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A comment on Sears has another chance to avoid closing down. Parent comment

Re:Sears has another chance to avoid closing down by Zigurd on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @11:46AM (#18856946)
There was an enormous Sears near where I grew up. It always felt shabby and badly run. They had lost the recipe even then, when they still had the catalog business.

I get the impression from Sears and other big companies that lose their way that they become the playgrounds of big management egos that want to leave a mark and get written about in business publications, whether or not their ideas work.

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Re:Sears has another chance to avoid closing down by ams6110 on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @11:53AM (#18857018)
Same experience. Sears was an anchor tenant at the local mall for decades. In that time they never did a significant rehab. When they finally closed a few years ago, it was still like stepping into the 1970s to shop there.
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Re:Sears has another chance to avoid closing down by rhino369 on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @12:16PM (#18857250)
My guess is that they got their lunch eaten by Wal-Mart and Target. Wal-Mart beat them on cost and margin.

And you can't operate a mega-chain on premium customer service since the average customer shops on price or convenience.

Department stores have been dying for a long time.

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Re:Sears has another chance to avoid closing down by spiralx on Wednesday January 09, 2019 @07:09AM (#18864124)
The dysfunctional Randian management model imposed by their CEO had more to do with their failure than any external woes:

https://outline.com/dnb2UK

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Re:Sears has another chance to avoid closing down by Zigurd on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @04:35PM (#18859950)
I should have made clear just how ancient I am. When I was a kid, it was still the heyday of department stores like Lytton, Goldblatt,and Marshall Field which had their own candy shop selling their own candies, and a department called "millinery." Some of these stores were notably stuffy and seemed to cater to my grandmother's generation. But they were still prosperous. I had never seen a Wal Mart.
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