The fall of Sears
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- Опубликовано: 25 май 2024
- At its peak, Sears, Roebuck was the largest retailer in the world. And then, the company that dominated the department store and mail order business for much of the 20th century officially filed for bankruptcy, buckling under its massive debt load and staggering losses. David Pogue looks at the company and its failure to evolve in a changing economy.
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Worked at Sears for 20 years. Very sad to see such incompetence in management destroy an American Institution.
Hello David here I used to work for Sears for a short time, and I found it impossible to keep them happy, I was just curious did you have that problem?
The best story I have to tell you is I was at a morning meeting and I had 3 donuts and the manager said I took too many because I did not work for her, But I worked in Sears home improvement department 😀
@@DisneyFan-eg3oz Anyone who worked retail could sit for days and tell
horror stories. But they could also tell a lot of good stories as well. In the
end you pretty much ask yourself if it was worth the years. One thing is
sure. You saw the best, and the worst in people. There were also good
managers, as well as some bad ones who simply had no clue in running
a business. Both male and female managers. My only big wonder was the
fact that someone could cost the company big bucks, and still keep their
job. You do that at a major major job that makes hundreds of millions, and
you are going to be standing in the soup line for sure. Those companies will
not tolerate big mistakes. Retail consisted of simply keeping the customers
coming back. That was the main priority. And if you lost customers, retail
stores were going to start looking for ways to terminate your services for
them. The key was having a great personality, and the ability to do multiple
tasking. If you had those valuable traits, you were considered a valuable
asset. Managers were always stealing one's ideas to gain some influence
for the next step in management. I never trusted a manager who said if you
have a good idea, let me know. He/she is not getting paid to ask for ideas.
They need to be good decision makers, and quick on the spot thinkers. That
is the formula for success.
I hope Sears paid you well. 20 years is dedication!! You were doing something right!
Home Depot, Lowes, and Amazon have destroyed Sears more than incompetent management.
billionaires can be such sass monkeys
Sears died solely because of Eddie Lampert’s incompetence, ego and endless greed. The last couple of years, he’s been steadily gutting the company just to line his own pockets. What a legacy to leave for yourself and your family. He’s the type of person that is a stellar example of the moral and ethical decline of our country.
Not to mention Amazon and Wal Mart. They didn't exactly help the situation either
Sears was already on it's death bed before Lampert. He just came in and pulled the plug.
That's just what they want you to think. He's a fixer. He came in for a reason and it's definitely not incompetence, evil but not incompetence. That's the cover they use for everything. Avg Americans get sold the excuse of "incompetence " about everything, mostly Government and eat it up, complain a bit about that then go about their business while the crooks laugh at the ignorance of the public.
@Europa H2O Alien you're ignorant or a schill.
@Europa H2O Alien you'd make a good used car salesman, "Trust me." I bet that's what Lampert told pensioners of Sears.
The problem is always, ALWAYS going to be management. They don't listen to consumers and think that their set way is the right way. Good leaders are open to new ideas and change. Sears and Kmart refused to change, so they sank and only exist online.
Was of a great place then of Kmart it was the down fall to Sears as i see of it for KMart had no mangerment to it
I worked at 2 Sears stores I did my best but could not keep them happy 😞
Eddie Lambert purposely, deliberately destroyed Sears & K Mart with his bad management.
democrat politicians?
Wal mart figured it put.. sears didnt
Too bad they dumped the catalog. They could have put their catalog online before Amazon.
They did 11 years before but internet use and credit card use was less then. Most people shopped with cash. Indian Motor Cycle company made smaller motorcycles about ten years after they went out of business smaller motor cycles became popular with Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, etc.
Well said, it kills me how true it is #LexusTech
And we just got an Amazon Christmas catalog last week!
Sears was a dying dinosaur even back in the 1990's that did everything but the right thing to revive itself. Then when Kmart bought them...the slide of death escalated ...Kmart and the CEO clown was a disaster for Sears. I worked for 5 different Sears stores in my 15 year career with them and when the idiots in charge sold the credit card...I knew the dominos were starting to fall and was just a matter of time.
Craftsman tools are what’s left of Sears in either Lowe’s or Home Depot.
Sears Management doomed the company through it's arrogance and incompetence.
that was my experience also as I worked for these morons.."SEARS" ..they had this arrogance that they were the MIGHTY SEARS and they knew it all..WELL they were WRONG and NOW GONE..
@@Steve-vl5mg I spent several years working at Sears; it was mind boggling how badly run they were. Even in recent years we still had great products - but often couldn't get them, advertising was awful, and the stores were being run into the ground. Staff was cut so badly that critical signage and setups were never done, samples (like expensive tool chests) never got put on display. Truly sad to watch first hand a great company take a dive. And there was one reason - real estate for EL. The big deals, for instance, to turn stores into movie theaters and gyms. Didn't matter if the store was doing well - if it was, must be a good location to shut down and convert.
Next one will be the Best Buy.
@Fuzzy Butkus In my 5 years there I sold a huge number of tools among other things. Oddly, before working there I had little idea of how good their tools were - but once I got there, I bought plenty. I bought my snowblower before I got there - excellent investment several years later, looks and runs like new. I still buy their tools when I can, but it's harder now since my store is gone (turning into a movie theatre and gym - like many other, courtesy of EL). I've no idea of how many snowblowers I've sold, but it was a lot, and most (except for some very low end stuff) I'm proud to have sold. And a lot of other gear.
I agree with Mr. Westfahl's statement!!!
Sears WAS the Amazon of 1920 - 2000. Sears should BE Amazon right now.
more like the Amazon of 1920-1990. Extending out to 2000, is a huge overreach; even by then, the writing was on the wall for them.
Sears was the Walmart of 1950-1986. The company never could compete with amazon since they took retail to a whole different ballgame. It probably explains why Walmart has struggled in recent years to compete with Amazon.
Sears never could have competed with Amazon. They were just not set up to be a low-cost retailer. I'm a big fan of instant gratification when it comes to shopping so over the last five or so years I've gone to Sears looking for products that I had already priced online. Every time the product was literally twice as expensive at Sears.and so every time I left Sears empty-handed and ordered online and waited a couple days. I walked into Sears expecting and willing to pay 20 to 40% more, but not over 100%
@@Mrcharles. The other problem is that the same sales just erode into your brick and mortar sales, i.e. it's the same customer who would've bought in your store. Talking about much earlier in the day when it was still cool to do brick and mortar shopping. Online shopping a whole different corporate side and they end up competing with brick and mortar as if it's a different company since sales goals drives retail no matter what. Amazon did not have this issue to deal with since +1 customer is a full gain +1, no explanation needed to explain cannibalized sales.
As a kid, I always looked forward to the Christmas/Holiday/toy SEARS catalog, as well as the J.C. Penny one.
we loved Xmas catalog as kids
@@michaelsix9684 Isn't it funny how we loved it as kids, but when you reached adulthood,
with a family to support, it suddenly became a Stephen King novel!! Did our parents
feel the same way is the main question. Toys have always cost big money, mainly
because you had to keep the attention span of kids to a high degree. Monopoly would
only hold them for a few. And each kid had different wants. And sexual gender factored
in as well. Those Barbie dolls cost an arm and leg. And remember, they make a lot of
different dolls. And you know the kids want the new model when it comes out, and the old
models are put away to sell for thousands of dollars somewhere down the road in the later
years of the kid. Providing some thief in the family does not sell it for drugs first. And that
happens to the best of families everywhere.
