Two weeks ago I posted a video about the decline and fall of Sears. My weekly video is normally watched by a few hundred small business people, but the Sears video has well over 3000 views (as of 4/9/17). And mine isn’t the only YouTube video about Sears. They’re all getting high engagement.
Clearly, Sears has struck a nerve. Comments made to my video are all over the board, but I have a big question. WHY is the Sears story so big? Why do we care so much?
And what can businesses learn from the Sears story?
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Hi Steve,
I watched and listened to your Sears video. Of course, it struck a very emotional nerve as you described so well. If we needed anything 30-35 years ago the first trip was to Sears. Not only to buy but also to look and feel what is new, from electronics, cameras, TVs, tools, household items and clothing. Now, the new generation comes along and shops online or goes to the Apple Store, which offers a totally different, modern experience, from customer attention to immediate payment and emailed receipts.
Right now, I also see the HHGregg appliance and electronics stores going out of business as well. Almost a similar set-up as Sears was, with large floor space, but not as inviting as for instance the Apple Store.
I feel like there is not just one missed item that is responsible for the Sears downfall. Many things came together: inside mistakes, missed signs of the changing times, outside influences, the digital internet based economy, management miscues etc.. They probably thought for the longest period of time that they were “too big to fail”, and we all have seen this happen from other industries as well: Banks, Kodak, Polaroid, RadioShack etc…. Once you miss that crucial point in time to recognize and make a change, it is over and you might die a long and agonizing death. A business has to reinvent itself constantly, even if it means initial pain, but without that there is no future. In general, all the department stores in the malls are in grave danger, and the malls are trying to stay relevant, but the effort and resources this requires are sometimes impossible to overcome.
I love your Monday ‘ramblings” and share them with my staff. Keep’em coming.
Jurgen
Sears is like your grandparents, you grew up with Sears as the matriarch of your family and your “go to” for all your family shopping needs. When the catalog arrived, you sat with your siblings and went through the toy section page by page and made your “fantasy” Christmas list. In my case my older sister and I would play a game. First she got the right page and I got the left page. We would go through each page to seer what we each got and then we would start over by switching pages. We never actually got everything in the book because our family finances did not allow for the purchases of these toys, but it was “magical” just going through and dreaming about receiving everything in the catalog.
Then we grew up and started our adult life and our sears stopped sending us their catalog and we lost touch. Every once in a while we would find time in our busy lives to visit them and noticed they were getting tired, and old and not as magical as they were when we were little. We wanted to visit them more, but they seemed in a world that was not in sync with our world.
What if during our visits to them we instead found that they had taken up tennis, wore the latest fashions, had totally remodeled their home and were up on all the latest happenings. It would be an “adventure” again. We would start to visit them a lot more. They would not be old, but rather still the place we went to get everything we needed.
When you talked about the demise of Sears, you hit a huge emotional chord that was the same as saying our grandparents were in their last days. We had regret that we did not visit them more and now our opportunity may be gone forever.
I’m not sure why they started failing, except Kmart was a bad decision for them, but I know why they’ll fail.
Craftsman, Kenmore, they’re shedding everything of value. What differentiates them from everyone else now?
If Sears can die, any once highly positioned brand, company, etc can suffer the same fate and I think that is scary.
Like you, i grew up in a small town in the midwest and can remember regular family outings to our local Sears outlet in the town square. But times changed and maybe they just couldn’t adapt. But it’s sad to see a once proud institution fade away.
Steve,
To your ask to clarify about Sears (and Penny’s), I’ll go back to my childhood. It was a family outing for my mother and my siblings to buy blue jeans, school clothes, shoes and basics for our home at a Department Store, in both our town and the bigger city 10 miles away. They were an important part of our family’s clothes budget for 4 children born within 5 years, they were affordable and they were able to sell many more things than clothes (toys, appliances, yard tools, etc) that our family needed. At that time, there were no Kohl’s, Target, WalMart or many more in competition for every families dollar. Grocery stores sold groceries, appliance stores sold appliances, hardware stores sold hardware. Today, everyone tries to be every thing for every one. Or we look on the internet and order what we need to be delivered to our doorstep. As an automobile dealership, we will see a day in the not to far future that our products are sold without ever stepping in the dealership. I still like one on one relationships and building a friendship with our customers–always have, always will!
As a kid, Montgomery Wards was our store and my favorite anxiously awaited catalog to get. I was very sad when they went out of business. Sears now affects me much the same way, but for slightly different reasons. It has been our favorite place to buy appliances and tools. For me personally, I seems to be the only place I have any luck finding comfortable, stylish shoes and boots that I can stand in all day without hurting my feet AND can afford. Also winter coats. My experience has been to have very helpful employees too.
However, the last two times I visited I was extremely annoyed by a man who was following me around the shoe department with a clipboard, trying anything to get me to agree to a home visit for estimates on window replacements or roof repair and the like, offering me gifts just for talking to him. He seemed desperate. Obviously I’m there to buy SHOES, not windows or doors, and I hate when salespeople follow me around the store. I like to think when I shop.
I guess Sears has ALWAYS been a pretty diversified store, so maybe it’s not fair to say they should just stick to what they do best and not spread themselves so thin. During a research project in college I learned that they actually sold and shipped house kits….yes, HOUSES in do-it-yourself kits…during the old west days. You can actually see some of them in old gold mining towns in Eastern Oregon…miner’s shacks.
Beyond that, though, maybe the thing that kills stores like Montgomery Wards and has hurt stores like K-Mart is that they are just not considered “cool” to millennials and the up and coming generations. Kids today don’t want their peers to know their clothes came from K-Mart. Millennials prefer to shop online. Maybe it’s seen as where grandma and grandpa shopped. Too bad, because they are missing out…and paying more…in my oppinion.
Steve,
It’s interesting to get such a big response to a weekly video. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but here goes.
I think there are a few things involved. First, Sears had a significant place in many of our lives during our formative years – and losing something from that time in our lives is sad. I’d venture to say that many of us started disengaging from Sears at the time the company was growing the fastest – by making acquisitions in areas that weren’t the stores or the catalog. It seems to me that Sears corporately got more excited about other ventures that weren’t the core of their business, taking attention and talent away from what made Sears, Sears.
I do wonder if Sears would have been able to adapt from the catalog to the internet if they had kept their focus on their main business – and been a leader in going digital, focusing on Craftsman and other lines that led the field, and transforming into a viable presence.
Back to the question – I think the response is a natural reaction to a loss of things we held dear in our formative years, a desire to understand, and a time to mourn (in some way) our loss of things from simpler days.
I did used to go to Sears for many things having grown up with them. I fell away from that; not sure exactly why. I suspect it had something to do with the feel of the store as that is important to where I shop. I always hate to see the stores fail that have been around a long time. But they need to keep up with the changing times and changing customer needs. As you pointed out, it’s a mixture of things such as leadership, product, the store itself, etc. They are not the first and sadly won’t be the last. Change seems to be happening faster than ever. I think the huge response reflects our resistance to change especially the long-standing icons of our youth. They have either fallen by the wayside or have been swallowed up by larger corporations. RIP Sears!
Perhaps their marketing department should look at marketing/merchandising from the consumers’ angle. I used to buy from Sears all the time. I found myself moving away due to lack of “energy” in the stores – from ceiling to floor.