No one goes to the mall anymore.
Their home service sucks.
More evidence that the economy is roaring back, according to Obama.
Gonna be a run on Craftsman tools.
This century’s Sears & Roebuck is Amazon.com. Sears can’t compete with Amazon and Overstock for non-brick & mortar sales, and it can’t compete with Walmart for in-store sales. It had a good run, but it’s over.
Means nothing. Sears has essentially been little more than a real estate play for years now.
OTOH, I have my own theory about the downfall of Sears and Wards, and others. They used to carry guns, ammo etc, and good well made, if somewhat plain, clothing. Then they went all "high fashion", with glitz in the store displays, and eliminated those yucky guns.. and started their long goodby.
Both Wards and Sears once had their own house brand of firearm and ammunition as well as fishing and other "outdoors" type supplies. Western Field and J.C. Higgens respectively. The nicer models from Sears were called "Ted Williams" models.
Why do I get the sick feeling that Bain Capital is just waiting in the lurches???
Just looked at Sears Holdings. Sears, Roebuck & Co. has 2700 stores, so closing 1200 of them is a big chunk.
Strangely enough, I’m wearing a Hawaiian shirt from Sears right now. Sad to see them slip away.
This is the end of the old catalog days, just another event in the evolution of capitalism. Businesses that have outlived their business model must die so that fresh thinkers can thrive.
I have loved and bought many Sears products. The Sears and especially Craftsman names are still good well recognized names. There are some companies which are sitting on a pile of cash, what somebody must do is snatch up the name and promote it as the “American Made” alternative to all the junk out there. Sell off all the real estate, pump up the internet sales.
It could be done if done right (Hank Meijer are you listening?)
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people./sarc
Mark for later reading.
LLS
I think it’s unfair to lay the decline of Sears at Obama’s feet simply because Sears has been in a complete and utter tailspin for well over a decade, exacerbated by the foolish decisions to acquire/merge with K-Mart and to sell their exclusive Craftsman line outside of their own store and catalog system.
Sears used to be the best place to go for appliances, but it would take longer to check out and schedule a delivery, thanks to poorly-trained staff and antiquated systems, than it took to shop and compare the items in the first place.
Oh! Wait! KMart already tried that. Never mind.
As a master mechanic I would have to get any Craftsman tools at a strong discounted price, I’m too spoiled by the higher quality Snapon tools. The feel is different, the tolerances are different and the steel is definitely different.
Even the Snapon cloned tools from Taiwan look and feel better than the Sears branded hand tools.
About the few things that I will buy from Sears is the widescreen TV’s over the years, theirs are better for the most part, the prices are better. Every single HDTV I have bought from Walmart which has been three over the years has turned to crap within a month.