Sears on verge of fading away after closing more than 3,000 stores

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

There was a time when Sears was as big as it gets in the retail game in the United States, and having the store’s catalog in hand … well, 30 years ago that was about like hoping on Amazon or any of today’s modern online mega retailers.

But times have been changing fast for Sears.

Earlier this year, the one-time giant was down to just eight locations, and now eight is down to five, according to a new report from The Street.

To put that in perspective: Sears once had 3,500 stores, making it the largest retailer in the country.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/iconic-retailer-verge-fading-away-101539914.html

That's what vulture capitalists do to companies.

[hlthe2b]

1. I find it incredibly sad.

Those who think it is an arcane and outdated notion to have physical stores anymore better wake up.. Buying on the internet via the megalopolis, Amazon is not a given.

Not to mention, venture capitalists (vulture capitalists) are soon buying every damned house they can find, leaving normal people out in the cold and when they buy up all the rentals, we really WILL be out in the cold.

[UpInArms]

2. I loved the sears catalog

And they were such an imbedded part of history

Vintage Mail Order Houses That Came from Sears Catalogs, 1910s-1940s



In the early 20th century, companies such as Sears, Roebuck and Co., sold tens of thousands of mail-order kit houses.

Available in a variety of styles and at a range of price points, these DIY kit houses would arrive via railroad boxcar as precut and then the buyer would have them assembled.

From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company’s count. Sears Modern Homes were purchased primarily by customers in East Coast and Midwest states, but have been located as far south as Florida, as far west as California, and as far north as Alaska and Canada.

[msongs]

11. one bathrm in house, yikes!

[zeusdogmom]

23. Trust me you can survive 😄

7 of us with one bathroom. We all made it out alive and well.

[dem4decades]

33. We had 5 in the house with 1 bathroom, dad would be in there

6:30 to 6:45 every day, and when you got your turn after, it was filled with smoke. That's the way it was.

[Ocelot II]

34. Most houses had only one bathroom until maybe the '60s.

Only wealthy people had multiple bathrooms. I grew up in a series of houses with one bathroom - parents and 3 kids. The last house, built in the late '40s, was added onto when I was a teenager and we finally got a little half-bath on the first floor. The 1906 house I lived in with my ex had (and still has) only one, and the place I live in now, built in 1885, had only one bathroom until I did some remodeling ten years ago. Neighbors told me that a family with 8 kids had lived in this house years ago, which blows my mind since it's quite small.

[Keepthesoulalive]

3. Sears was a victim of bad management

Before the vultures started picking at its carcass.

[ProfessorGAC]

41. You Ain't Kidding!

• They had over a century of customers buying without touching.
• They offered practically anything through the catalog.
• The had one of the first digital financial platforms.
• They had their own bank & finance/credit structure.
• They had a mountain of name recognition.

What did they do?
Sold off the digital platform, dumped catalog sales, narrowed their selection, sold off the bank, and focused on brick & mortar.
They should have been Amazon before Amazon existed.
It should be a business school study on what upper management shouldn't do.

[moniss]

4. I worked for Sears when I was

in high school. Great time and I loved all the different specialty catalogues in addition to the "big catalogue". I clearly remember how excited everybody was to get the Christmas catalogue every year.

[Vinca]

5. When we were first married (dinosaurs still roamed the earth), Sears was where you went to get everything.

I remember paying off appliances for a few bucks a month on a Sears card. The first place you ever looked for anything was Sears. Their downfall started when the ended their Sears credit cards. Suddenly, brand loyal people were forced to get VISA or MC and started to look around. They must have had the dumbest management on the planet. The stores started closing soon after.

[Ocelot II]

35. Same here. We bought appliances, tools and housewares there until the mid-80s.

[Vinca]

37. Funny, I was thinking about this again and it occurred to me that when I was a teenager, I'm pretty sure

I bought the Beatles first LP at a Sears. If I had that unopened record now, I could probably buy Sears. LOL.

[Ocelot II]

39. We bought a lot of Craftsman tools, which was Sears' store brand.

They didn't make the tools but I think they might have been the main vendor. I think they are still manufactured, not sure who sells them now.

