Interesting fact. It reminds me of how K-Mart is apparently big in Australia despite having died a slow and pathetic death in the US. Or how Yahoo is still a thing in Japan.
Literally almost everything, up to and including entire houses. I've lived in two Sears houses, great quality stuff if not a bit small by modern tastes.
When I was a kid it was normal for parents to let their kids read the huge yearly Sears catalog to get ideas or pick gifts. By then they'd stopped selling items like firearms and houses but had pretty much everything else.
If they had the foresight, they should have become a better version of what Amazon is now.
They should have been... after Prodigy (an early online service that Sears and IBM co-started) failed, their CTO (or whatever the position was) was certain "the internet is just a fad" and they didn't invest. They literally had the infrastructure that if they'd just put their catalogs online for phone orders to start with, Amazon might not have expanded beyond books and taken off like they did. I remember when Sears shut down catalog sales, I knew they weren't going to last at that point.
The fact that Amazon exists is a testament to the stunning mismanagement of Sears’ corporate leadership in the 90s and early 2000s. They had all the ingredients and instead simply set the company on fire.
Since we're reminiscing, I remember Sears sold a "Sears-version" of the Atari 2600. I forget what it was called, but it was identical to the 2600.
My 9 year old brain was convinced that it was somehow inferior to the Atari-branded version of the 2600 and I was sad when my parents got me the Sears version for Christmas (it was probably cheaper than the Atari, I can't remember).
It didn't take me long, however, to realize it was the same thing with a different logo.
When visiting my parents a couple weeks ago who live closer to where I grew up, my dad mentioned he recently visited one of the Sears stores that we used to go to sometimes when I was at kid. He said the store seemed to be only half full of inventory, with entire display shelves empty, and he couldn't understand why it was even being keep open at all.
Does anyone have any ideas for if some of the original seats home assembly manuals exist? I'd love to take a look at those plans and can't find any records.
I tried to buy a vacuum from a Sears store once. The cashier couldn't price match against Sears' own website, which had a lower price. So while inside the store, I purchased the vacuum on my phone, and selected in store pickup, and showed it to the cashier. But they had a separate building for in store pickup I had to drive around to.
So how can I get control of one Sears store and through that one store, singlehandedly resurrect the brand? Surely they must be ready to field Skunkworks-like ideas from young talent willing to risk and win...
This hypothetical new Sears vision is to create an Ikea competitor, but an honest Ikea, where Sears squares off with their biggest showroom-based adversary.
Ikea is beautiful but hollow, as their showrooms are seductive dioramas, but the resulting money exchange of cash for particleboard is like buying sex instead of meeting you life partner.
Instead, Sears would be the interface between the customer and the American-made premise. Sears sells American made products and represents American makers. Fuck selling washers and dryers. The showroom is not there to stock imports in cardboard. It's there to show you a concept, what your life could be if you stop buying junk. It's there to demonstrate quality. It's not particleboard at the core; it's a chunk of USA.
It would shamelessly capitalize on nostalgia and quality. Instead of nordic spartan whites and blands, it would have dioramas of pine wood wall panelling, cast iron wood stoves, chrome magnificence, Tiffany glass. Want a new desk? $5k. Made of US oak. Want the pine walls? The boardfeet are in the back, milled 5 miles away, how much square feet you need?
Even better, each store is fucking exclusive. Find local makers and concentrate their products in the geographically local store. Make people rabid and giddy to travel to each store even if they need to go five states away. Visiting is a unforgettable experience, like a museum that you can buy stuff.
Stage 2 is to use the Sears branded products like Ycombinator for machine shops. Sears injects some startup capital and now Sears cabinet pulls are turned on a machine lathe in a startup machine shop in Ohio. Furniture ateliers are like franchise Chick-fil-as.
26 comments
[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 58.7 ms ] threadWhen I was a kid it was normal for parents to let their kids read the huge yearly Sears catalog to get ideas or pick gifts. By then they'd stopped selling items like firearms and houses but had pretty much everything else.
If they had the foresight, they should have become a better version of what Amazon is now.
1911: https://archive.org/details/sears-roebuck-catalog-122-spring...
1922: https://archive.org/details/SearsRoebuckAndCoCatalog1922_201...
When I was young, they were especially known for their tools:
1974/1975: https://archive.org/details/SearsCraftsmanPowerAndHandTools1...
More here:
https://archive.org/search?query=title%3A%28sears+catalog%29...
They were Amazon before Amazon, but just didn’t realize it.
The OLD Radioshack, obviously.
My 9 year old brain was convinced that it was somehow inferior to the Atari-branded version of the 2600 and I was sad when my parents got me the Sears version for Christmas (it was probably cheaper than the Atari, I can't remember).
It didn't take me long, however, to realize it was the same thing with a different logo.
The company Danelectro made guitars and amplifiers in the 50's and 60's under the Silvertone brand name distributed through Sears.
Danelectro came up with the idea of packaging a guitar pickup in a chrome lipstick case. They used actual lipstick cases in the beginning.
We still have lipstick pickups today; they are a big part of the electric guitar world.
A company named GFS makes double coil lipstick humbuckers: https://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Pro-Tube-Lipstick-Humbucker...
This hypothetical new Sears vision is to create an Ikea competitor, but an honest Ikea, where Sears squares off with their biggest showroom-based adversary.
Ikea is beautiful but hollow, as their showrooms are seductive dioramas, but the resulting money exchange of cash for particleboard is like buying sex instead of meeting you life partner.
Instead, Sears would be the interface between the customer and the American-made premise. Sears sells American made products and represents American makers. Fuck selling washers and dryers. The showroom is not there to stock imports in cardboard. It's there to show you a concept, what your life could be if you stop buying junk. It's there to demonstrate quality. It's not particleboard at the core; it's a chunk of USA.
It would shamelessly capitalize on nostalgia and quality. Instead of nordic spartan whites and blands, it would have dioramas of pine wood wall panelling, cast iron wood stoves, chrome magnificence, Tiffany glass. Want a new desk? $5k. Made of US oak. Want the pine walls? The boardfeet are in the back, milled 5 miles away, how much square feet you need?
Even better, each store is fucking exclusive. Find local makers and concentrate their products in the geographically local store. Make people rabid and giddy to travel to each store even if they need to go five states away. Visiting is a unforgettable experience, like a museum that you can buy stuff.
Stage 2 is to use the Sears branded products like Ycombinator for machine shops. Sears injects some startup capital and now Sears cabinet pulls are turned on a machine lathe in a startup machine shop in Ohio. Furniture ateliers are like franchise Chick-fil-as.
- Coral Gables, Florida
- Orlando, Florida
- Braintree, Massachusetts
- Concord, California
- El Paso, Texas
According to another article I found (https://www.costar.com/article/1406528706/once-giant-sears-c...)