Sears’ demise leaves a catalog of memory
As a youth on an Iowa farm, I had a muskrat trap line. One night a big raccoon invaded my trap line and, when snared, dragged the trap upa big willow tree. Eventually I harvested the raccoon, took him to our basement and skinned him. After about six hours of effort, I sold the pelt to Sears Roebuck for 15 cents. That was disappointing because I was routinely selling my muskrat pelts for $1 to $1.15, but at the time Sears was my only outlet and my only source of money for these pelts.
Selling pelts was my introduction to Sears Roebuck, and in many ways Sears has continued until the present to be a part of my life. At the start of every school year, my mom would buy me a pair of new Roebuck blue jeans and, of course, we had one of those big Sears catalogs in our house, so I could browse through it for hours, looking for future dreams. Sears had connected to people’s lives because it had figured out how to reach the mass market through a huge catalog and the post office, especially the RFD services in the rural areas.
Throughout my life I collected oodles of Craftsman tools that are still hanging in my garage. Along with those tools, I bought a few DieHard batteries and a variety of Kenmore appliances, including refrigerators, washing machines and dryers. I paid for all of them with my dedicated Sears credit card. I was one of many Sears customers who would rely on Sears to provide service for all its products, and that generated great brand loyalty. But now, with Sears filing for bankruptcy protection, it is suddenly over.
At its peak, Sears operated close to 1,000 stores, and was the dominant anchor store in many malls throughout the country. Now many of those stores are closed. What happened? From the outside, it looked for many years that Sears was on top of the retail world, while on the inside it seems that Sears believed it was the only answer. The effect was to transform the Sears Tower into the Sears Silo. Feeling that it was safe and secure in that silo, Sears ignored the changing forces in the marketplace.
Sears made a number of strategic errors. It did not see the big-box phenomenon coming, and by 1989 Walmart had become the biggest retailer in the United States. Sears also had the biggest catalog in the marketplace but did not figure out how to bring it to the internet. Eventually Amazon overwhelmed it in product availability and distribution. Sears had this captive credit card but its refusal to accept other credit cards pushed a lot of customers to Sears’ competitors. And, last but far from least, the reports are that the hierarchy was filled with financial people who tried to squeeze more profits out of the existing business, but there were few retailers in upper management to push for shifts in retailing strategy.
Consequently, Sears is joining other big names in the marketplace who failed to recognize or keep up with the changing technology, the changing markets, and the changing opportunities. We have better opportunities and we are taking advantage of them. I am glad that I am no longer trapping muskrats and raccoons, but I still feel some nostalgia in seeing Sears evaporate out of my life.