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Posted: 12/28/2018 1:26:37 PM EST
[#1]
Good!
Fuck sears. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 1:28:41 PM EST
[#2]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I am 28 and have never been inside of a Sears. I kind of want to find one just to go check it out. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 1:34:11 PM EST
[#3]
Sears done fucked up. They were Amazon before there was Amazon when they had a catalog that had literally everything. But they said fuck this newfangled internet shit, shopping malls are the future forever!
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Posted: 12/28/2018 1:50:54 PM EST
[#4]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Lots of stores from way back are gone.................Otasco, Western Auto ( at least around here), Oshman's, TG&Y, Woolworth, Zayre's, Treasure Island, Richway, etc...............used to go in all of them |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 1:53:41 PM EST
[#5]
Sucks, Sears was a fun place as a kid especially around christmas.
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:00:59 PM EST
[#6]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
And yet there are still department stores in America. Kohl's, for example. Sears reached their well-deserved demise for many reasons, most of which were management decisions. I'm no business guru, but management values, in hindsight, seemed to be: 1) We must continue to do business as we've done it the past 50 years. We have too much to lose by trying audacious and risky new ideas. (Never mind the fact that they had plenty of capital to do so) After all, they may become a threat to our own core business. (Never mind that someone else will eventually try it) 2) Instead of recognizing our unique quality brands and improving quality and investing in them, let's prostitute them by making them more cheaply, charging the same, and pocketing the difference. After all, Joe Sixpack and Suzie Cupcake won't know the difference. (Never mind that competitors can sell cheap shit too) 3) Make a bunch of ill-advised, high visibility divestitures to please Wall Street, leaving yourself only the the low margin retail business threatened on the low end by Wal-Mart and on the high end by specialty retailers. 4) Make a bunch of high visibility brand acquisitions to please Wall Street, (Land's End, etc.) only to squander their customer goodwill by doing nothing with them, as the brands died an ignoble death on the dusty shelves of empty stores. 5) Squeeze our service businesses (auto, appliance repair) to drive costs down and maximize profitability, which results in high customer dissatisfaction. 6) Milk our customers for personal data for sale and marketing, and take the opportunity at the checkout counter to try to sell them 8 more Sears services. This makes it so unbelievably annoying to shop there that everyone soon stops bothering. 7) Merge Sears and K-Mart together, producing the textbook example of "two turkeys can't make an eagle". Rather than try to turn around one failing chain, let's merge two together and try to save both at the same time! 8) Fail to invest in the physical stores appearance and maintenance, leaving them dilapidated and shabby places, thus making them unpleasant places to shop especially compared to competitors like Wal-Mart and Target that did invest in their stores. 9) Have a rich Wall street man-child CEO remotely manage the corporation from his Florida estate, screaming at underlings over video chat, thus driving any executives with any other job opportunities out, leaving only the detritus that couldn't find any better place to work. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:02:33 PM EST
[#7]
Where will I go for my action-wear slacks?
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:15:16 PM EST
[#8]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Sears could have built a solid website and been a player for the amazon story. Sears had products and regional distribution centers in place. Sears was great and is now sad. There is a sears house in the town I live in. It was delivered by train. 
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:24:26 PM EST
[#9]
Quote History |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:34:41 PM EST
[#10]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
The Sears lingerie section was my go to for mastubatory stimulation in my misspent youth. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:36:13 PM EST
[#11]
They used to sell everything including houses. Sad.
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:37:55 PM EST
[#12]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
They used to sell everything including houses. Sad. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:39:40 PM EST
[#13]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I am 28 and have never been inside of a Sears. I kind of want to find one just to go check it out. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:43:19 PM EST
[#14]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I was just in the Sears store in Mansfield Ohio on the 23rd. It is in the Richland Mall. It was actually quite sad to be in there, probably for the last time. I remember going there since I was 5, I'm 34 now. Used to be super busy, that day hardly anyone around. Store used to be decorated for the holidays, that day half of it was bare. The escalator was broken even, this was a 2 story sears in the mall. The bottom was tools, lawn stuff, beds and appliances. I remember picking out a tool to buy my dad for Christmas every year for a long time as a child. Grown up, I bought all my hand tools from Sears until about 8 years ago. I jumped out before they went Chinese. What a complete moron that made that decision should be shot. After that I barely bought anything there again. I could go to Harbor Freight or Home Depot to get the same things and maybe even better. The last realization in came to while walking around in Sears is that it has literally looked the same since I was 5. They never even moved the shelving around in almost 30 years.  Family Guy goes to Sears |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:48:57 PM EST
[#15]
Their arrogance and lack of foresight killed them.
