We went inside a Sears and saw why the company is dying

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

http://www.businessinsider.com/sears-failing-store-edward-lampert-bankrupt-retail-2017-2?utm_content=bufferaa914&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Sears losses are mounting as the once iconic brand continues to struggle. The company announced it had a brutal holiday quarter and is planning to cut costs by $1 billion in 2017. Full year revenue is expected to fall 12% from last year to $22.1 billion. The company has been shutting stores and selling off assets to stem losses and repay debt.

[jpsb]

When Sears gave into the mob and dropped Ivanka Trumps line they pissed off most of their customer base. Sears is done.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

When Sears gave into the mob and dropped Ivanka Trumps line they pissed off most of their customer base. Sears is done.

Sears was dying long long before Trump.

[jpsb]

Sears was dying long long before Trump.

True, Amazon and Walmart. Sears couldn't compete. However they blew any chance of a comeback by giving in to the mob. I was going to buy a bunch of stuff there (selling some property) now it's Lowes or Homedepot for me.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

True, Amazon and Walmart. Sears couldn't compete. However they blew any chance of a comeback by giving in to the mob. I was going to buy a bunch of stuff there (selling some property) now it's Lowes or Homedepot for me.

No they blew it by continuing to suck.

[alicewonders]

When Sears gave into the mob and dropped Ivanka Trumps line they pissed off most of their customer base. Sears is done.

Yes, I think they decided to just go with a quicker death, rather than postpone the suffering any longer.  lol

[Restored]

It's the same way with churches. When you take a political stand, you alienate half of your customers.

[r9etb]

No they blew it by continuing to suck.

A quip for the ages....

[Cripplecreek]

Sears was dying long long before Trump.

Sears was dying 20 years ago.

Stores like Sears, JC Penny, and Wards all harmed themselves by clinging to an image that the population no longer appreciates. They all held themselves out there as the home of the finest quality at a time when the population put cheap over all other concerns.  Basically they were classy stores in a world that has abandoned class.

K-Mart was at the opposite end of the scale. It was known as the place where the low income people shopped. In the 1980s the last place a teenage girl could tolerate being seen was in K-Mart. Oddly enough they succumbed to the same thing that took down classy stores like Sears. The lower classes merged with the middle classes and other stores grew to serve that wider segment.

WalMart, Meijer, Target etc are the real culprits.

[jpsb]

Sears was dying 20 years ago.

Stores like Sears, JC Penny, and Wards all harmed themselves by clinging to an image that the population no longer appreciates. They all held themselves out there as the home of the finest quality at a time when the population put cheap over all other concerns.  Basically they were classy stores in a world that has abandoned class.

K-Mart was at the opposite end of the scale. It was known as the place where the low income people shopped. In the 1980s the last place a teenage girl could tolerate being seen was in K-Mart. Oddly enough they succumbed to the same thing that took down classy stores like Sears. The lower classes merged with the middle classes and other stores grew to serve that wider segment.

WalMart, Meijer, Target etc are the real culprits.

LOL, love the part about a teenage girl hating being seen at Kmart, very true. But what really happened is that Amazon and Walmart changed the retail model.  Amazon brought us on-line shopping. Who doesn't like that? And Walmart brought us "the China" price. Who doesn't like saving a few bucks?

If Sears and other retailers had caught on in late 90s early 2000s and adopted the new retail model they might have prospered but they did not catch on until recently.

Sears had huge customer loyalty, but siding with "the mod" against Trump will IMHO prove to be suicidal.

[SZonian]

Sears pissed off the shadetree mechanics and DIY'ers with their changes to the Sears and Craftsman brands and their "free replacement" policy on hand tools.

Started buying garbage products from China to replace the quality products from Japan and Taiwan to sell under their Sears brand. 

I bought an electricians plier with wire stripper, crimpers that was made in Japan...in 1983...still have it.  I'll go to Harbor Freight and buy some one off tool on the cheap vs. paying for it at Sears.

Drill bits are garbage...dull quickly and break easily.  Their quick change kits are also garbage, the drill bits come loose from their adapter and spin...

Power tools manufactured in China and sold as Craftsman.

Diehard batteries used to "die hard"...now?  I've used the warranty/pro-rate on each battery that has gone into the wife's car since replacing the OEM Honda battery.  4 batteries in the space of 8 years or so.  She likes them, who knows why, so that's why she still gets them.

