Sears Holdings files for Ch 11 closing 142 more stores before years end

[Thebobo]

I bought my C=64 there had it for a week and returned it for a C=128. They had a whole area selling Ataris and Commodores and a few others.

And on I did a bad thing note. The 128 died so bought another one changed the guts of my dead one with the new one and returned the one with my dead guts. ~ yes I was a bad boy.

 

[Paratus]

Sears was a case study on not having a clear business plan and failing because of it in my capstone class right before graduating with a BS in MIS. This was back in 2001. It is amazing they have literally survived about 30 years due to their immense portfolio of assets. Fascinating case study. Sears didnt know if they wanted to be a low cost or premium brand. Stuck between Walmart on the bottom, and Target\Macys on the high end. Back then online retail was small and just getting started. I think the Amazon effect in the past 5-8 years is what finally did them in and accelerated it near the end.

Here’s the idiotic thing about the ‘Amazon’ effect. Sears was essentially Amazon from it’s original founding 132 years ago until 1925 when they started investing in retail locations. They shipped out catalogs and sent what you ordered by mail. (I actually remember reading as a kid the ‘Great Brain’ series about a family in Utah in the 1890’s. They’d occasionally order new fangled items like indoor toilets and basketball hoops from the Sears catalog)

Sears could have easily realized from its history that the internet was going to make mail order big again. They could have been a massive competitor to Amazon. Instead they completely missed the boat. Add in incompetent management and here we are.

 

[brycejones]

I guess we will all outlive the lifetime warranty on our Craftsman tools. Too bad, their stuff was very good quality back when they made it in the USA.

I'm surprised the bankruptcy court and creditors are allowing them to do this looting. Chapter 11 is specifically for reorganization-to keep the company operating. The chances of Sears doing this have got to be pretty much nil.

Craftsman has already been sold off to Stanley, you warranty should still be intact.

 

[hal2kilo]

It's amazing to me that it's taken this long. Should have died when they got rid of Craftsman.

 

[fskimospy]

Here’s the idiotic thing about the ‘Amazon’ effect. Sears was essentially Amazon from it’s original founding 132 years ago until 1925 when they started investing in retail locations. They shipped out catalogs and sent what you ordered by mail. (I actually remember reading as a kid the ‘Great Brain’ series about a family in Utah in the 1890’s. They’d occasionally order new fangled items like indoor toilets and basketball hoops from the Sears catalog)

Sears could have easily realized from its history that the internet was going to make mail order big again. They could have been a massive competitor to Amazon. Instead they completely missed the boat. Add in incompetent management and here we are.

I remember the Great Brain series! I loved those books but Tom was kind of a psychopath.

 

[fskimospy]

It's amazing to me that it's taken this long. Should have died when they got rid of Craftsman.

I worked for them for a bit when I was in high school and even then I was kind of amazed they were still in business. The only reason I could think of that I would go to Sears even then was to buy an appliance or tools.

 

[Genx87]

Here’s the idiotic thing about the ‘Amazon’ effect. Sears was essentially Amazon from it’s original founding 132 years ago until 1925 when they started investing in retail locations. They shipped out catalogs and sent what you ordered by mail. (I actually remember reading as a kid the ‘Great Brain’ series about a family in Utah in the 1890’s. They’d occasionally order new fangled items like indoor toilets and basketball hoops from the Sears catalog)

Sears could have easily realized from its history that the internet was going to make mail order big again. They could have been a massive competitor to Amazon. Instead they completely missed the boat. Add in incompetent management and here we are.

Absolutely. It is a case there it all went full circle but Sears did not keep up. There is some irony in a company having a foundation of being mail order being crushed by other essentially mail order companies ~130 years later.

 

[brycejones]

Here’s the idiotic thing about the ‘Amazon’ effect. Sears was essentially Amazon from it’s original founding 132 years ago until 1925 when they started investing in retail locations. They shipped out catalogs and sent what you ordered by mail. (I actually remember reading as a kid the ‘Great Brain’ series about a family in Utah in the 1890’s. They’d occasionally order new fangled items like indoor toilets and basketball hoops from the Sears catalog)

Sears could have easily realized from its history that the internet was going to make mail order big again. They could have been a massive competitor to Amazon. Instead they completely missed the boat. Add in incompetent management and here we are.

Oh man the great brain series. I went looking for them recently and they are out of print.

 

[zinfamous]

Lol, never give a pregnant lady access to power tools.

And I thought the lesson was never to let a 2nd-rate author of 6th grade literature act as a foundation to your business strategy.

 

[IJTSSG]

Sears = Americana

 

[Puffnstuff]

Published close list set to liquidate within the next two weeks.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/business/sears-store-locations-closing/index.html

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

It's amazing to me that it's taken this long. Should have died when they got rid of Craftsman.

Yeap, It's actually funny - they were kind of the pioneers of catalog orders once upon a time.