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:52:17 PM EST
[#16]
Sears still smells like popcorn when I go into the local one. As far as I know this particular store never made popcorn.
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:54:33 PM EST
[#17]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Wrong.... I Have my Dad's old Craftsman tools he bought, I am still using them 65+ years later. They have been used hard, been through a garage fire, and while smaller ratchets have broke [many years ago] the replacements were still quality and the 1/2 drive stuff soldiers on. The smaller ratchets that broke were abused WAY past what they should have, when you're a kid you don't think ''gee, I have a 2 foot piece of pipe on the end of this thing, maybe I should get out the 1/2 breaker bar.'' The sockets are all still in good shape, I use an impact socket set for big stuff now, probably the only reason I didn't when I was a kid was that we didn't have an impact gun.  I've grabbed HF stuff occasionally, I can break that stuff with ease in a month or two. I stand by what I said - the craftsman stuff of last century is trash compared to even the homeowner grade China stuff at places like Lowes, HD, and HF. Brands like Gearwrench and Sunex are one step above the homeowner stuff and are good enough that you can use them professionally. Craftsman is, was, and has always been junk (their modern Chinese junk is slightly worse than their legacy domestic junk). People that want to argue this point are likely folks that don't use tools too often or have a great familiarity with them. Its just in 1970, there was no other alternative for non pro's and so Craftsman took most of the market notoriety. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:57:46 PM EST
[#18]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I think that Lampert always knew exactly what he was doing. Normally a Hedge fund either cuts up and parts out a company it buys quickly for maximum profit, or it orders basic fixed to improve its performance and flips the company as a whole. Either way, the Hedge fund usually wants to get in and get out.And when one does hang onto the company, they generally do everything they can to make it do well. I think Lampert decided to see if he could milk a company like Sears for more money than just selling it, and using it as a collateral base for investment using loans through a slow motion death, using separate incorporations for the retail ops that paid rent to the property side. And each time Sears got loans or bailouts the legal separation of the property side meant it could just keep the rent money as the retail side got bailed out over and over again. And all the property is still a ton of collateral, even if it was in distressed shopping malls, and they could use it to get big institutional loans at low rates, and go make 10-15% on those low single digit loans in the stock market. How Lampert ran around terrorizing the Sears Retail sides management, and his oddball consumer loyalty card/points system, but did nothing to address the fundamental problems Sears retail had was a two pronged strategy. 1. It was all a show so that there was a big paper trail of him "managing" Sears, which would protect him from malpractice lawsuits by Sears retail side creditors. It's hard to prove willful mismanagement, as long as there's a decent facade of "See? I tried!" that the defense can put up as a smokescreen. 2. On the slim teeny-tiny chance Sears bounced back, no matter why it actually did, Lampert would be hailed as a genius. Obviously a huge long shot, but no big deal, because #1 was the important part. As was legally funneling all that money into his Hedge fund. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 2:58:40 PM EST
[#19]
I have a local Sears store. Do you think there will be deals to be had?
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Posted: 12/28/2018 3:05:13 PM EST
[#20]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I have a local Sears store. Do you think there will be deals to be had? |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 3:09:26 PM EST
[#21]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I have a local Sears store. Do you think there will be deals to be had? |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 3:10:58 PM EST
[#22]
Bye Felicia.
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Posted: 12/28/2018 4:26:10 PM EST
[#23]
So nothing from Lambert.
Will be interesting to see a full accounting of all this when it's over. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 4:26:44 PM EST
[#24]
For everyone pointing out that Sears could have been Amazon, but fucked up, I think you are being a little harsh.
The last Sears catalog came out in 1993. "Commercial" (e.g. non-science and non-military) access to the internet did not exist until 1991. The World Wide Web didn't exist until that year as well. Amazon (the online bookstore) and ebay weren't founded until 1995. Sears would have had to be pretty visionary to see the online retailing boom in 1993. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 4:35:53 PM EST
[#25]
Sears get financing?