Started hassling customers about tool replacements.  I had a 1/4" drive ratchet that started to fail, instead of just telling me to get a new one off the rack, they were persistent in telling me to rebuild it myself with a kit.  I am more than capable of doing so, but that's not the point.  Started challenging me on worn screwdriver tips, especially Phillips/crosspoints and getting close to accusing me of abusing them.  I told them the quality of the tips was garbage and had to get a manager to intervene.  I paid a premium for the tool, I expect you to honor your policy.

I hate to see Sears go, but these are self-inflicted wounds...

[Bigun]

Sears pissed off the shadetree mechanics and DIY'ers with their changes to the Sears and Craftsman brands and their "free replacement" policy on hand tools.

Started buying garbage products from China to replace the quality products from Japan and Taiwan to sell under their Sears brand. 

I bought an electricians plier with wire stripper, crimpers that was made in Japan...in 1983...still have it.  I'll go to Harbor Freight and buy some one off tool on the cheap vs. paying for it at Sears.

Drill bits are garbage...dull quickly and break easily.  Their quick change kits are also garbage, the drill bits come loose from their adapter and spin...

Power tools manufactured in China and sold as Craftsman.

Diehard batteries used to "die hard"...now?  I've used the warranty/pro-rate on each battery that has gone into the wife's car since replacing the OEM Honda battery.  4 batteries in the space of 8 years or so.  She likes them, who knows why, so that's why she still gets them.

Started hassling customers about tool replacements.  I had a 1/4" drive ratchet that started to fail, instead of just telling me to get a new one off the rack, they were persistent in telling me to rebuild it myself with a kit.  I am more than capable of doing so, but that's not the point.  Started challenging me on worn screwdriver tips, especially Phillips/crosspoints and getting close to accusing me of abusing them.  I told them the quality of the tips was garbage and had to get a manager to intervene.  I paid a premium for the tool, I expect you to honor your policy.

I hate to see Sears go, but these are self-inflicted wounds...

Sears no longer even owns the trade name Craftsman!

 https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/09/sears-sells-craftsman-brand-fights-to-survive.aspx

[SZonian]

Sears no longer even owns the trade name Craftsman!

 https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/09/sears-sells-craftsman-brand-fights-to-survive.aspx

Well, in a way...FTA:

Rather than buying Craftsman outright, Stanley Black & Decker is buying the rights to use the Craftsman brand outside of Sears-affiliated sales channels. Meanwhile, Sears Holdings will be able to continue producing and selling its own line of Craftsman-branded products in Sears and Kmart stores. Sears will start paying royalties to Stanley Black & Decker for use of the Craftsman brand after 15 years.

[Bigun]

Well, in a way...FTA:

Either way, as you said earlier, the brand no longer means a thing.  And IMHO that is a tragedy.

[INVAR]

If Sears and other retailers had caught on in late 90s early 2000s and adopted the new retail model they might have prospered but they did not catch on until recently.

Sears killed it's future when it abandoned and ended it's catalog sales in 1993.  They should have brought the Sears catalog back at the advent of internet sales - and perhaps they may have reclaimed it's title of retailer king instead of Amazon.  But they refused and bought Kmart instead and sealed their fate.

The only Sears store within 3 hours of here is closing in April, but it has been a shell and an empty depressing place for years.  Only their hardware department had any life in it.  Parking lot at the end of the mall where they are anchored has been chronically empty for years.  Even during the holidays.

Sears is done and has been for awhile.

[Machiavelli]

Sears was dying long long before Trump.

Exactly!

[Smokin Joe]

Sears was dying 20 years ago.

Stores like Sears, JC Penny, and Wards all harmed themselves by clinging to an image that the population no longer appreciates. They all held themselves out there as the home of the finest quality at a time when the population put cheap over all other concerns.  Basically they were classy stores in a world that has abandoned class.

K-Mart was at the opposite end of the scale. It was known as the place where the low income people shopped. In the 1980s the last place a teenage girl could tolerate being seen was in K-Mart. Oddly enough they succumbed to the same thing that took down classy stores like Sears. The lower classes merged with the middle classes and other stores grew to serve that wider segment.

WalMart, Meijer, Target etc are the real culprits.