[MichMan]

6. The acquisition by K Mart was not a very good idea

The K Mart CEO made some very poor decisions. Seldom when two struggling entities merge does it end up being the saving grace.

Never in my lifetime would I have ever guessed that Sears and General Motors would have gone bankrupt.

[bucolic_frolic]

7. Was Kmart sandbagged with a goal in mind?

https://www.reddit.com/r/kmart/comments/1f4zgw9/my_opinion_on_the_demise_of_kmart/

I have often asked myself.. what went wrong? This question, for me, this question goes all the way back to the 2002 bankruptcy filing. I was happily employed at Kmart when that bankruptcy happened. I remember thinking it all started with Chuck Conaway, the CEO at the time, brining Mark Schwartz on board. That, in my opinion, is the point in time where Kmart began falling apart.

Schwartz had been a Walmart executive for 16 years when Conaway brought him on board. He immediately instituted those ridiculous price wobblers as part of the "Bluelight Always" program, and those things were a complete eyesore. The customers hated them. We hated them. They were always in the way, and would often fall off the peg hooks and shelves when stocking merchandise or even when customers were going through items. I found out later on that Walmart had previously had a program that utilized similar wobblers, and that was at a point when Schwartz was still with Walmart.
_______________________________
https://www.carrcommunications.com/clips/kmart-published2001-12.pdf This is an ultimate in depth look at Kmart, 2001, when Conaway was appointed.

_______________________________

Eddie Lampert was chairman and CEO of ESL Investments. It was HQ in Greenwich, CT.

Conaway was COO of CVS immediately before he joined Kmart. His home base was Woonsocket, RI.

[ProfessorGAC]

42. Lampert Lost A Few Hundred Million....

...of his own money, and he was not a billionaire. Lost half of his own fortune.
Never should have been the CEO that had day-to-day operations. He was suited only for the finance side. CFO? Maybe. CEO, never. Total failure.

[UpInArms]

17. General Motors

Rick Wagoner

The General Motors CEO who killed the original electric car is now in the electric car business

Rick Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors who resigned under pressure in 2009, is back in the car business, joining the board of ChargePoint, which maintains a network of charging stations for electric cars.
This would normally be an uneventful appointment—industry veterans often advise promising startups—save for Wagoner’s history as the executive who killed GM’s first electric car.

In 1996, GM rolled out the EV1, an innovative battery-powered car. It was introduced in response to a 1990 California law requiring car makers to produce zero-emissions vehicles in order to continue selling conventional automobiles in the state. GM produced 1,117 EV1s, but made them only available for lease.

While limited by their small size (just two seats) and a range of less than 100 miles, the car was popular among environmentalists and celebrities like Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson.

As GM was promoting its foray into renewable vehicles, it was simultaneously lobbying to weaken the California law. When the auto industry succeeded in watering down the regulations in 2001, GM, under Wagoner, soon after terminated the EV1, citing limited demand.

But GM just didn’t stop making the cars, however; it recalled the vehicles and destroyed them, over the objections of their drivers, who offered to buy them from GM. In the documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?, released in 2006, director Chris Paine contends GM sabotaged the EV1, fearing electric vehicles would undermine its conventional business. GM denied that accusation.

[Kaleva]

8. Some of us may remember using a outhouse with a Sears catalog

[bucolic_frolic]

9. Sear grew into a marketing suburban powerhouse after WWII

It really didn't make anything. The products, American state of the art, were made for Sears and sold through their stores with various brand names. That entire system has melted down with foreign competition.

[Greg_In_SF]

10. Sears should have been looking

at online shopping back when Amazon only sold books. They let themselves get passed by.

[misanthrope]

15. Yep, they had everything in place to give them a leg up on it

They suffered from a lack of vision.

[Captain Stern]

25. Yup. Sears should have been Amazon.

They basically were Amazon without the online aspect. You picked what you wanted out of a catalog, ordered it, and it was delivered to your house. They sold everything. They had the warehouses, distribution centers, etc., but they dropped the ball.