It was Amazon before Amazon.
Loved looking at the catalogs as a child circling wish list items. Everything looked so fancy then!
And the lingerie section..... me as a small boy... lol
I worked at sears for almost 10 years from 1996--2005. I was there when the merger happened and the fall from that point was so fast. They didn't stay modern and let target and Walmart pass them by. Upper management destroyed the company and Lambert was at the top of the list. They stopped caring about their employees and refused to focus on the things that were working such as automotive. That was my department and at the time it was a great job but they ruined that too. Such a shame because when I look back at my past jobs I always go back to sears. It was the best job I ever had until the merger and then it went down hill.
well thats a know thing what happens with a merger from a company made in usa - they do this all the time abroad -there is even a timelime when the merger company wont exixt anymore in any form and that 10 years with for "rich" seems to a century and nobody would remember their promisies
_ think maybe Chinese mgmt. could've saved Sears - Lambert should've sold to Chinese 'cause they wouldn't have any problems pronouncing it 😉
Wow.. my uncle was the Vice President .he told me. He had a talk with lambert’. About the company. He was telling him about this up coming coming called Amazon. Lambert just rolled his eyes.. and said nobody’s going to buy anything from a store called Amazon. !! True story !!!.
The same thing will happen to Lowes Stores. I work there now am leaving after an offer to work in State government. But they could care less about employee input, training and development and most of all customer service. As an someone who had shopped there for home project items, you'd be lucky to find someone within 100 feet of displays or where customers need the assistance. I also think its the nature of retail stores as a whole though.
Sorry here about Sears
This is so sad, I have such good memories of Sears in my childhood.
From SEARS to Tears
#ThankYouSears
Amazon sucks
Lmfaoooooo
😂😂😂😂😂💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
Tears for Sears!
Being a kid coming home from school......and discovering the Christmas catalogue had arrived! 😍🎄🎁🎅🤶🎄
I remember that too in the 1970's.
I recall learning as a kid, how to place orders over the phone.
Yes, wasn't that fun?????
Drink a bottle of Franks Hot Sauce. It always makes me feel better.
well I didn't have that lol
From a nostalgia standpoint it was heart breaking for us boomers to see Sears die. This may sound goofy but in the years just prior to the demise of Sears, I would sometimes go to Sears just to revisit great childhood memories of a different America from the past. If Sears would have had good leadership with a vision for the future, they could have figured out a way to outflank Amazon by combining brick and motor with a massive online presence. So sad...
i think you meant to say brick and mortar
My mom worked for sears for a decade. Made lifelong friends. I grew up there We got everything from Sears. When I graduated from college I went straight to sears to buy a Kenmore Washer and Dryer. It's still running strong 20 years later.
@@SmoothbassmanStudios Yep. My Kenmore washer and dryer which I bought from Sears 20 years ago are also still going strong. Nostalgia aside, people need to consider the darker implications of a monopolistic behemoth like Amazon. Sure it's great paying less and having merchandise delivered to your door but it's dangerous to have a company that has not only cornered the market Sears, JC Penney's etc. once competed for but also has a huge chunk of the business-web hosting-Internet-services market and houses the entire cyber infrastructure of the CIA in its cloud. Isn't interesting that after Amazon wiped out a lot of its brick and mortar competition, they're now building their own brick and mortar stores. When I consider the comfy, cozy relationship Amazon has with the govt., it's downright chilling to think about where this is all going...
@@GTX1123 Very well said.
I get nostalgic too Steve. In the mid 80s, I was at school in Boston and would often go to Sears or Woolworths for breakfast, lunch or even dinner. The meals were balanced, and at 1.25 - 2.50 they were less expensive than most alternatives. I'd sit at the counter (next to the soda fountain) and talk to other regulars. Eventually a bunch of my classmates started going with me cause it was affordable (we weren't rich) and the food was good (best meatloaf mash potatoes and gravy around). Those places closed a few years later, but I'm glad I got to experience things before they changed. Boston began to emerge from its long post ww2 recession and things went upscale real fast. I miss those days - I never had any money, but life was good and companies like Sears were part of our everyday lives.
Sears was taken over by the man that was a mess at Home Depot...He has destroyed K Mart and Sears....horrible man....horrible track record.
daverburr94 maybe he could run for United States President
No vision.
But yet he's still a billionaire. Doesn't sound too horrible to me.
Trump, is that you?
The guys that ran Enron into the ground cut from the same cloth. When they took over the last thing on their mind was providing safe and inexpensive energy for America. They just wanted to raid the employee pension fund and a wealthy, well run company of it's assets.
Lampert never had the skill or desire to save Sears, just a raider.
All he wanted was the Kenmore brand he wanted the refrigerator and he wanted the Diehard batteries is what he wanted and that's all he cared about
Anytime a hedge fund manager takes over as CEO you can kiss that company goodbye. They are just there to liquidate the assets.
He failed Sears when he merged it with K-Mart. Sears was compared more with JcPenney, Macy's, Dillards etc as far as clothes went. Then when he merged it with K-Mart more people looked at Sears are the off brand store, with cheaper clothes. K-Mart would of done way better without the merge. Very sad. Sucks. I hope Sears lives, and makes some changes to heavily compete with Amazon, Best Buy etc.
I agree with everyone about Lambert. This sounds something like what they used to call a "Hostile Takeover" if memory serves. Robberbarron tactics. Parasite. We need Sears. What are we going to do with no department stores?
@@SceneGirlSceneQueens "Would've".
My very first job, while in high school, was at Sears in 1970. I bought my first watch by saving up my money from my wages. It was a Seiko watch and cost $75.00. I was so proud of that. I continued to work p/t at Sears through h.s. graduation and in the summer while in college. As a kid growing up in the 1950's and '60's, Sears was my favorite place to go with my mom and dad and my brother, from the "candy store" to the toy department. I will always have a special place in my heart for Sears, my home away from home.
My 1st impression was always that warm welcome & aroma from the Nut & Candy Kiosk! Such a nice touch! & the Bennelli Motor Cycles & mopeds made for Sears! Good times
@@doctorgarbonzo2525 As a kid in the 70s I would buy 25 cents worth of nuts and candy. The ultimate salty and sweet. Warm cashews and carmel. It smelled and tasted so good.
Sears was probably the ONLY place to shop. Never liked them
@@scottr3484 They were high end all the way through the 60's
@@doctorgarbonzo2525 Sears was NEVER high end.
I loved Sears. I was born in 1974, and have nothing but fond memories of Sears, especially shopping with my Dad and Grandad in the tool department. Craftsman Tools have fed my family since I started as a heavy duty truck mechanic in 1992. It breaks my heart to think about what happened to Sears. They WERE the Amazon of the 20th century. Management simply didn’t pay attention or care.
Most Sears stores attracted less customers after 2011.
Lambert is the problem - period. Just as one person can make another company great, another person can destroy a once great company. Lambert has destroyed both Sears and K-Mart!
....and he'll make out like a bandit once they're gone, smh.
@Ann Linley No he asked for bankruptcy forgiveness. He's the only person who won't be crippled after sears closes
The man is greedy and money hungry, what a shame
I agree. They needed to replace the guys at the top. I think he was both trying to find a buyer for the company, and rip out and own its assets
@@rollinthunder1000 Eddie is like another Ivan Boesky.