What killed the local K-Mart was keeping Rosie O'Donnel as a spokesperson after she jumped Tom Selleck on her show over making an NRA ad. Selleck was there to plug a movie and she went apesh*t ranting at him and against guns.
At the time, K-mart sold more guns than any other retailer in the US. Gun owners demanded she be given the bum's rush. They kept Rosie, and gun owners boycotted. (think a boycott by 80 million people, that isn't going to end well). 
The parking lot at the nearest K-Mart went from being fairly full week long to being empty. They closed a year later. I have little doubt that scene was repeated across America.

People are creatures of habit. Get them used to a new store, and they won't go in the 'old' one so much. The Wal-Mart next door was packed. (Add to that the Martha Stewart line of stuff had a color palette that ranged from gopher puke green to baby scat brown...)

[JustPassinThru]

Sears was dying long long before Trump.

I'm seldom on your side, but this time you have it straight on.

Sears has been in a death spiral since Sears Roebuck & Company sold itself to Kmart Holdings...which renamed itself Sears Holdings.

Actually before; but before the sale, it was responsibly managed.  Kmart, by contrast, became a plaything of one Eddie Lampert...moneychanger extraordinaire, crony bankster who decided he was a management guru.

He rode Kmart into the toilet, into Bankruptcy Court, a few years before; and somehow regained control after the crash.  Used its new capitalization to buy Sears...thinking, I guess, to loot Sears' extensive cash resources and real estate.

And he has.  And just as the first time round, the combined two companies are going down...down...DOWN. 

Poor store management; poor inventory and product availability.  Dirty outlets.  Obnoxious clerks badgering customers who just want to pay.  Chaotic store and lower management...fired for trivialities; often quitting in disgust.

And at heart, the same basic problem Sears had earlier:  THEY HAVE NOT ADAPTED.  Walmart was eating them for lunch.  And FWIW, Walmart, years ago, paid MORE than Sears after Kmart took control.

Eddie Lampert knows it all; so he has changed none of his failed strategies.  He runs it like a hobby, meeting his managers via Skype feeds from his Palm Beach mansion.

Sears is about at the end of its rope; and will choke and strangle this summer.  Fall at the latest.

[JustPassinThru]

Sears killed it's future when it abandoned and ended it's catalog sales in 1993.  They should have brought the Sears catalog back at the advent of internet sales - and perhaps they may have reclaimed it's title of retailer king instead of Amazon.  But they refused and bought Kmart instead and sealed their fate.

The only Sears store within 3 hours of here is closing in April, but it has been a shell and an empty depressing place for years.  Only their hardware department had any life in it.  Parking lot at the end of the mall where they are anchored has been chronically empty for years.  Even during the holidays.

Sears is done and has been for awhile.

I could understand abandoning the catalog business, in the prism of the time...it was very, very expensive.  In retrospect, it could have been a jumping-off point to an Internet portal...PDF of a catalog, then an online catalog...Sears could have out-Amazoned Amazon.

Not that that would have done much good - Amazon has never made money, even today.  But Sears could at least have kept business and cash flow that way, kept itself relevant.  In the early days of Amazon...Sears-versus-Amazon, both online shopping portals...that would have been a no-brainer.

But Sears was done when Sears management and owners gave up and sold the company to Kmart.  They wanted out; and maybe they were right.  But watching this icon of Americana crash, is beyond depressing.

[INVAR]

Add to that the Martha Stewart line of stuff had a color palette that ranged from gopher puke green to baby scat brown...

You know.... I thought those colors sounded familiar.

I didn't find them in my PMS color chart - but I dug up my old box of Crayola's and wouldn't you know it.... THERE THEY WERE!!!

[IsailedawayfromFR]

WalMart, Meijer, Target etc are the real culprits.

Walmart maybe, but not Target, which is dying as its Management is trying to appeal to a small transgender segment and hemorrhaging its main base.

Comparison graphic that shows particularly the respective earnings announcements from last year. 

[JustPassinThru]

Sears was dying 20 years ago.

Stores like Sears, JC Penny, and Wards all harmed themselves by clinging to an image that the population no longer appreciates. They all held themselves out there as the home of the finest quality at a time when the population put cheap over all other concerns.  Basically they were classy stores in a world that has abandoned class.

