WI: Sears Survives

DominusNovus

Here’s one of history’s ironies: a storied business that thrived by cornering the mail order market, dies in no small part to abandoning that market just as it came to dominate again.

Yes, thats an oversimplification, but lets consider these two years:
1993: Sears ends its general merchandise catalog
1994: Amazon is born, while other online retailers also begin to take shape
Sears was turning its back on home delivery right as it started to come back.

So, lets assume that someone in Sears leadership at the time is a visionary and decides to gamble a bit on the infant World Wide Web, and they begin to migrate their catalog to the internet over the 90s.

This is unlikely to be super important in the short run, but if they’re growing their online business right alongside Amazon (who might stick to books for all we know), then we might see Sears not only survive the transition to an online economy, but also perhaps an earlier adoption by consumers of online shopping, perhaps a year or two ahead of schedule (public trust in Sears and all that).

Their stores might continue to close more or less on pace with OTL, or at least downsize, turning into fulfullment centers and showcases (and probably loaded woth impulse buys). The company probably wouldn’t care too much, ‘we were in the business of home delivery long before we had mall stores, this is just getting back to our roots.’

Anyone find this plausible?
 

Colonel Zoidberg

No reason it couldn’t. I mean, it would have to be better at it in the beginning and not just jump on the bandwagon when everyone else does. If they stick it out for another couple of years and decide to do what Amazon did, they may have been a lot more successful.

Side note: I worked at Sears at the nadir of the recession. I sold electronics on commission. It was great before I got there - by the time I got there, it was damn near impossible to make decent money at it, and it was nothing more than a foray into part-time retail to guide me through some tough times. All the money to be made was in extended warranties and accessories - when I got there, selling a TV was hardly worth it. If it cost $1000, I made $10. A couple of years beforehand, it would have gotten me nearly $100. Selling two TVs a day would have made me a decent living as a salesperson in the olden days; by the time I got there it wasn’t worth a shit. So no one stayed, no one made money, and no one gave a damn. And that right there was part of the reason Sears didn’t make it - no one gave a damn and no one had any reason to.
 

Keanu

I think it's plausible, but it could definitely end up backfiring depending on how long it takes the company to fully adjust/make the transition. Blockbuster for example started the transition to boxes and streaming too late and it actually wound up hurting them more.

Sears would definitely have an advantage getting in on the ground floor and having name recognition, but if they don't invest or promote the service enough they could be overtaken by a competitor. If Amazon or another equivilant still rises succesfully, they could cause problems. From what I understand and have seen, Amazon is very predatory and when it wants to get into a market for a certain item will offer to buy smaller companies or if they don't accept, bankrupt them by underselling. So Sears will have to watch out, and be willing to let stores close as the market develops as you said.

But I believe it would be totally plausible for them to stay in business if they had of had foresight.
 

DominusNovus

TechStuff podcast actually did a pretty indepth series on Blockbuster versus Netflix, and Blockbuster actually had the infrastructure and tech, but their franchisees and key boardmembers hated the new site and killed it.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Keanu said:
. . . Amazon is very predatory and when it wants to get into a market for a certain item will offer to buy smaller companies or if they don't accept, bankrupt them by underselling. . .
Click to expand...
This is supposed to be illegal, but perhaps in the actual world, not so much.
 

Mark E.

I recall that computer shopper magazines were dominant through the nineties, so it could be after 2000, closer to 2005, when Sears takes the plunge and goes on-line. An item to remember is that Sears has some real recognizable brand names: Craftsman, Kenmore, Die-Hard. Amazon, though, subcontracts to smaller suppliers, a concept different to Sears. There is no reason Sears can't stock and ship out of Chicago (or other hubs) the way they did when the catalog came out early in the century.

As for K-Mart, its competitor was Wal-Mart before Amazon came along.
 
Driftless

Driftless

Donor
Would the order online, ship to your local Sears store with no shipping fees have helped (early days especially)?
 
Worffan101

Worffan101

Very simply, they need a different CEO from the idiot who tried to reorganize it along Ayn Rand lines. That was what killed the company, not the recession.
 

Kaze

Banned
There is only one way for Sears to really survive. Do not be a dinosaur. Do not sit on one's laurels. Do not call the internet a "fad". When the internet comes into existence - make a presence before Amazon, and deliver to location.
 

DominusNovus

Worffan101 said:
Very simply, they need a different CEO from the idiot who tried to reorganize it along Ayn Rand lines. That was what killed the company, not the recession.
Click to expand...

Who said anything about the recession? Its quite obvious that they couldn’t compete in the new economy, Ayn Rand (?!) amd the recession have little to nothing to do with it. The irony is that the new economy resembles the one that birthed Sears in the first place.
 

Carl Schwamberger

Sears had a huge advantage over the other on line retailers. They had the infrastructure, the warehouses, the suppliers, the inventory/ordering system, the banking, everything except a online catalog. I remember a lot of internet sales startups crashing due to hasty lashed together inventory & delivery systems failing.
 

TyranicusMaximus

DominusNovus said:
Who said anything about the recession? Its quite obvious that they couldn’t compete in the new economy, Ayn Rand (?!) amd the recession have little to nothing to do with it. The irony is that the new economy resembles the one that birthed Sears in the first place.
Click to expand...

Jeff Bezos reflects a Randian view as much as any other businessman I can think of.
 
Driftless

Driftless

Donor
Driftless said:
Would the order online, ship to your local Sears store with no shipping fees have helped (early days especially)?
Click to expand...

Mark E. said:
Isn't that what they did in the late sixties and seventies?
Click to expand...
You'd either send in the form completed in pen and ink, or the really daring would phone it in. It wasn't till the mid-90's when computers and internet for business got traction that online ordering became a possibility. That's where Sear's old school catalog model already had the ordering and shipping structures in place. They should have been able to eat Amazon's lunch in the mid-90's - if they were looking ahead....

Plus, with orders being run through Sears, grandpa and grandma might be talked into buying via the internet vs Amazon in 1995. You might get more early adopters from a surprising demographic group...
 
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Mark E.

Driftless said:
You'd either send in the form completed in pen and ink, or the really daring would phone it in.
Click to expand...
When we moved to Kansas City in the sixties, we phoned the order in and it was shipped to the local Sears outlet, close to home. The outlets were small stores that had very few items, usually appliances.
 
Driftless

Driftless

Donor
Mark E. said:
When we moved to Kansas City in the sixties, we phoned the order in and it was shipped to the local Sears outlet, close to home. The outlets were small stores that had very few items, usually appliances.
Click to expand...

I was being a bit facetious about the phone thing :p; but it does point to the concept Sears was all set up and ready to go before Amazon, and they seemed to be unwilling to walk through the door to the 21st Century.

You can almost hear those infamous words in the Sears boardroom.... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
 
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