Almost as sad as burying an old friend.
I remember lying on my kitchen floor as a little kid flipping through the Sears catalog and making my Christmas list.
I was one of those kids raised on Sears and the catalog, later working for them. The benefits were fabulous. Like this piece said, you could do well enough as a Sears employee to make an actual career out of it. You could buy a home and raise a family on it. I took it for granted at the time, because I never knew anything else and innately knew that this was how it was supposed to be.
We have to stop squeezing products and places dry. We have to go back to giving good value, both in products and in service. We need institutions like Sears that we can count on for good jobs and for products that aren't junk.
JC Penneys and Montgomery Ward are the two others we've lost. Heartbreaking.
Sears products ie. tools, hardware, mowers, clothes, appliances -- were top notch, affordable, and will miss them
@@michaelsix9684 Exactly!
@@michaelsix9684 lifetime warranty on tools , yeah can't beat that.
I remember a country song, am elegiac paean to the decline in popularity of the outhouse, included the line "...and read the Sears and Roebuck catalog..."
Agree them where the days
Do your research. Lampert has systematically made a fortune off the decline of Sears. These are not stupid men. Greedy, not stupid. Oh, and getting rid of those ex employees pensions by going bankrupt will be a big bonus for them. Sears has tried to cut their retirements in the past and have been sued, thus settling with tiers of payouts for shorter and longer term employees.
Let's face it Edward Lambert is the problem he's cocky he's arrogant he's totally clueless about running any retailer and NOTHING WILL CHANGE THAT. Kmart and Sears both would of had a chance if he wasn't anywhere near them. I used to work for a Kmart the store had so much potential and made me sad it couldn't be reinvented but he won't put a dime in the stores so ultimately he paid for it. That stupid Shop your way Rewards program is a joke it's completely complicated it cannibalizes our sales and that's why it was more expensive to shop there. He knows what he's doing he's deliberately destroying both brands making money in the back ground hes a slum lord in the business world. he's responsible and nothing will change it people. awfully sad when you see two iconic retailers fail all because of ignorance
**How is making himself a 'Billionaire' exhibiting 'ignorance' on Lampert's part?** (the more 'Sears' fails, the more
$$$$$ he and the other 'top-echelon' make in profit!) How? By deliberately devaluing brands like 'Kenmore'
'Diehard' and 'Craftsmen' and selling them off at gigantic profits for HIMSELF and a few others...he's supposedly
bringing in much-needed cash inflow to 'Sears' and it did...**and it went right him as salary and 'bonuses'**
I was a customer service manager for Kmart years ago. I agree, the stores had so much potential for change and growth, yet Lampert systematically drove the entire holding company into the ground.
He has only been in the corporate headquarters like 1 time a year I heard. If he wrecked like American oldest and biggest company with only going to work 1 day a year, just imagine if he showed up full time. This guy is a walking blight and everything he touches will wither and die.
He has destroyed many lives and when the last Sears and Kmarts close in 2021 he have destroyed tens of thousands of lives.
@Mike Collins Replace " CEO" with " Jew CEO" and maybe you have a point.
I remember looking at the mini bikes... and dreaming of owning one as a kid.
My mom used to take me to sears for school clothes every year in the 90's!
Tell me about it... The Sears in my area recently closed, and it's nostalgic and quite sad to walk the halls looking at the 40% off closure sale.
This was my childhood clothing store... Alas, this is capitalism, and the normal cycle of business. Fear not, a better store will replace it.
My parents did the same in the 1960's but the prices went up and the quality and selection went down over time. They weren't even made in the USA any more which was the only selling point left. I would pay more for quality goods made in the USA but when they are cheaply made in China and they want 5 times as much as Walmart and they even want to charge more than Macy's what's the point going. I was shopping for a suit some years back. Nobody there to take my measurements and the only employee in sight had no idea that was a thing. Their suits were all polyester anyways. So I went to Men's Wearhouse and got a wool/cashmere blend three piece suit custom tailored for less than the cheapest one at Sears that month. The one's at Sears were all made in China. The one I bought was made in Italy.
I remember visiting my relatives in Costa Rica back in 1990 and how one of my cousin’s prize possessions was the Sears catalog. She would spend time showing me what items she wanted to order and also she would show me items she would eventually buy from Sears. I knew Sears was done as a company when they discontinued printing the Sears catalog. At least in this era of the internet why Sears did not have an online version of the Sears catalog? I think that was very much a lost opportunity. What a Shame.
Sears had/has Sears.com. You could find anything and everything that you wanted on Sears.com more books than Amazon at lower prices (seriously), tires, wheelchairs, trumpets, shoes, everything. Problem was that they didn't advertise and let Amazon surpass them.
Sears also decided to cut back on advertising, on TV and print. Management never realized that people like to look at print ads. With print ads, you look and say, "I didn't know that I wanted one until just now" or "Lawn mowers are on sale, mine's getting old. I think that I'll go to Sears and get a new one."
I worked for Sears for a decade. The company was pumping tons of money into new tech to help retail. Electronic signage. Portable computers for salesmen. They created an incredibly innovative appliance store but it never went beyond the prototype.
Eddie kept finding ways to make it look as if Sears was going to turn around while he was finding ways to suck money out of the company.
Gold Winger but what I disliked abt Sears.com was they were following Amazon’s model - 3rd party sellers. I wanted to only shop for things that were sold directly from Sears not Joe Schmoe.
@@regisnyder Not in the early days. Much was drop shipped like with JC Whitney but it was sold through Sears. Sears turned to the third party model in later years.
@@goldwinger5434 What of the 'Home Store' aspect (rather like a franchise) like the one in Harrisburg, Ill.?
@@gerrynightingale9045 Those were a great idea. Allowing consumers to get access to Sears products even if they weren't close to a Sears and saving them the expense of shipping a catalog purchase. The Sears Hometown Stores and Outlets (SHO) operations were sold off about five or six years ago.
SHO also includes the Sears Appliance Showrooms and the Sears Hardware Stores.
Sadly, it looks like the failure of Sears is pulling down SHO.
I worked part-time for Sears for seven years and loved going to work every day; it was my first post-retirement job. When I went for my interview, the guy from HR asked why I wanted to work for Sears. My answer, word for word, was, "Because there's a big sign on the front of the building that says Sears. My grandparents shopped here, my parents shopped here, my wife and I shop here and now, my kids shop here. I don't have to convince people to buy our merchandise, I just have to show them what else to buy." He laughed, shook and hand, and took me down stairs to introduce me to everyone. We were a "B" store, which meant we were a smaller store that sold mostly appliances, electronics, tools, sporting/exercise equipment, and did vehicle repairs. Heck, back then we were getting up to $10,000 for a flat screen television, $1,000 for a digital camera, and $300.00 for a memory card, and people snapped them up! Not only that, but we received commissions for every sale! I resigned when Sears merged with K-Mart, because I believed that doing so spelled the end of Sears. Really sad, but I guess you could say that the Internet of today is the Sears of "yesteryear." Worst of all, most of us who worked at Sears, believed that they could have saved themselves, but the head honchos in Chicago no longer had the vision of it's founders.