At the end of the day, it's their fault that they didn't adapt to the constantly changing market. You can take a look at any store that has ever fallen in history and can clearly see "Yeap, not surprised they fell".

A lot of people love to see this as an apocalypse of all retail brick and mortar stores and I simply have to shake my head and disagree. They may not all be ginormous Walmart/KMart equivalents, but the retail space is definitely still getting filled - just might be with smaller clothing store chains, purse stores, athletic wear stores, etc... instead of the big-box warehouse ones.... But for that, Costco / Sams / BJs certainly aren't getting smaller.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Looks like the writing might be on the wall for them.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/02/business/sears-decision/index.html

 

[sportage]

Aw... Sears....
I think my great great great grandfather bought his first horse and buggy from Sears.
AND... Sears still sells em.

 

[dawp]

I bought my C=64 there had it for a week and returned it for a C=128. They had a whole area selling Ataris and Commodores and a few others.

And on I did a bad thing note. The 128 died so bought another one changed the guts of my dead one with the new one and returned the one with my dead guts. ~ yes I was a bad boy.

I worked on returns for Tandy/AST computers back in the late 80s and early 90s, you would not believe what some folks would try to pull, replacing CPUs with ceramic tiles, replacing old, outdated parts in place of new, and the like.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Sears announces more store closures.

https://www.news4jax.com/money/sears-and-kmart-closing-26-more-stores

 

[Thebobo]

Bummer I loved the sears catalog lingerie section as a kid.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Bummer I loved the sears catalog lingerie section as a kid.

I mean, I'm sure its incredibly difficult to find images of women modeling lingerie for sales purposes (and non-sale purposes) these days.

"Those were the days, when you had to sneak the Sears catalog to ogle women in their undies, and pretend you're actually seriously interested in whatever lame comedy was being used to flash gratuitous T&A and the rental store's tapes would be worn out in key sections due to frantic rewinding and rewatching to see some tits! And there were porn stashes out in the woods! And you had to watch real porn in a theater with other men."

Which, you know that actually is a sign of the isolation that the internet has brought. Used to be porn stashes were a shared commodity (I remember us sharing the Playboy stashes of our parents, by that I mean us showing them when friends were over and the parents gone and just looking at them; one friend's dad had boxes and boxes of them, and a friend took some and then his mom found them and he gives me a call freaking the fuck out because his mom had cleaned his room and he couldn't find the Playboys, but she hadn't said anything to him yet...hahaha). And apparently like it used to be common for there to be stashes of porn just out in the woods (with it being kinda a right of passage, like almost Stand By Me, to go find them). And the communal porn theaters.

Not that I'm saying plenty of that was healthy, but it made us have to interact in a way that we don't any more. I think there are healthy more open sex behaviors in a lot of ways these days, but those aren't the norm, and I could see the isolation aspect particularly being an issue with younger people (sure you might amass a huge collection of "real" girls sending pics and of course dick pics are not in short supply, but there's a schizm where its like we're missing the wooing stage of things, so its romantically stunting ourselves in a lot of ways, pics to Netflix 'n chill and then GTFO).

 

[compuwiz1]

This sure has been a slow death. Put this thing out of its misery already.

 

[IronWing]

This sure has been a slow death. Put this thing out of its misery already.

The cow maybe old but there are still a few drops of milk to be squeezed out by the execs.

 

[Victorian Gray]

This sure has been a slow death. Put this thing out of its misery already.

There is still money that can be sucked out of that death so I suspect that it will be a while yet.

 

[Puffnstuff]

77 more stores along with their HQ are closing. Sears won't be around much longer so make plans to score big on their liquidation sales.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/warren...re-stores-closing-hq-being-sold/#1c6a7d7d4444

 

[UNCjigga]

77 more stores along with their HQ are closing. Sears won't be around much longer so make plans to score big on their liquidation sales.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/warren...re-stores-closing-hq-being-sold/#1c6a7d7d4444

Too late in my neck of the woods. Should have grabbed that garage fridge when I had the chance. Fun fact--I had a Sears and HH Greg within a half a mile of each other--now there's only a Target and Best Buy left in that area.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Things are getting clearer for which stores are under the gun this year.

Sears and Kmart closing more stores in late 2019 and early 2020. Is your location closing?

More than 100 Kmart and Sears stores will close by the end of 2019 and more closures are expected to continue into early 2020.

www.usatoday.com

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Things are getting clearer for which stores are under the gun this year.

Sears and Kmart closing more stores in late 2019 and early 2020. Is your location closing?

More than 100 Kmart and Sears stores will close by the end of 2019 and more closures are expected to continue into early 2020.

www.usatoday.com

I understand the point of closing stores that are no longer profitable - but the problem is you have to do something to address the underlying problem, otherwise it's ultimately useless.

It's going to be a slow painful death just like all the previous like Toys R' Us.