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Posted: 12/28/2018 4:46:08 PM EST
[#26]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
For everyone pointing out that Sears could have been Amazon, but fucked up, I think you are being a little harsh. The last Sears catalog came out in 1993. "Commercial" (e.g. non-science and non-military) access to the internet did not exist until 1991. The World Wide Web didn't exist until that year as well. Amazon (the online bookstore) and ebay weren't founded until 1995. Sears would have had to be pretty visionary to see the online retailing boom in 1993. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 4:49:02 PM EST
[#27]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Sears get financing? |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 4:54:26 PM EST
[#28]
Honestly, zero fucks given
I did like Sear for appliances and tools and will miss them for a few things. They also were pretty good about hiring veterans. Adapt or die. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 4:56:12 PM EST
[#29]
No loss. Pay attention Cheby.
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Posted: 12/28/2018 4:57:02 PM EST
[#30]
Their rack shelfs from one back room of one the stores will go nicely in several people's shops and garages
 ...at a deep discount too.
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Posted: 12/28/2018 4:59:20 PM EST
[#31]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Nope. And they announced 80 more store closures earlier today also. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
Sears get financing? |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 5:15:51 PM EST
[#32]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I think that Lampert always knew exactly what he was doing. I think however two things happened over the years that got in his way. First, I think Lampert got into his head the idea that he wanted to be known as the guy who turned around an American icon like Sears as well as KMart. It wasn't enough to be rich, or known as an investment whiz kid, he wanted to be known as a brilliant businessman. Jack Welsh, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and ... Eddie Lampert! One little known fact is that Lampert was the largest shareholder at AutoNation, at one point owning more than half the company. Guess who started buying a lot of AutoNation stock, while Lampert sold, and a couple years ago became AutoNation's new largest shareholder? Bill Gates. Lampert wanted to be an investment whiz like Buffet, and a business whiz like Gates. So perhaps he didn't just tear up the company and sell for parts like your average hedge fund type. Instead he wanted to satisfy his ego and really turn it around. Second, I don't think the Board and pesky things like SEC let him do all the things he wanted to do. Even the stock market didn't let him do what he wanted. A few years ago Lampert gave a memorable public rant when Sears released quarterly earnings, complaining that companies like Tesla and Uber can burn through millions of dollars loss every week, and yet are cheered by the market. Yet Sears sales don't *increase* enough, and the stock drops off a cliff. And of course, it's obvious that Lampert is actually no brilliant businessman. So buh bye Sears. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 5:17:56 PM EST
[#33]
I was just in one and they’re selling screwdriver sets for $40 at 20% discount. That is a stupid price.
Their socket sets were $139 at 20% disc. Last year same tool aisle they had a carbon monoxide detector that had been there 20 years. The packaging plastic had yellowed and must have been an inside joke or something. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 5:27:20 PM EST
[#34]
They were Amazon with their mail order catalogs before the internet existed.
All they had to do was embrace changing times. Goodbye. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 5:33:45 PM EST
[#35]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
For everyone pointing out that Sears could have been Amazon, but fucked up, I think you are being a little harsh. ... Sears would have had to be pretty visionary to see the online retailing boom in 1993. In hindsight, we can all see that Amazon's website is the modern equivalent of the Sears catalog. That all Sears had to do was re-run their original business model, this time on the web instead of a paper mail-order catalog. But Sears management had already canned the idea of mail order several years earlier. Amazon was a bookseller in the late 90s, not the Everything Store it is today. The web was new and unproven in the late 90s. Lots of businesses were popping up, folding, supported by investors only. The idea of returning to what is obviously a "mail order business" would have been laughed out of the C-suite. The dot-com bubble crashing in 2000 almost certainly proved to Sears management that the New Economy was bunk. Imagine the stunning foresight it would have taken for a company like Sears in say 1998 or even 2003 to say "look, we are going to return to our roots as a mail-order company, this time web-based, and wind down our retail stores because otherwise 15-20 years from now we'll be bankrupt". What Board of Directors, probably populated by a bunch of 60 and 70 year olds, would have signed off on that plan? |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 5:41:42 PM EST
[#36]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
He ran that store into the ground. He should have never been Chairman or CEO. He has no idea about retail stores and his decisions proved to be the downfall of Sears.  "Sears is a finance company!!!" No, it isn't, even if that's where the money comes from. Without a retail operation, the rest is worthless. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 5:47:18 PM EST
[#37]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
No loss. Pay attention Cheby. The US needs to cut out dealers and of course allow consumers to choose autos with less advanced safety and environmental features. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 5:57:30 PM EST
[#38]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Their website was historically a flaming shit show of staggering proportions. Inexplicably, other stores' products were mixed in with Sears products. Hey guys, Amazon already exists, OK? And I would be there if I felt like seeing random search results mixed in, but the only reason I'm on your Geocities-era tottering site to begin with is specifically because I'm interested in Sears products, though God alone knows why. Visiting now, it seems to have been given a thin veneer of usability since the last time I used it. Too bad there's nothing they sell that I would want to buy. Craftsman? Aside from parts for a bandsaw or something I don't own, I have a thousand places to buy shitty Chinesium tools. Amazon just did everything better. Some a lot better, some a little better. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:04:15 PM EST
[#39]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Wow, lots of hate here for Sears. Why did Craftsman go downhill? Because we wouldn't pay the extra $2 for a better product. Going to Harbor Freight saved you a few bucks but in the long run that piece of shit tool will have to be replaced two or three times. So quit your bitchin - you did this... But that was one of Sears high points, until they trashed it. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:05:35 PM EST
[#40]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Yep. "Sears is a finance company!!!" No, it isn't, even if that's where the money comes from. Without a retail operation, the rest is worthless.  The Sears credit card was more profitable than the retail sales business.
