings are worth approximately double the company’s value (based on share prices), could cause them to begin to sell-off some of their properties.
There is a regional mall just South of Princeton which once featured four anchor stores:
Lord & Taylor
Sears
Macy’s
JC Penney
The Sears at that mall closed a few years ago. L&T closed all of their stores a couple of years ago. That JC Penney–like most of their stores–doesn’t seem to get much foot traffic, and if that store closes, I think that the mall is likely done-for. If Macy’s is the last remaining anchor store, the mall is doomed–IMO.
Here’s what I remember about Sears:
They had successfully transitioned from a mail order company to a mall store set up. They were very successful with their stores. They stopped doing the catalog about 10 years before the internet took off. Even after that, it took a while for Amazon to catch on. Remember, Amazon started out as a bookseller.
Then people started buying on line rather than going to the store. By then Sears was fully committed to the brick-and-mortar concept and didn’t have anyone left who could run a mail order business. Besides, their management bought into the American “short term profit” model rather than the “sacrifice the short term for long term gains” model that had made them successful.
Don’t forget that the big box stores such as Walmart were stealing customers from the mall based stores - which needed to make more of a profit to cover the cost of being in the mall.
I can not remember the last time I was in a mall. And to make matters worse, Amazon has so many products that are too unique to be stocked in a store.
What I find very interesting is the idea that the price of shipping is so low that it offsets the cost of running a brick-and-mortar store.
Back in the 80’s Sears still had 30%-40% of it’s sales through catalog sales. They just never invested in on-line. Even when Amazon was taking off - Sears didn’t follow suit. Walmart now has a very large on-line store where you can buy pretty much anything (a lot more then what they sell in their retail stores).
Totally agree that Sears was just a failure of imagination, or to recognize and adapt.
When I was a kid, Sears was the place to go to for clothes, electronics, tools, appliances, even car care (to get this back to car stuff). It slowly withered away.
The last Sears I went to was about 10 years ago. I was interested in buying a riding lawnmower, and thought I’d give Sears a chance. After about 15 minutes of walking around…no sales associate spoke to me…they were playing hip hop music on the sound system…and I was the only one under 70 in the store, which was largely empty anyway. In fact, there appeared to be only (2) employees in the whole store, and they were doing anything but helping customers, including waiting on the ones waiting at the registers to pay. Needless to say, I ended up buying the lawnmower from Lowes.
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For the last 10 years they were open around here, my trips to Sears were limited to tools and appliances (when on sale). Oh, and a DieHard a few times. I now go to Lowes for most appliances, and I need to get rid of, not buy, tools. Car batteries from Autozone.
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That’s what my wife says.
I like to point out my wife’s kitchen tool and cookbook collection when she says things like that. 