Some of my fondest childhood memories are spending hours and hours turning the pages of the Sears catalog and fantasizing about the things I'd buy if I could (same with the Montgomery Ward and JC Penny catalogs).❤😢
ilovegoodsax I know right!🤓💁🏽♀️
I'm from. Chicago, and grew up a few miles north of the original. Sears HQ on the West Side. I loved browsing through the catalogs as well.
Or the bra section
...you beat me to it.
Well done.....
I'm right there with you!!! Good simply times back then
Sears was a big part of my life growing up. My parents bought most of our stuff there, because it had everything. It was Walmart and Target combined. We used to get a family picture taken there every year at the photo studio. As a kid, the Christmas toy catalog was coveted by me and my brothers and sisters. I was even a clothes model for Sears catalog for two seasons in the 1970's.
Sears was where I got my first job with a paycheck. A Sears card was my first credit card. So sad to see this institution gone.
My first hand tools set (ratchets, sockets, screwdrivers, etc) was a Craftsman set my father bought me for Christmas as a teen as he had Craftsman tools for years. They were great. Nothing fancy, but U.S.A made and got the job done. There were only a couple of times I bent or broke a tool. I'd bring it in to the local Sears store and they'd replace it on site, with a smile, no questions asked. The whole process took a couple minutes.
I will miss that.
@kwg2005 the truth has been spoken!!!
thank you for that.
I saw a recent strength test between a 30 year old Craftsman wrench made in the USA and a brand new Craftsman wrench made in China. The new one twisted and broke in seconds while the old one stood strong.
Travis K I'm a frequent customer of my local Ace Hardware store and know the owner fairly well. As you probably know, Craftsman tools are sold at many places now including many Ace stores. The owner of my local store told me a few months ago (after I complained about Chinese Craftsman tools) that Stanley has purchased the rights to manufacture them and is slowly bringing the production back home. I'll gladly pay extra for anything that says made in U.S.A.
@@MikeBrown-ii3pt You can always check out Ebay, they sell old tools which were made in USA years ago, some are in good shape. The owner of the tools got old or passed away so the family is selling them.
@Europa H2O Alien Fifteen years ago?! I know for a fact that I exchanged a broken 1/2" drive breaker bar, 1/4" drive ratchet wrench and a 1/4" drive socket at my local Sears no longer than five years ago.
As a kid, my favorite Sears catalog was the Fall/Winter catalog.
You & about a billion other kids🙇ours was already dog eared by Thanksgiving🎄
Same
As a teenage boy my favorite section in the Sears catalog was the bra and underwear section. Thankfully I've grown up.
Sears Whishbook was my Faveroite.
Ah, the famous ''wish book''
In it's peak, Sears had much more than Walmart does now. They left lots of good memories. I bought wide whitewall tires from their catalog for my old cars well into the 1980s. This report hits it dead on when they said that management destroyed this big corporation. Very sad.
Then there's no hope for Walmart.
You are so, so right. Sears was always a welcome sight, a good neighbor, and a benefit to everything it touched. Wal-Mart? Even in the 80s we knew they were a force of choice-killing destruction.
@@Cre80s My home town never really embraced Wal Mart when they were expanding in the 1980s and didn't get it's first store until 1993 after I had moved. Still many home businesses and other grocery stores have survived since then. Customer loyalty pays dividends.
Interesting that we all see what Sears should have done. Kind of a no brainer that they should have put the catalog online. When Sears bought Kmart I knew it was the end. JC Penny’s put their retail items online to stay afloat. The management of Sears drove the business into the ground.
I never understood why Kmart would buy Sears! Kmart was failing too!
To this day... remembering the Sears holiday catalog "Wishbook"...makes my heart skip a beat and I feel pure innocent joy! RIP sears.
Lol that's so cute saying "RIP sears...
I really miss the Sears at my local mall, there was never anyone in there but I just have good memories of shopping there with my Grandma before she died, and never knowing what item of clothing you were gonna find, but you just knew it was gonna be good. It just felt old and behind the times the last time I went in. If Sears could rebrand its itself as Sears & Roebuck and they could model itself as a Nordstrom mixed with a Crate & Barrel, while maintaining a strong online presence I think it could still appeal to our current generation still.
Not really its over.
I miss sear back in Crenshaw in los angeles 😞 I rather go there to get everything
I was your 110th thumbs up.
@@ACoustaDC the comment only has 100 likes
This breaks my heart because when i was a kid, my dad had an unstable trade job working in masonry cause work was hard to come by in the wintertime but then my dad found a great job at sears working as a delivery and installation person for the store that was at our mall and we did better financially with that and my mom found an every day gig cleaning a house for a lady that wasnt just weekends and got paid by the hour so both my parents did pretty good and sears was a great place to shop, so it breaks my heart that a great store that gave my dad a job is now nonexistent and plummeted
Oh wow. I remember when my father knew about Amazon. He sold all his stock in sears.. true story !! He saw it coming !!
Too easy to answer
1. "Made in China"
2. Amazon.com
3. Not willing to change
4. Should have put the catalogue on online early.
Many people wasn't sure about the internet back in the day. I remember when windows 95 and dial-up was the only way to use the internet. It was worthless back then
It put its catalogue online in the 80s to early also walmart has to be mentioned they crushed it in 90s and 00s.
Made in China doesn’t mean much tho. Look at Walmart almost all their stuff is chinese made and they still dominate
So sad, when I walk through Walmart, and see on the lable: "Made in China", I then ask my self: "We can't built these products here in the USA?" and then add: "No wonder we have no good jobs in America any more."
Blockbuster Video had a similar trajectory by not listening to their customers and not changing with the times. 😟😟
@Farmer James True
daskinder
Streaming eclipsed this 100 year old CD and DVD market paradigm‼️ This old technology and was long DEAD even before any rollouts of playback equipment‼️
@Critic Of Horror - Brandon C. Sites Blockbusters had so many stores so they could muscle out any potential competition they might have, especially in rural areas.
@Critic Of Horror - Brandon C. Sites they didn't bother to BUY Netflix, either.....
variety.com/2013/biz/news/epic-fail-how-blockbuster-could-have-owned-netflix-1200823443/
daskinder Pretty sure same thing with Yahoo.
Lambert is stripping Sears of all its assets.
@Dennis W. He should’ve filed for liquidation rather than reorganization bankruptcy
I love Jews because they know Business better than Christians and Muslims. As an agnostic guy I think it funny Jews are still outsmarting Gentiles.
If Eddie Lampert runs for President I will not vote for him.@Herbert N
I understand Lampert is Skull & Bones , do the math.
+Dennis W And he's doing for his own personal financial gain. Once Sears finally goes belly up, I would not at all be surprised if he ends up in the middle of another Enron-style scandal. At the very least, he will go down as one of the worst CEOs of all time.
