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Sears, once the world's biggest retailer, now faces bankruptcy after not turning a profit since 2010


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https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/125-year-old-sears-file-bankruptcy-report-n918446

 

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Shares have fallen by more than 85 percent in the last year as e-commerce has taken over the brick-and-mortar retail space. Despite pairing up with Amazon in 2017 to sell appliances online, analysts say Sears has not kept pace with change nor made investments in the digital space to the extent that Walmart and Target have done.

 

 

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They could have been Amazon, but had horrible management. They had the continent-wide infrastructure for local deliveries and warehousing, they have a catalog system set up, and you could even have picked up from your local store. Instead, they had management that made the internet divisions compete for attention and budget resources, so there was internal sabotage (why do better when you can make your competing division do worse?)

 

Sears will sit alongside Blockbuster in the history books as a company that could (and should) have been the dominant new force in a new market, but failed to leverage their current position to do so.

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1 hour ago, Joestradamus said:

One close to me started closing down a few weeks ago, it was a mess in there. Appliances were so cheap that I considered buying some and just putting them in storage, but the ones we wanted were still too expensive to impulsively buy, unfortunately. 

 

Sears shut down in Canada a year or two ago and this exact same thing happened. Their debtors took over the stores and decided to put everything on a "clearance sale" that in reality was like 5-10% off. Eventually they lowered the prices but employees stopped showing up, and those who remained just let people take what they wanted and charged them made-up prices. People were taking light fixtures off of the walls and cashiers would take $10 for them, haha. It was chaos and then they just shut it down since the employees didn't give a shit anymore.

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1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

They could have been Amazon, but had horrible management. They had the continent-wide infrastructure for local deliveries and warehousing, they have a catalog system set up, and you could even have picked up from your local store. Instead, they had management that made the internet divisions compete for attention and budget resources, so there was internal sabotage (why do better when you can make your competing division do worse?)

 

Sears will sit alongside Blockbuster in the history books as a company that could (and should) have been the dominant new force in a new market, but failed to leverage their current position to do so.

 

Isn't Sears the company where the CEO decided to pit the internal divisions against each other in some wild misunderstanding of Randian self-sufficiency ideals?

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1 minute ago, SFLUFAN said:

Like Ballmer-era Microsoft?

 

I don't know as much about that, I'm thinking of a CEO profile I read that specifically touched on his being a fan of Ayn Rand and my impression based on my own familiarity with Objectivism was that he really misunderstood it.

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49 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

I don't know as much about that, I'm thinking of a CEO profile I read that specifically touched on his being a fan of Ayn Rand and my impression based on my own familiarity with Objectivism was that he really misunderstood it.

So he is just like every other proponent of randian objectivism

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3 hours ago, Joestradamus said:

One close to me started closing down a few weeks ago, it was a mess in there. Appliances were so cheap that I considered buying some and just putting them in storage, but the ones we wanted were still too expensive to impulsively buy, unfortunately. 

The Sears in my area was the same way. Big giant "sales" that still weren't that great until the very end. The building was eventually leveled and now a Dicks Sporting Goods stands in its place. Even more annoying is practically in the same parking lot they built a Field and Stream store which must be owned by the same company as Dicks because everything about the 2 stores are identical and they sell almost the same stuff. 

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We have two stores in our town that sell somewhat affordable clothing: Kmart and Fred Meyer.  There is also a farm and ranch store, but unless you want country western clothing or safety gear, they aren't a great option for most people.  The Fred Meyer in our town is planning on phasing out of clothing and most other departments aside from grocery soon.  If the Kmart closes, the town will not have anywhere to really shop for clothing.  Walmart has been attempting to build in the town for the last 10 years (they own the land even) but local protectionists have blocked them from moving forward with construction during that entire time.  Meanwhile, half of the downtown businesses are already closed, and other shopping choices are practically gone.  Yes, you can drive to Portland or Yakima to go shopping, but then aren't helping the local economy at all, plus it's a hassle. 

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1 hour ago, mclumber1 said:

We have two stores in our town that sell somewhat affordable clothing: Kmart and Fred Meyer.  There is also a farm and ranch store, but unless you want country western clothing or safety gear, they aren't a great option for most people.  The Fred Meyer in our town is planning on phasing out of clothing and most other departments aside from grocery soon.  If the Kmart closes, the town will not have anywhere to really shop for clothing.  Walmart has been attempting to build in the town for the last 10 years (they own the land even) but local protectionists have blocked them from moving forward with construction during that entire time.  Meanwhile, half of the downtown businesses are already closed, and other shopping choices are practically gone.  Yes, you can drive to Portland or Yakima to go shopping, but then aren't helping the local economy at all, plus it's a hassle. 

Do they have U-hauls there?  Cause it sounds like a lot of people need those there.

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30 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I wonder how well they can do with a scaled down operation. I feel like their entire business model was built around being a large, wide retailer. It's going to take some real doing to make it work at a smaller scale.

Oh this is just holding off the inevitable for a little while.

 

Even if they were more competitive in their pricing and had a drastic overhaul to their online presence, they still are losing when it comes to advertising. There isn't anything Sears does that somebody else isn't advertising like crazy that they offer. 

 

Sears doesn't have the money to be competitive nor the leadership creative enough to have a vision to get them out of this. 

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