The big missteps that brought an American retail icon to the edge of collapse

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I went past the Landmark Mall Sears on the western edge of Alexandria, Virginia, on a commuter bus yesterday evening at 7:20 p.m. I saw maybe two or three cars in the parking lot.

The Falls Church Sears used to be a Lord & Taylor. Sears took over maybe 20 or 25 years ago. It's across Route 7 from the Seven Corners Shopping Mall.

Like all articles in the Washington Post, this one brings up ads for Amazon.

The big missteps that brought an American retail icon to the edge of collapse

By Sarah Halzack June 1 at 3:35 PM

Walk into a Sears these days, and you’ll see an icon of American retailing collapsing before your eyes.

On a May visit to the Falls Church {Virginia} store, the floors in the refrigerator aisles were splotched with brown stains. Over by the exercise equipment, the walls were scuffed and had wires hanging out of them. There were empty shelves in the shoe department. And in the tools section. And the men’s clothing area. ... The place is in decay — much like Sears’s once-dominant business model.

After six straight years of plunging sales and profit losses, the company is shuttering stores and selling off crown jewels like its Craftsman tools line.

Decades of missed opportunities have brought Sears to this. It lost its focus with ventures into Discover credit cards and Coldwell Banker real estate in an attempt to diversify. Then big boxes such as Home Depot and Best Buy chipped away at lucrative product niches. But maybe the biggest whiff: Executives knew as far back as the early 1990s that they had to wean Sears off its dependency on shopping malls — but its many forays into other store formats never quite worked. ... As e-commerce moves toward its golden age, Sears is an also-ran.
....

Sarah Halzack is The Washington Post's national retail reporter. She has previously covered the local job market and the business of talent and hiring. She has also served as a Web producer for business and economic news. Follow @sarahhalzack

[mercuryblues]

1. I used to love Sears

I saw their decline over the years. Their clothes went from a good quality at reasonable prices to paying top dollar for something where seams tore, colors ran, and shrunk 3 sizes in the wash.

I used to buy all my kids clothes there. I could rely on them to have a great selection for both genders, ranging from Sunday best to play clothes. Which meant I only needed to go to one store to get everything. Which meant a lot to me with 3 or 4 kids to buy for at any given time. No going from store to store, in/out of car, taking a whole day. go in, get them outfitted for school in a few hours. Then take them all out for what I dubbed "their last meal" before school started.

Then the problems I mentioned started happening. Now I was running back and forth, exchanging items. I went there less and less.

[WestSeattle2]

2. I don't believe I've purchased anything at Sears, in at least

ten years. There is a store close to my home, but it's old, depressing, and the sales staff are miserable. The men's clothing area was a disaster - clothes tossed in piles, disorganized, and many apparel items had no price tags. Meanwhile, I remember the clerk just standing in the cashiers area, shooting the breeze with a friend (not an employee, or at least not on the clock). Really? The department you're responsible for looks like a bomb went off, and you're just going to ignore it and BS with your friend?

That was my last experience with Sears, and will never return. I blame the train wreck on poor management, from the store department level all the way to the top of the pyramid.

[PJMcK]

3. Their Christmas catalog was huge when I was a kid

The Sear & Roebuck Christmas catalog would arrived sometime in mid-Fall and would consume hours of my fantasy time dreaming of all the toys that Santa could bring me! It was about an inch thick and the first half was clothing and the last half were toys and games. Curiously, I seem to remember that the toys were segregated by gender. Nonetheless, it was a true treasure trove!

Interestingly, their regular catalog, which featured everything they sold, was a couple of inches thick and was geared toward customers in remote areas who couldn't get to a store. A friend who sailed a small boat around the world took a copy with him as a reference when he needed to buy something in a foreign port. That catalog wasn't as much fun to me since it didn't have any toys!

It's depressing to see this once dominant company going into such steep decline. They weren't able to adapt to the changing world of commerce, much like Radio Shack.

Of course, now that I'm much older (and have the internet), the toys I'm looking for are somewhat different!

ETA: The other day I was looking for a slightly unusual tool and I was able to order it online from Sears. It's a tool called a screw starter and it looks like a screwdriver with a threaded tip. They had their Craftsman version for under $4.00 so I bought two. They arrived this morning and I'm impressed by their excellent and prompt service.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. My nearest Radio Shack just closed its doors on Monday night.

I think I was their last customer. I bought some RF adapters for $0.50 each.

[PJMcK]

5. Amazing, isn't it?

Radio Shack should've been one of the companies to succeed in the technological age. I guess their management never got their perspective out of the retail model.

Like Sears, they're another retailer from my youth. As a teenager, I was fascinated with electronics and built numerous Heathkits and other electronic projects. Not only did I assemble one of the first available calculators, (8 decimal places with add, subtract, divide and multiply and only one memory slot for an integer), I developed some rudimentary audio equipment for our student-run FM radio station and built a stereo vibrato device for my electric piano. I bought all of the parts at Radio Shack, including transistors, capacitors, resistors (I even learned the color-coding for them!), and other components for these and other projects. The sales staff in those days was knowledgable and several times made very helpful suggestions for my projects.

Sad to see them go, too.

[Galileo126]

7. I know this article is about Sears, but I - too - liken it to Radio Shack

PJMcK just welled up some tears in my eyes. I, too, was an electronic hobbyist. I used to save up my paper route money and bike down to my local Radio Shack to buy parts. Capacitors, resistors, transistors, etc. Just to make silly and fun things. My favorite was making radios out of seemingly "nothing".

Damn, I miss those days. RIP to Heathkit, too. We actually had a store just 10 miles from my (childhood) house.

(And yeah, I worked for my high school FM radio station for the whole 4 years, too.)

Damn, those types of staores are falling to the wayside of the internet. Oh well, we must adjust, yeah?

-kudos!

[PJMcK]

8. Good times

Bachatcha, Galileo126!

Enjoy your weekend.

[dragonlady]

6. Sears used to sell kits to build a whole house

From 1908 to 1940 they would provide all the parts to build yourself a home. This website shows all of them with plans, and it's fascinating:

http://www.arts-crafts.com/archive/sears/

[Warpy]

9. A lot of the houses are still standing, especially the ones in flyover country

They weren't luxurious and many have additions tacked onto them, but if someone followed the instructions, they got a sturdy house. They stopped selling them when the buildup to WWII made the bits and pieces too expensive. They should have spun off that company, they'd have made a fortune during the post war housing shortage.

There have been too many dumb decisions down the line, like selling off Craftsman tools. The biggest dumb decision was ending the catalog business in favor of sticking stores in every shopping mall out there. That's really what broke them. Quality went down and shoppers went elsewhere and that was long before Amazon appeared.

Retail is in trouble across the board mostly because the middle class has dropped down to working class and has neither the time nor the money to go shopping. However some, like Sears, are a study in stupid management decisions, like selling off the best parts of the company and overexpanding.