On Sun, 8 Jan 2017 11:55:39 -0500, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

In article l-OdndxO45_qY-3FnZ2dnUU7-
, lcb11211@swbelldotnet
says...

On 1/6/2017 5:07 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 6 Jan 2017 16:14:25 +0000 (UTC), John McCoy
wrote:

Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet wrote in news:QZOdnbpFJasTtvLFnZ2dnUU7-
:

On 1/5/2017 10:37 PM, wrote:

Sears didn't kill sears. Nor did Walmart. Nor did the Internet. The
North American Public killed Sears. And are the poorer for it, when
you get right down to brass tacks.

I believe it was merging with KMart that killed Sears. KMart had bad
deals going back in the early 90's.

KMart was the "coup de grace" - and a great lesson in how to
use bankruptcy court to avoid all your mistakes and make a
fortune from other people's money - but Sears's problems go
way back before that.

Sears was once what Amazon is today - you could buy anything
from them. Mail in your order, and in a week or two go down
to the Railway Express Agency(*) and pick up your package.
With the arrival of mall culture in the 50's and 60's, Sears
let the catalog business fade away, and became just like a
hundred other department stores (most of which have long
since disappeared). Come the revival of mail-order, and
instead of Sears sitting pretty with an order processing and
shipping system already in place, they have nothing - and
the new guys take over that space.

You could by a house, a car, a motorcycle, all your furniture, all
your clothing, all your tools and hardware - virtually anything you
needed "on line" (the phone line) back in the early years of Sears.
They were WAY ahead of their time. They totally lost touch by racing
all of their "competition" to the bottom.


Yeahhhhh they dropped the house, car, motorcycle long before they had
any real competition.

FWIW, I grew up in a Sears house. Can't
honestly say much for them. Sturdy enough I
guess but that's about it.
They were affordable, and could be assembled by semi-skilled workers
anywhere you could reach with a mule team.. They brought "quality
housing" to a lot of areas where substandard housing was the norm.

All the engineering and design was done, and there was a WIDE choice,
right up to the $5850 Magnolia - a veritable mansion, down to the
$1700 Crescent bungalow. and the $1880 2 story Norwood.