K-Mart was at the opposite end of the scale. It was known as the place where the low income people shopped. In the 1980s the last place a teenage girl could tolerate being seen was in K-Mart. Oddly enough they succumbed to the same thing that took down classy stores like Sears. The lower classes merged with the middle classes and other stores grew to serve that wider segment.

WalMart, Meijer, Target etc are the real culprits.

I disagree with this.

For openers, Kmart has been in trouble since the 1980s.  They promised cheaper, but what they sold, after their initial growth period, was EXPLOITATION.  I had plenty of ugly experiences with Kmart clothing and shoes and with their nasty, abusive return policy.

People were turning away; and it was that opening that Walmart dove into.  They offered, initially, somewhat-better quality over Kmart; MUCH better customer relations, and better relations with their own employees.  While Kmarts were getting dirtier and more disorganized, Walmart - at the time - was clean and well-stocked.

Sears didn't cut it, correct.  The 1980s were the Throwaway Generation...everyone was getting richer, and didn't want to spend money until they were.  It was either Neiman-Marcus or Macy's (which was still a top-tier brand, then) or a junk department store.  This, too, was the era of Target...another store that was well-run in the recent past.

Now, you say, at the end, that Target and others are the real "culprits."  Well...competition is a fact of life in retail, in a free economy.  If a store can only survive without competition or with government or company-town protection...then it's not a going concern; it's a zombie business.  Walking dead.

Kmart and Sears, together, are as good as dead.  Since Boss Eddie has burned through most of their cash and resources, there's little left to use for a turnaround.  The best plan would be to sell out what's left to someone who actually knows how to run retail merchandising.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Sears killed it's future when it abandoned and ended it's catalog sales in 1993.  They should have brought the Sears catalog back at the advent of internet sales - and perhaps they may have reclaimed it's title of retailer king instead of Amazon.  But they refused and bought Kmart instead and sealed their fate.

The only Sears store within 3 hours of here is closing in April, but it has been a shell and an empty depressing place for years.  Only their hardware department had any life in it.  Parking lot at the end of the mall where they are anchored has been chronically empty for years.  Even during the holidays.

Sears is done and has been for awhile.

The catalog business was really a novel idea and I agree it could have morphed into it being internet sales king.

I recall my dad dreaming about owning an Allstate, a car made by Kaiser and sold in the Sears catalog in the early 50s.


A neighbor of mine owns a house that was sold by Sears in the 40s similar to below.  It came in a kit and was assembled on site.

[JustPassinThru]

Your dad dodged a bullet.  The Kaiser Henry J, also sold as the Allstate, was not an especially good or well-made car.  A Willys Jeep flathead four; and NO TRUNK.

The first years of that car, the rear section did not open.  You got the spare out by pulling the back-seat back out, and crawling back in there.

Eventually, shortly before the car was killed for poor sales...they did engineer a trunk lid into it; but by that time, Sears had given up on the idea.

And why did the Kaiser company do this?  GOVERNMENT MONEY.  Tax breaks, specifically.  Then, as now, there were bow-tie-wearing dweebs who wet the bed, working in government offices, and worried about peons driving cars that were TOO BIG. 

Henry Kaiser was the original crony - he knew government business inside and out.  His conglomerate was making money, even if Kaiser-Willys wasn't doing so well; so he built a car to comply, got tax breaks...and NO SALES.

That was shortly before Kaiser-Willys closed down passenger-car lines and focused on military trucks and jeeps. The popularity of the Jeep brand, began about eight years later, and was a surprise to everyone.

[INVAR]

The catalog business was really a novel idea and I agree it could have morphed into it being internet sales king.

There Sears catalog was a big deal when we were growing up, especially around the holidays.  What kid did not pour through the giant phone-book sized full color catalog to drool over the toy offerings and point them out to relatives as the things we wanted under our tree in the 4 months or so after that catalog would come out?

Sears Catalog had that brand identifier nailed down solid with several generations by the time internet sales began in earnest.  The hard part was done in terms of branding and getting name recognition. All they had to do was follow the same idea that the catalog stood for - and do online sales - calling itself "The Sears Catalog".  I'm not talking about a catalog retailer like Service Merchandise, but simply take the concept of catalog sales and turn it into what became Amazon today.    I would think that was a much better risk to recapturing market share than to go and buy a dying brick and mortar discount retailer to challenge Walmart.  That failed, and so too did Sears itself.