Sears's History Predicts Almost Everything Amazon's Doing

Re:Sears's History Predicts Almost Everything Amazon's Doing by Johnny555 on Monday September 25, 2017 @12:02PM (#15331509)

I wonder if the seemingly shortsighted decision was influenced by the desire to appease stock analysts (who are more interested in next quarter's results than next decade's) by shedding costs quickly. Analysts seemed to think the company was heading in the right direction... few companies (aside from Amazon) have the luxury of telling analysts "We're forgoing profits now so we can build up our business"

A quote from that 1993 article:

Still, most analysts hesitated to say that the revamping alone would put Sears back on its feet. "Put it this way: They're off their knees," said George A. Ashur, director of corporate bond research at Chase Securities Inc. "This is without a doubt good medicine for the company, but I have to see a few quarters of good returns before I'm ready to ditch the conservative show-me attitude."

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Re:Sears's History Predicts Almost Everything Amazon's Doing by Animats on Monday September 25, 2017 @03:13PM (#15333154)

At the time, mail order shopping was dying. Montgomery Ward and JC Penny were also bailing on mail order. The Sears model was for a pre-car America, where it was either Sears or some local overpriced retailers with no selection. By 1993, the US had malls everywhere there were people, Wal-Mart was taking on the job of servicing small towns, and the customer base of people reachable only by mail had shrunk.

Sears had the first good fulfillment system, but it was geared to the postal system and rail transport. It took about two weeks to get delivery on something from Sears, and you never knew what was out of stock until the package showed up. That allowed malls to beat them on convenience.

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