[fujiyamasan]

26. I just read yesterday that they co owned Prodigy back in the day along with IBM

Last edited Sun Dec 28, 2025, 07:25 AM - Edit history (1)

They had everything in place. They completely blew it.

[Aristus]

12. Wasn't it Sears that had the Ayn Rand-worshipping dickhead CEO

who forced the various divisions of the company to compete with each other, instead of marshalling those divisions to compete with other companies?

One wonders where the board of directors digs up these fuckbrains. One would think a complete inability to run a major corporation would be a disqualifying factor in the hiring process.

[JI7]

14. That's makes no business sense to me

[Aristus]

19. Or to anyone else with a functioning brain.

n/t

[fujiyamasan]

27. Eddie Lampert

[The Madcap]

31. Also asking how they can be a CEO anywhere after blowing it.

It's almost as if they have a big neon halo over their head saying "CEO - I'm the Best!!'"

Experience failing does not, I repeat, DOES NOT, inevitably lead to success. Just look at the Orange Menace for proof of that.

[JI7]

13. Didn't they go out of business a few years ago ?

[B.See]

16. I sure thought so. News to me.

But then again I I buried them way down deep on my s-list decades ago.

[SWBTATTReg]

18. Sears did themselves in. I recalled when I worked for JCPenney's, that Sears, the opposite anchor store in our local

mall, was already experiencing the thralls of dying slowly. They dominated back then (in 70s), but that was when Walmart's, and other store chains started going. Sears was already seen as arrogant, didn't have a good attitude. Kind of did themselves in.

[Norbert]

20. The Sears Christmas Catelog was the boomers Google

I would page through it from the time it arrived to December 24th. For a kid like me, this was the motherlode.

[maveric]

43. Loved that.

My brothers and I would fight over it every year.
The ultimate wish book.

[Danmel]

21. Sears holiday portraits were a tradition

Sad.

[Jacson6]

22. I thought they already went out of business.

I shopped there from the 1980's until the early 2000's. They didn't modernize and do online shopping. They started out as a mail order catalog 125 years ago. You could buy the material to build a house and they would ship it to you.

[Xolodno]

24. Sears went down not to one bad decision...

...but several. It was a way of thinking and perpetuating it into all its leaders. The danger of "yes men".

[fujiyamasan]

28. A series of bad decisions made over the span of decades

Had they played their cards right they could have dominated or at least been a major player in online retail and e commerce. Back in the early ‘80s they co owned Prodigy (pre AOL). It includes a lot of what AOL would later feature including online shopping.

I’m not sure how they didn’t capitalize on that. I’ve read they never invested adequately in IT and when they did it was too little, too late.

[BH liberal]

29. Sears catalogs were...

ever-present in our house when I was growing up. Naturally, their Christmas catalogs were kid favorites. Shades of "A Christmas Story"...

[GoCubsGo]

30. I had no idea they still existed.

Other than as a "home repairs" company that regularly sends spam to my e-mail. Vulture capitalists were part of their downfall, but their unwillingness to change with the public's shopping habits and tastes was a huge culprit, as well. They were gone from my town almost 20 years ago. Hell, even the mall that housed them is gone. It's hard to stay in business when the only ones using your building are seniors who use it as a walking track.

[MichMan]

32. Successful thriving public companies don't sell out to vulture capitalists

Last edited Sun Dec 28, 2025, 09:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Failing companies desperate for any lifeline, however, do.

[LPBBEAR]

36. Don't forget the Trump connection....

Same guy also killed K-Mart.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/sears-sues-eddie-lampert-steven-mnuchin-others-for-alleged-thefts.html

[MineralMan]

38. Fascinating! Sears Roebuck & Co. Changed How America Shopped

in the early 20th Century. However, it was stuck in its ways and could not adapt to the digital marketplace at all.

It suffered the same fate that the local department stores suffered in another time, and became the victim of change, just as it was the winner 100 years earlier.

[themaguffin]

40. It's really sad and it didn't have to be this way. They were intentionally gutted and destroyed

...Reagan's legacy lives on...