Leon wrote:
On 1/13/2017 9:17 AM, Jack wrote:
On 1/12/2017 10:48 AM, Leon wrote:
On 1/12/2017 9:37 AM, Jack wrote:
On 1/11/2017 9:47 PM, wrote:
On Wednesday, January 11, 2017 at 10:17:14 AM UTC-6, Jack wrote:
Sears should be where Amazon is today, based on their long
history of
catalog and mail order sales.
--
Jack
Yes, hindsight is always 20/20. And it would be just as accurate to
say Radio Shack should be exactly where Best Buy and Dell combined
are
today. In the 1970s and 1980s Radio Shack was the computer store.
Everything electronic was at Radio Shack. Radio Shack was in every
mall back then so they had presence everywhere in the country. All
the new computer buyers of the 1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s
should
have bought from Radio Shack. But the Shack is now about gone. Why
didn't the people at Radio Shack predict the prevalence of computers
and online everything that came 30 years later? Probably the same
reason Sears did not see everyone ordering everything in the mail
(FedEx and UPS are a big part) fifty years later.
It's not hindsight, it is now. Sears could have easily shifted to
online sales at any time, but my guess is management had their
collective heads where the sun don't shine.
Sears has had on line sales for most of this millennium.
After a thousand years of on line sales you would think they would be
better at it...
Have you looked at their P&L sheet? Their internet sales may very
well be what is making money. Speculation does not override the facts
on the balance sheet. The over saturated brick and mortar locations
are certainly a loosing proposition with few to no customers in the
many of the locations.
And the holding company may be totally at fault. It could very well
be robbing Peter to pay Paul/KMart. Sears was making money and not
that long ago. The losses in the last 20 quarters would choke any
horse. If Sears has had losses for every quarter in the last 5 years
there must have been profits prior to that.
About 15 years ago I was a proud Sears investor; after all Sears was an
american icon--almost as old as the trains. When it went down 20% or
so, I doubled up, after all. The results of that made me really
unhappy. When I had a chance to get out with "only" a $500 loss, I took
it, and that turned out to be absolutely the right thing to have done.
That was of course, before they left their shareholders behind via their
bankruptcy (and reorganization with Kmart). Lesson learned (I'm not
exactly sure what it was, but I learnt it!)