Me: *walks in sears*
Employee: "sorry we dont have that but we can order it"
A few years back I spoke with one of the former catalog marketing executives who had retired in 2005 after 40 years. He told me that catalog sales had always lost money at Sears for decades. But mailing out the catalogs drove traffic to the stores. People would see something they wanted in the catalog and then go to the store to see if they had it, rather than wait for delivery. Then Sears hired young, upcoming executives (with no mail order or retail experience) and they stopped sending out catalogs because the "catalogs lost money". Sears suffered and eventually went belly up. Lesson learned: The internet and digital marketing has NOT taken over direct mail. Direct mail is one of the most powerful media.
did he also mention lamp guy burned it to the ground never paid merchants for products defaulted on them they made money by destroying sears he saw a opportunity to make fast cash and run they also refused to get with the times ie do online their prices started to get way to high they never updated stores they looked straight from the 80s still.. no customer support meaning cashiers you'd had to find them. they were rude etc because the store treated them bad when that ceo came in he saw money.. and how you make money off of burning a company.. im sure the government would like to look at the books remember enron.. yea dont pay your merchants and get free products raise prices soooo high profitsssssss destroy the company claim a loss.. chapter 11 yea the ceos etc all got bonuses remember that they got millions hmmmmmmmmmm and nothing went on after that lamp was not in jail etc people did question it but none of these leeches never does any time etc they all go on to found new companies or go to other companies and hide behind a desk making tons of money
This is so familiar. I worked for a company that decided it no longer needed smaller customers who placed small orders. It was profitable, but not to the same degree large customers with pallet orders were. Problem was, they didn't understand that those small customers added to our trucks, our turns, and our volume. They thought they could run off 15% of our customers and only lose 3% from the bottom line. Sadly, they lost 15% of the profit due to some of the reasons I stated above. Merchants and guys with retail experience didn't all have college degrees, but they understood business much better than many of the fine minds they hired with an MBA.
@@jimdavis2385 Spot on, Jim. There's no such thing as a "bad customer". If my ad agency depended on just big clients, I would have gone out of business 20 years ago. It's the small clients that have always kept us going.
The Midwest had a restaurant chain, Bill Knapps which catered to families and the elderly. Young management came in changed it. Went out of business soon after.
The internet was going strong in 2005. Just think if he would have moved the Sears catalog to an online website like Amazon. Sears would be a billion dollar company instead of Amazon and no one would have even heard of Jeff Bezos.
Blockbuster, Toys R Us and now Sears will fade away in our distant memory
Showtime Video rose and fell even faster than Blockbuster.
Internet put the movie places out of business.
Walmart will never go out of business.
The management from toys r us moved over to petco the pet supply company. Blockbuster undercut themselves with their membership deal, all the money went directly to corporate and none to the stores. Sears did themselves in with their prices, "maintenance" agreements/extended warranties and not honoring their guarantees. Sears got what it deserved.
😢😢yep
My father worked there for 18 years he loved it he loved working there he didn’t find a single thing wrong with their Management but unfortunately in 2010 when the company started to decline there was a lot of tension between him and the other managers to the point where you couldn’t take it anymore and quit eight years later the Sears store that he worked at closed
Most of my family did a lot of shopping at Sears for 3 generations wow hate to see Sears go out of business.
The short version is THIS . . . they "No longer Care" about their customers !, PERIOD !.
I always heard about their customer service being complete trash. So sad!
All those unemployed workers is the real issue. Losing jobs after yrs. of service to the company. Forced retirements and lay-offs.
WD Harris amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/11/16/business/sears-executive-bonuses/index.html
WD Harris are jobs supposed to last forever?
kwg2005 not so sure about that. I think most of the job lock is due to employer supposed health insurance.
People aren't loyal to their employers because employers haven't been loyal to their employees for generations now. This didn't start yesterday. This has been going on for decades. Kids grow up seeing how their parents have been treated, so there's no wonder that loyalty to a job is all but dead.
In the case of Sears, they made a killing pushing credit cards with high interest rates, and raking in late fees in a time when every payment went through the mail, so there was no proof your payment arrived on time and simply didn't get credited until Sears got around to processing your payment. Then they began killing their own good brands. Craftsman used to be good tools, made in America, with a real lifetime warranty. You didn't have to hold on to your receipt for life to claim that warranty. If the models changed, you would get the equivalent, not just an, "Oh, well, they don't make that tool anymore". Now Craftsman is made in China, nothing special, average tools with a premium price, a price that doesn't pay living wages to employees, but just goes into the pockets of management. Not my money. Craftsman tools and Diehard batteries used to be among the best available. Sears killed their own good brands. In their greed to grab every penny, they drove their customers away. Their credit card business was borderline predatory, too. Other companies should take note, but they never do.
The fall of Sears is incredibly simple. They got rid of the stuff they were best at and kept the stuff they were worst at. Basically, their corporate office totally failed them.
The CEO just liquidated its assets to enrich himself... leaving the junk no one wanted! That is called RAIDING
I worked for Sears in the early 1990s. This is true. Management was full of old fashioned management. If any of them had any vision, they could have easily made the jump from the catalog to online retail. They already had the infrastructure in place! They just needed the website. They should have been the Amazon of today.
Brings back great memories. Born in 1960. When we went to town, we could shop in Woolworths or McCorys, but the Sears catalog, that had all the good stuff. We bought a lot of it to. Sat around guessing the day it would come in the mail.
I fondly remember getting lost in Sears several times as a child (I never panicked) -- I will miss them being around. Why my family took so long to find me each time is ANOTHER kind of memory.
I went to my Sears store (that closed last week) several times this year and was shocked at how empty the shelves were and how few workers were available to help. Funny thing was they were a lot of "We're Hiring" signs all over the store.
Trying to replace workers who abandoned ship. Also, failing stores sometimes put up we're hiring signs to keep customers from thinking the store is going under.
My local sears here in California, was said to be closed dec 31st...I went the weekend before Xmas and there was so many things left. The men’s department was quite empty, but the women’s and girls section was still pretty stocked. Pretty sad, I shopped a lot at sears as a young girl. 😔
kam2244 X yup...you’re right! who is going to want to work there anymore??? 🤔 to know that you will be let go any day, and have no stability...it sucks for everyone else that depended on that job
I remember that most times salespeople could not be found if you had questions or needed help. The cashier was dealing with purchases so s/he could not help either.
Ed Lampbert did this on purpose. And made billions the easy way with no regard for the 250,000 or so employees.
you may be correct.
He had business degree at Yale, he is smart but he cheated the system. He is immoral, very immoral that guy is.
He probably knew what he was doing. If not, he should not have been in his position.
Their prices were higher than competition, it was inevitable.
Bigger question, why did the original founders of Sears allow somebody like Ed Lampbert take over? I bet there was kind of government meddling going on, with all the new rules and laws in place on businesses and Wallstreet, I won't be surprised if the US Government over regulations is what is truly killing all of these businesses. And the government today seems to be in cahoots with all of the new businesses that are taking over, like Facebook, Google, Amazon and the huge rise in the Asian markets like China and South Korea.
Both Sears and the Sunday morning CBS, are staples of my childhood growing up in Chicago. My Dad would watch the Sunday morning news early in the morning and I would hear the sound of the trumpet and see the sunlight quietly start to reveal its rays through our windows. Sears was the store we went to buy winter clothing like jackets, gloves and snow boots. The early 80’s were great times growing up, even through the drama that happened at home. Those were still good times with family.
Thats a shame. I grew up looking at the sears wish book. Loved looking at the big catalog it was awesome
Eddie Lampert destroyed Sears. He's a hedge fund raider who enriched himself by selling off all Sear's assets. What a bum!
Sears has been dying for 30 years... Beth you cannot be that stupid...