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:07:12 PM EST
[#41]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
I'll add another reason Sears failed. Sears used to have their own store card and they owned the bank that issued the card. You could only use a Sears card or a Discover card at Sears stores. The Sears card was the most profitable part of the business (because of 21% interest rates and no merchant fees paid to third parties). Sears sold off the bank that issued the card because "The Stock Market undervalued the asset." I think that happened about 15-20 years ago. Sears cards were like the gold standard of good credit. You had to have good credit to get one. You can only sell off a specific cash cow ONE time, and then you've forfeited its annual revenue. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:08:47 PM EST
[#42]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Once upon a time, Sears was a credit card company that had a captive retail operation. The Sears credit card was more profitable than the retail sales business. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:08:56 PM EST
[#43]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Depends where you live. For anything beyond Walmart, Lowe’s and Home Depot I have to drive an hour. So a two hour round trip plus thirty or forty minutes in store vs clicking a button and having it show up on my door two or three days later. Figure the cost of gas and time wasted I’m coming out ahead using Amazon. If you live in an urban area where lots of specialty retailers are available then maybe going to a brick and mortar makes sense for you. I hate shopping in general so I’ll just keep clicking online. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
Quoted: This, quality tools, guns, other good stuff. Sad to see them go, soon you will have your choice of Amazon or Walmart 
All the Amazon fanboys should look around, I rarely find anything on Amazon that is not available elsewhere for less. If you live in an urban area where lots of specialty retailers are available then maybe going to a brick and mortar makes sense for you. I hate shopping in general so I’ll just keep clicking online. I have used Prime for years and rarely find items to be more expensive than local B&M. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:10:18 PM EST
[#44]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Their rack shelfs from one back room of one the stores will go nicely in several people's shops and garages ...at a deep discount too.
"I'll take them shelves, too." |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:12:13 PM EST
[#45]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Yep. "Sears is a finance company!!!" No, it isn't, even if that's where the money comes from. Without a retail operation, the rest is worthless. Quote HistoryQuoted:
Quoted:
He ran that store into the ground. He should have never been Chairman or CEO. He has no idea about retail stores and his decisions proved to be the downfall of Sears. "Sears is a finance company!!!" No, it isn't, even if that's where the money comes from. Without a retail operation, the rest is worthless. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:23:04 PM EST
[#46]
Amazon didn't have "physical" brick and mortar stores in the key locations like Sears did, this was a cost that grew and grew. Sears also had 65,000 employees with full pensions and benefits, something Amazon never will have.
Personally, I'd rather shop at Sears and Kmart than order on Amazon any day, keep the jobs local and grow your community. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:25:53 PM EST
[#47]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Step one - Sell guns again. Step two - Sell tools that don't suck. When harbor freight sells better quality tools at half the price your shit is fucked. 
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:31:48 PM EST
[#48]
Lingerie section in the catalog saw lots of page flipping. I was busy in my youth!
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:38:05 PM EST
[#49]
Quote HistoryQuoted:
Some people did this, but given the state that Craftsman is in today, I doubt it was nearly the same amount of people who stayed away from HF and bought Craftsman because of the quality and the fact that it was American made. When they moved production to China, it eliminated every reason to buy Craftsman. |
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Posted: 12/28/2018 6:38:23 PM EST
[#50]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Oh God no, everything was marked up before it was marked ''down'' and if it's really worth a bunch, it's not on sale. |
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