Sears is arguably a good example of how execution (and culture) often trump strategy. They were online. They invested in Prodigy. But their heart never really seemed to be in it and they never really changed the way they operated based on online.

I would spin culture the other way too. Sears was a more premium company. They had commission salesmen working the floors. (I think it was as recently as like 2010ish, I walked in to one and looked too long at something was was swarmed) You didn't go there for the "lowest price" you went there for good stuff and when you bought something big they helped you figure it out, they'd show you a dozen fridges, maybe with features you'd never seen before, and by the end of the day try to talk you in to a stove and dishwasher to go with the one you landed on and then have someone bring it over, install it and take your old stuff away. They had house brands: Craftsman, Diehard, Kenmore that were legit and made legit stuff; it wasn't the highest end stuff but it wasn't just the cheapest stuff they could label. I don't think it was possible for them to compete for low margins like Walmart or Amazon, it just wasn't "Sears." Prodigy was expensive, the few things you could order there had extra costs associated with it, I don't fully remember but I think you had to actually pay a premium for the experience to order it on prodigy and then you paid shipping costs and everything. It's not simply just buying and selling stuff online and it shows up, price matters and people buy big stuff differently than they did 40 years ago, they know way more about it before they go to the store now because of the internet.

I'm sure there will be plenty of books about it all when it's said and done and I'm sure there is a list of mistakes that is unimaginably long. I doubt Sears could have been saved though, it wouldn't have been "Sears" any more.

It is odd, at least to me, Sears is this nostalgia thing. Looking at the catalog as a child, playing with Prodigy way way back when. I've read maybe a dozen articles on the place here on HN over the last decade. I haven't been in one in nearly as long. I think I've known they were totally doomed for as long but in some part of my brain it was impossible for it to unfold exactly as it has. It's just been a train wreck in ultra-slow-motion. They seemed to have had so many resources they could have used to try things, they just couldn't actually try them.

Reading this, it makes it seem that Sears died because the middle class died. Why did people ditch this middle-of-the-road experience for the cheaper one? Because they were forced to.

People also buy more of things. Before, you saved up $800 for a 35” console tv.

Today, you buy a $199 tv for every bedroom, living room, man cave, etc in the house

We have way, way more possessions than our parents, and especially grandparents did.

People ditched the middle-of-the-road experience because the cheaper experience wasn't an option. Would I buy things for more money if there were no Walmart? Sure. But, for many things, I'll buy at Walmart given the option. Even middle class people like to save money and the value add from more expensive shops often isn't worth the price.

Executives see a million trends come and go. Thay pay lip service so they don't sound outdated, but they have too many friends that drank the kool-aid and went down in flames on fads they came and went.

And then just one more in the pile with this "online" thing. And like all the others, it came and went.... oh wait... it came and stayed? It came and grew!? It came and destroyed !?? Well I guess you can't call them all.

>For a very long time, due to custom printing, you could get semi-permanent Sears URLs to rather vulgar images on shirts, pillows, blankets, etc.

I'm not sure I understand that, could you please elaborate? Are you saying that they provided custom printing, then some users printed vulgar images, and could pass on URLs for others to print another batch?

Exactly. You could upload an image for custom printing, with no sanity check as to what the image was, and it would be available for others to access as well, resulting in a semi-permanent link to hentai, porn, and extreme profanity. I imagine the justification behind it was that in order to do the custom print at the lower price, Sears had to buy a larger order, but I have no idea.

Like it would show up in the search results for other users? Or would it be a just a url you could send to people?