I’m not surprised to hear the news but it’s sad anyway. I’m 60 years old and grew up with the store and catalogs every year, just like my parents. Sears was an American institution. The sears wishbook catalog was a big treat, pouring through all the toys, wanting everything but knowing you’d have to narrow your choices. My mom always ordered out Christmas and birthday presents from sears because they would deliver the order & she didn’t drive. We always got our school clothes from them, my mom bought a washer around 1965 and it lasted for 22 years. Sears was a store you could always count on, a part of America history is now history.
I think my mother still has her Kenmore washer from the 80's. My Samsung is about to die after 8 years.
I was at Sears shopping for a washing machine about twenty years ago. The salesperson went on line and said I could order one and had to pay for it right then. I said I wanted to see the machine in the store and did not want to order and pay for one without being able to see and check it out first. I purchased a Maytag at a small appliance store. Unfortunately, the manager at the private appliance store turned out to be an idiot and I was sorry I did not purchase the machine and repair contract extension at Lowes. Ah, but I still remember the old Sears and how good it used to be long before K-Mart took it over. Now we do not have a Sears or K-Mart within traveling distance. I shop at Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Lowes and sometimes Target. My daughter orders from Amazon.
My dad worked for Sears for almost 40 years. He started out as a janitor in his late teens, put himself thru college. Then went into repair, then sales, then management, then district managers (he even designed the Sears System Business Centers (which essentially is what Staples and Office Depot were), and retired VP of Sales . When he retired, no gold watch , not even a thank you. Gave more than half of his life to that company, and they just go "see ya" LOL. Companies always think they are doing you a factor. They wouldnt exist without their people.
I loved the sears catalogue. Even though I knew we could never afford anything from it, I loved looking at all the clothes for people my age, and loved looking at the furnishings and dreaming about my future home!
When you walk into one of their stores and see entire sections with Nothing or with white flat sheets hanging in front of sections indicating that the area is closed, or when it takes 30 minutes from the time the cashier begins ringing up your merchandise to the time they hand you your bag and receipt then you know there's a problem at corporate.
Ours closed where I live. I loved Sears because they always had great products. I went to buy a dish washer and they didn't have anything in stock. The store was always empty and no one would help you. Sad really.
The employees all seem so sad now.
@Acme Inc. welcome to the Nightmare named millennials
J C welcome to the nightmare called "old people who have nothing left to live for complaining about how great things used to be"
we still have a Sears it's really sad the place is nearly empty even this time of year so close to Christmas white sheets hanging up on closed sections the portrait studio closed hair salon gone and the eye glasses place gone to I think the tire shop is shut down to back in the 80's when my mom would take me there it was all open and running Christmas you could barely make it through the store with out running in to people because of the crowd's and everyone you knew was there.
I used to work for Sears. It's sad to see it closed down.
I used to work for JC Pennys. It's sad to see it still open.
Same here. Sears was a good place to work right up until the merger with Kmart.
they had cool tools i always bought theres. now i goto home depot of lowes
Sheeple Barn 😂 goodness
@@sheeplebarn333 Funny but accurate comment, all retailers treat employees like crap and pay a non living minimum wage, and the days of making high commission are over, the presidents figured out the employees will show up even if you pay close to nothing, and that's why they get away with the bad pay and terrible treatment.
Sears stopped honoring their Lifetime warranty on tools. I stopped going there.
A lifetime warranty is the dumbest idea ever. You need repeat purchases for business to survive.
A lifetime warranty means the life of the company. Ace Hardware now sells Craftsman. They might honor the Craftsman warranty.
My house was filled with Sears products and I was always satisfied with the service on appliances, cars, and furnishings. It was when I could not get service appointments in the early 2000s that fit my ordinary schedule that convinced me to stop buying from Sears Roebuck. I had to negotiate getting service appointments from Sears customer services that were located in other states. Sometimes the techs did not show up or wanted to rescheduled at the last moment. Kind of a bummer when I had to stay home all day long waiting to get my appliance repaired but the service did not happen.
I haver bought a sears appliance, Would be embarrassed to have it in my home.
I hope General Motors is watching this
fotopfanatic I hope Garbage Morons goes out of business once and for all. Trump will not allow any more bailouts for those a$$holes.
G.M does not care if they fail. The company is solvent and they have no problem liquidating it. Even if the stock crashes, the board members will make millions each in compensation from the sale of real estate and brands. The people at the top would prefer to cash out while its solvent and end it.
GM should make each of its car lines a separate company: lean and mean, standing for something special.
@@exchequerguy4037 This has been done before. Or at least... it was attempted. And then GM decided "hey, let's make Pontiac and Saturn sell rebadged versions of our cars that aren't selling too well!" Let's not forget how both Pontiac and Saturn went under in the same YEAR. Why? Mainly because GM wanted to push cars that sold poorly.
Naw GM is a great company my dad brought a Chevy truck. Oh how he "LOVED IT"😄😄😄😄 Lets see had an 18" paint blemish right off the bat. Never got fixed!!! Transmission went out!!! And the best thing it started to run rough. Went from small items to check still same problem. Then took it to an engine place. Chevy didn't case hardened the cam shaft!!! Later rented a Firebird to check them out see if any good. Took it back after 6 hours because his back was killing him. Did the same with a Thunderbird. He bought one. He said he would never buy a GM product again. He impressed by my Toy!!!
My very first credit card was a SEARS card to help me build my credit. I remember as a kid, my family would shop at sears and as years go by, I’ve noticed a huge difference in service: so many empty shelves, messy stores etc. it just didn’t feel nice being at their stores anymore and Target became the replacement for it. The end of an era and will certainly miss it ❤️
Mine was also, but I didn't shop their enough. It got cancelled. Not sure why, I didn't. I like the prices at Sears generally. But yeah, separately, it was interesting, I visited the last Super Kmart in Ohio. Before it closed. I liked it and got a good price on Jeans. Now I don't remember which one's I bought their. But oh well at least I got something. The Sears near here is still around. But I don't go to Malls. I'm part of the problem, I shop mostly online besides most groceries. And sometimes clothing. Or a pickup order.
Shut up
We had a Sears Savings Bank near my home in Norther California. My first checking account was with them in the early 1980s before they were bought out by Citibank a few years later.
It's dumbfounding that Sears failed. How do you not turn the world's largest catalog order business into the world's largest internet sales business is something I'll never understand. As someone who grew up with the Sears catalog it's sad to see it go. What a shame that those iconic brands got sold off - Craftsman, Diehard, and Kenmore. Who didn't have those products in their home?
Sears should made an offer for Amazon when it had the chance and now Amazon is going retail.
It’s easy, when you start hiring unscrupulous people to work in your company, auto service was always a ripoff, actually they were fbed several times by authorities for deceitful practices
I have very fond childhood memories of Sears. My mom would take my brother and I when she went shopping. She would always buy us popcorn once we got there to keep us quiet. It was truly a bonding moment for the three of us.
This reminds me of the fall of Tower Records, who missed the opportunity to dominate the digital distribution market.
Its not like that. The former CEO Eddie Lampert had no intentions for Sears to survive, he is profiting off its demise.
@@conchobar wow for real? How he do that?
@madbug1965 But sometimes you are what you are and you have to call it a day if you are secure in your finances . Ever heard of the Dave Clark Five ?
