A family-owed business is sold out by the descendants of the founders,and is then pirated by management more interested in squeezing all the juice out and destroying it than they were in keeping it solvent.
The big screw-up was taking a national business with a FIRM grip on blue collar workers,and try to attract the upscale Yuppie crowd by opening new stores in pricey and trendy malls.
If Sears had stuck to their business model,they would still be thriving.