Sears and Kmart are such great examples of not evolving with the times.
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
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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.
They did, but they waited until Amazon was ahead to do it. If I remember correctly they were more expensive than Amazon with no where near the selection of specialty stuff like computer parts or electronics. It meant that Sears was a place I basically never went to except if I was looking for something I literally couldn't find anywhere else.
The thing is, Sears already had the massive infrastructure in place to do it. The downside would have been trying to get their target market to make the switch during a time when Internet wasn't as ubiquitous and there still wasn't much trust in purchasing online.
But why would they even need their target market to switch? They needed to also do online shopping: with their existing distribution, their existing catalog, their existing delivery or in-store pickup. They already had most of the pieces so just needed the online part to bring in new customers or keep customers from switching
Which is crazy, because pre-Amazon Sears was exactly the place that had everything, especially appliance repair and parts. They never did have computer stuff but I wouldn’t use Amazon for that either.
If they had come up with a good interface.
There are a couple of stores that I have seen that used to be brick and mortar or catalog based and made the transition to online but their website is terrible.
McMaster-Carr comes to mind. I'm never really sure if I have found the part I'm looking for whenever I shop on their website.
Maybe it's a skill issue, sure, but online shopping should not require an onboarding process.
I think McMaster's transition from catalog to website is brilliant. I've had younger crew be amazed when I gave them an old catalog; like keep it in the break room and flip through it while looking at McMaster on their phone.
I do wonder why they kept the black and white pictures.
McMaster-carr is amazing for technical parts. I love it.
They were sabotaged. Toys R us too.
Yeah I thought it was corporate raiding and massive leverage that killed them. Like most success name brands that made it to the 80s.
Bain Capital was well known for that kind of bullshit.
Fuck Bain capital. Read so much scummy stuff done by them.
"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
In Canada we have Mastercraft tools.
Sold by our lovingly pet named Crappy Tire stores (Canadian Tire)
That's a friendlier name than I usually hear
Do tell.
Crappy tire is what my dad used to call it.
He also called McDonald's 'choke n puke'.
Not that creative: Shitty Tire
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...
Man, I've smelled tool boxes with that vomit smell and always wondered wtf that was. The most recent one was one my ex inherited from her grandfather. We could not get the smell out.
Mastercraft has similar quality. Some great stuff for the average joe
Great, I always wondered if a dog or kid hit my toolbox at some point and how it keeps smelling after decades
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.
To be honest, I'm kinda surprised that I haven't seen any music store chains pop up. People like records, CDs, cassettes and so on for the same reason.
Around here, vinyl records and local record stores are still doing alright. There's at least 4 if them I know of, and they also sell some cds and tapes still. It is a little odd that no chain has tried to break into that space (or one of the megacorps like Time-WB trying to revitalize some deadmall brand like Sam Goodies.)
Newbury Comics is one place that's also managed to hang in there, which is pretty cool
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.
CompanyMan? I love that channel but it got really repetitive with "Rise and Fall" videos.
Not because the dude makes bad content, but because every single failure was because the company was bought out by PE firms that tanks the business, or they went public, expanded way too rapidly and collapsed.
They literally said 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.
avgn has a great video on that piece of shit
I don't know. I got to play with a virtual boy once and honestly for the time it wasn't bad it just wasn't good.
Nobody wanted to stare at Red lasers play a video game, but the technology itself had potential.
the execution was god awful just in that stupid little stand alone. zero comfortable way to play it
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.