@@jidowu6019 In the South we had Peaches which was good too Dad and Dubya and Garth Brooks turned America back inot Hootersville Green Acres --- music wise i.e. Yes we were exposed to King Crimson and Eno to through Peaches and even hipper mom and pop record stores. i miss those days and miss that culture even though it wasn't as convenient as today's net age.
J Idowu wasn’t THAT long ago!!! SMH!!!
Sears, Woodward & Lothrop, G.C. Murphy, Montgomery Ward, Circuit City, Toys R Us have all gone away. It's a shame that sears is going thru its bankruptcy and still rewarding its higher ups with millions. The wealthy stay wealthy, and the poor stay poor.
You nailed it.
Forgotten are all the "mom & pop" stores that fell after 93' to the hands of the terrorist, Walmart. Walmart duped Everyone by "made in the USA" slogan, then betraying America for sake of greedy profit margins. It is business and profit is the name of the game, but at what cost?
Hector Mzqt good question, but if people voted for mom and pop by buying their goods and services there, Walmart, Amazon, et al. wouldn’t exist. It’s America, sink or swim. People vote with their money, and will go to the next trend around the bend. Amazon, Walmart, all are potential victims of the fickle nature of consumers whims.
New Jack Swing - it’s just so sad to see the demise of so many great stores & now the death of Sears!!!
J Idowu - I paid off all my credit cards, I have no debt xcept my mortgage - we are a society consumed with debt up to our eyeballs & keeping up w the Joneses, unfortunately!! We can all learn to live within our means, get educated in financial & investment matters - the philology of many is to spend spend spend, that is not freedom bogged down by a mountain of needless debt
As a kid, my mom would get us Sears Toughskin jeans. They had the extra patch sewn into the knees. It wasn't a catch phrase back then, but to us the extra patch meant "challenge accepted!" Loved that store.
I remember going to Sears on Saturdays with my father back in the 80’s and it was packed. I went to one about a year ago to pick up an online purchase and it was a sad ghost town. I had to hunt around to find an employee. It is only a matter of time, when they sold their marquee brands like Kenmore, Craftsman and Diehard that was the end.
I loved the Sears/Kenmore canister vacuum cleaners. The best quality and most expensive was what I bought. But then Sears had a new company make the Kenmore and quality changed. Plastic parts instead of steel, especially at the joints, were substituted and these cracked easily. Then parts were almost impossible to get, whereas before parts were easy to order and receive. Loyal customers were disappointed too often and had to shop elsewhere..
Now this is depressing.
It's called Adaptation...they didn't keep up with the times..
@Mike Collins what are you some sort of free-market capitalist?
I Firmly believe it is why many wont work! WHY?
Harry you must be a baby boomer or silent generation?
FOH
The easy chair in my bedroom came from Sears in 1981. I love that chair. I miss Christmas shopping at Sears. So sad.
HardyGirl66 - me too, the Sears in my town was a two story store, you name it, they had it - I will miss Sears, I bought new SS appliances just 2 yrs ago, washer/dryer five years ago & so much more!! Iam saddened by this closure, bad management & greed is to blame!!
I own a Sears kit house from 1912. It has all the original hardware , doors etc...nothing altered. When I bought it 18 years ago, I knew there was something special about it. Then 4 weeks ago , the historical society contacted me to let me know I have a Sean's house. They sent me a copy of the deed from 1912! My house is built of high quality and is still standing strong!
You are lucky to have what you have, I've worked in these houses and love them.
Sears has always been a family store. I remember owning a pair of Jeeper tennis shoes, Ted William baseball, glove & bat. Then while shopping we stopped at the Sears candy counter for popcorn, roasted cashews, Swedish fish. I spent hours swooning over Sears catalog. Sears is Americans favorite departments stores to go too.
Sears should never merger with Kmart in the first place
They were trying to take advantage of the mild (and I do mean mild) success K-MArt had when they started carrying and promoting products by Martha Stewart. If Sears was too cheap or too stubborn to move into the age of online retail, they should have signed the "hot" name at the time like Rachel Ray or Gordon Ramsey or one of those other imbeciles who makes themselves out to be more than they truly are.
@@cgh7337 kmart was going down before they merged with sears, both wal mart and target were killing them. they failed to keep up with them and they failed to update their stores and stand out more.
@@Charmedone9805 I know, that's why I made the comments about Sears being too cheap or stubborn to move into the age of online retail or getting a "mascot" like Martha Stewart to help boost sales.
@@Charmedone9805 no, their corrupt CEO was using company funds illegally. They filed Chapter 11 in 2002 because their CEO was stealing from them.
@@jackson5116 that too but kmart was having problems even before then like buying other companys and stores and then selling them off. failing to invest in computer technology to manage its supply chain in the early 90's was another key factor and that made them close 110 stores in 1994 and failing to invest in their stores that whole big kmart thing was laughable all they did was do a cheap paint job to their stores and widened the aisle a big and tried their hand at private brands.
Our Sears closed last year after 57 years in our area. Back in the 70s and 80s my dad bought most of his tools and power tools at Sears as well as my and my sisters school clothes. What we didn't buy at Sears we bought at K-Mart. Never imagined those two would be the same company. Still have a workbench full of Craftsman tools. Great stuff.
I remember going to Sears with my mom whenever we needed appliances. A sewing machine. Blankets and comforters.
I used to love their record Dept.
I worked for Sears part time after school at a catalog distribution center,l enjoyed working there,met a lot of nice people,l did so well management offered me a permanent position but l decided to go to college instead,l miss the catalogs,sad 😓
I saw a Sears once built from the ground up circa 1966 in Santa Fe Springs, California. I was 10 or 11 at the time. It was a prosperous store, always brimming with shoppers. Then the surrounding property evolved into a mall with little stores with Sears the principal tenant, all the other stores attached to Sears as if they were riding its coattails. Then a Target moved in the other end, and other restaurants apart from the mall’s food court. Slowly but surely the once mighty Sears declined and deteriorated. Sears didn’t move along with the times. Even 25 years later it had that old 60s motif, and it seemed as an aging ancestor just waiting for the grave. Sadly, that once ominous and impressive building was no longer there, replaced with a Walmart and other retail outlets. Only those of us who witnessed this leader in retail have memories of that great place. Those, too, will fade with time and age. Time moves on for those who move with it, and life grinds to a screeching halt for those who don’t.
When you walk down the shoe aisle at Walmart, it has a funky smell.
3:30 Going into his house is like going into the 1980s...
I'm a 90a kid. I grew up at the tail end of Sears and JC Penny. I loved shopping at those stores with my mom; it's unfortunate how it ended.
even teh 90s sears was a shadow of its former self by that point in time. by the time labmert took it over in 2005 it was a walking zombie.
Worked at Sears while in college.
Great people I worked with.
In 1984 they got the older employees together and asked them to retire.
They wouldn't.
One women had been with Sears in that town when it was just a mail order store.
Then they built a new mall and Sears got a bigger store.
Not one of the big ones with two floors, but the next step up from the catalog store.
Back then Sears could shut down for 6 months and still make a profit.
I remember one of the managers getting pissy because someone had ordered bees and they were shipped to the store and not the customer.
Yup.
You could still buy ducks, bees and so on back then.
At that time Sears owned Dean Witter Reynolds. They also owned Allstate. They also owned Coldwell Banker.
I understood immediately that they owned three financial businesses.
They were also moving away from salespeople. They would just let people shop and take their items to a central checkout in each department.
