Sears and Kmart are such great examples of not evolving with the times.
In SEARS case... just going back to what they originally did. They were Amazon before the internet. You got a catalog in the mail, sent in your order and payment, and they would ship you the product. It's literally the exact same business. It's not even like Amazon came out of nowhere to be as big as it is today, it was on a clear trajectory, at any time SEARS could have jumped into the ring with the business they originally were instead of sticking to the clearly dying department store model.
at any time SEARS could have jumped into the ring with the business they originally were instead of sticking to the clearly dying department store model.
It's not even that, they could've easily kept their store locations. They just needed to move their catalog online and it would've been a done deal.
"Internet shopping is just a fad!"
Ridiculous when they were already known for *catalog shopping
Yet every 3rd garage in North America has Craftsman tools
I still have Craftsman tools I bought in the '80s, and some I inherited from my Dad. My only complaint is whatever they made some of the old screwdriver handles out of has degraded ever-so-slightly and off-gassed something that makes my toolbox smell like somebody puked in it. No idea what's up with that...
Tbf, Craftsman is owned by Stanley Black and Decker (though only since 2017)
Also funny to point out Sears and Kmart as not adapting to the times since they merged in 2005 (like a dinosaur merging with a Neanderthal...)
I honestly thought B&N would join them 10 years ago. I'm amazed that they managed to hang on
Books-A-Million and Barnes & nobles have one advantage, people that really like books like picking up the books and looking at them. It also helps that you can usually get coffee and read your acquisitions and there are board games and all sorts of things that they sell to kind of balance out the mix.
A company cannot disrupt itself. Sears, Kmart, and their colleagues who have perished became particularly good at making a profit through one specific channel. So every executive, every performance bonus, in fact every person on the payroll was focused on maximizing their specific method of turning a profit.
Unfortunately for them, the world changed and the leaders didn't realize they were themselves being disrupted and therefore had no capacity to turn the titanic.
Guy on YouTube likes to highlight these "Empires" on their rise and eventual fall. Many of them get bought out by private firms, gutted for all they have left, and finally shutter the doors on them when their carcass is no longer financially viable. Bright Sun Films, is the channel.
Sears cancelled its catalog the year Amazon launched. Funny coincidence.
The only distinct memory I have of Sears is when I got to try out the Nintendo Virtual Boy in their electronics section back in ~95. I was very excited because I thought Nintendo could do no wrong at that point. Needless to say, I was disabused of that notion very quickly.
They know what they were doing with the bra section of their catalogues.
Craftsman and Kenmore always had pretty decent quality. We bought a lot of our bigger household purchases from Sears back in the day. I do kinda miss 'em, just not the constant harassment from the salespeople to buy an extended warranty or open a Sears charge account. Some of 'em would get a little pushy about those damned warranties...
My ex used to work for them, and he’d make more than 10x the commission on a warranty. I think he also just didn’t make an hourly wage, but it’s been over a decade, so I don’t remember.
The point is that the insistence of salespeople is not a coincidence, but something that sears heavily incentivized
Back in the 80s and before, that extended warranty was incredible. We joke that my parents were the ones responsible for bankrupting Sears because of how much they used the lifetime warranties on things like appliances. As a kid it felt like we had a Sears repairman at the house monthly for the washer or dryer or fridge... Since Sears is long gone, I think I can tell this story. My parents had a betamax player that they really wanted to unrepairably blow up so they'd get a credit towards a new VHS player (they recorded all the shows they watched so they could fast forward through commercials, we had like 100 VHS tapes just to record TV on), so my dad wired up the betamax player to run 240v through it. Sears repaired it.