Well, I worked the floor and still ran a cash register.
They were going to use bar codes with "laser" scanners.
Nice idea but the bugs had not been worked out, so we just typed in the numbers in by hand.
I did get as an employee a 10% discount.
On the clearance rack in the mens' department they had a lime green nit type.
It was on sale for less than a dollar. So one day I bought it and stared to wear it to work at Sears.
The assistant manager saw me an the tie. He came up to me and asked me where I got that ugly tie.
I smiled and said, "Here. It was on the clearance rack." He just looked at me, rolled his eyes and walked on.
Years later I was back in that college town and went by the mall.
There was my old manager and it had been over ten years.
She remembered me.
I asked her about the old gang.
She said they called them all in for a meeting one day. They were told that as of Friday, they were all retired. I was shocked.
Well, it seems that word of them being retired got around really quickly. The manager of the local Penny's store heard about it.
He contacted the manage of the Sears and asked about them. Yes it was true they were being forced to retired.
The Penny's manager asked the Sears manager would he mind if he offered them jobs with Penny's. Not at all said the Sears manager.
So the Penny's manager came to the store. They called all those being forced to Retire on Friday.
He offered them all jobs at their same pay if they would come to for him and Penny's.
They all did.
He got adults with years of retail experience and customer service.
I worked at Sears in Eureka, CA for 14 years. There was a saying that went around: "There's the right way, the wrong way and the Sears way.". The Sears way turned out to be the wrong way.
Used to go there in the 70’s yo play the new Atari games. I can still remember the smell of new clothes there.
BucaneerBri Same here! My fondest Sears memories are of playing Atari on their “Tele-Games” system in their stores.
They really should have expanded into other countries too. They easily could have been a global brand by today.
I see you on such random things Larry
Yep so rich in the middle of the century should of expanded globally slowly from the 60s onwards into growing markets and europe.
@@Murdocke89 I think Larry spends like 20 hours a day on RUclips. I see this man everywhere.
Even on videos with hardly any views. Man of culture.
YEEEAAAAHHHH!
They did, see Sears Canada and Sears de Mexico. The Mexican operation is still going great
Sears was global. My friend
worked at Sears(Chicago)later,
I worked at Sears part time in high school and during college. Good times working there with great people. Sad to see them go down this way.
I'm 37 now and my parents actually met at Sears haha. Back in 1978 he worked at Sears as a radio and television sales man, and my mother worked in the lady's clothing department. These news made my parents shed a tear..
Sears was doing then what Amazon is doing now, if they had a smart CEO at the time today we wpuld be buying everything from Sears instead of Amazon or Ebay. They missed the opportunity and paid the ultimate price...failure
manny Vega kinda like B&H changed with the times. Besides a massive brick and mortar store in NYC they have a massive online presence and still send out those chunky catalogs selling from cameras to TVs
Lampert is so stupid just concerned with filling his own pockets. Where is the food aisle in sears etc...
I remember as a kid growing up in the 80s how exciting it was when the Sears Christmas catalog was delivered in the mail. I would spend days making my list just from this catalog alone. It's a shame to see what has happened to Sears. I'm just glad I can still get my Craftsman tools now at Lowe's Home Improvement.
Craftsman is not Craftsman any more. They call themselves Craftsman but there nothing like we remember.
"The Wish Book"
@@Soxruleyanksdrool They're junk from overseas.
Huh??? Sears Craftman tools at where??
@@Soxruleyanksdrool It seems like the strength in Craftsman and Sears was symbiotic, each shored up the other's measure of quality, same with Diehard, and lots of exclusive brands. All suffered without the other’s back. It seems almost like they all collapsed as one, but starting with Sears.
I worked for Sears in 1995-99 and I liked their ladies Clothing and childrens clothing! Awesome tools, furniture, appliances & fine jewelry. High quality merchandise for reasonable prices. I miss SEARS!
Growing up on a farm in rural Tennessee, the Sears & Roebuck catalog was my ''wish book'', alas, all one could do at that time was wish. Bought my first set of tools from Sears. Love that company, and sad that it is gone where we live.
We still have the original Sears here in L.A. It's turning into apartment suites but the sears at the first floor is gonna stay and be remodeled.
I still call it the Sears Tower....guess that's the only way the Sears name will live on.
There is a Sears Drivers Education school.
We have a sears in myrtle Beach
@@1974cobramustang sure you still do? They just announced 96 more closings 4 days ago.
QR One there’s one still by me, but prob not for long. Maybe they can focus all in on online business, they can still live on
To a true Chicagoean it will always be called The Sears Tower..
Me and my brothers used to spend hours looking at the catalog, talking about what if we had this. Good times. RIP Sears, you left us with great memories.
Growing up... my family purchased almost everything from Sears. This is very sad.
Bought a used Kenmore washer/dryer about 3 years ago, I'd say 1980s vintage and they still work great. Parts such as timers, belts, seals, etc can be bought on e-bay & other sources.
@@muffs55mercury61 : I could not get Kenmore vacuum cleaner parts in the U.S. Sears referred me to a company in Asia. I did not want to open that pandora's box. I had to dispose of two Kenmore machines that otherwise worked but needed unobtainable parts. I will not buy any Sears product now.
@@noraarico1313 So sad but that's often how it ends up. I've been lucky finding parts on e-bay sometimes.
Sears sell quality products. This is sad. I love Kenmore and Craftsman.
Tadia Foster Amazon sells Kenmore and Lowe’s is now selling Craftsman tools.
Back when i was like 20, the sears near me was a "tool specialty store"
I could go there and find ANYTHING!
My giant rollaway is packed, because back in my 20s, when i needed a tool, i went down' the street and got it at Sears.
Then one day, i went in there, and they didn't have crap for tools. They'd replaced most of the tool section with crappy exercise equipment. After that, anytime i was in there, the place was like a ghost town. Even that area where they had the exercise equipment because just an empty section after a while. I still cut through, to get in to the mall, but i honestly never bought anything in there after that.
The company made the store useless by undiversifying their product range and dissing their regular customers.
Sears was my favorite retail store,great selection of clothing and home goods at affordable prices...
I worked at Sears as a kid this is heartbreaking.
Sears also bought Lands End and doing its best to run that brand into the ground too. Lands End used to sell really well made, high quality clothing at reasonable prices and with a terrific guarantee. After Sears bought them their quality started to go downhill rapidly. I used to be a loyal Lands End customer, but once their quality sank to the bottom with Sears now in control I stopped buying their stuff. Lambert should be ashamed of himself for his greed.
Sears doesn't own Land's End anymore. It was sold off in 2014 as part of the fire sale. I haven't bought any of their stuff in a very long time, so I don't know if quality has improved with the change in ownership. I do understand what you were saying though. As an independent company Land's End sold quality merchandise.
Very sad to watch. We walked through a closing Sears location earlier today in Colorado and it was quite sad, after having grown up with Sears, to see the demise. Wishing the best to all of the employees who will likely lose their jobs while the people in charge take home bonuses.
R.I.P. Sears, K-Mart, Ayr-Way, Joslins, Bradlees, Radio Shack, Fred's, Blockbuster, Sharper Image, Circuit City, A&P, Suncoast Video, Service Merchandise, and so many others.
If I may say, your show is the one of the best magazine shows I have seen. I now watch your videos everyday. Bravo!