I watched Montgomery Ward go out of business years ago, and it was sad; now I'm going to see another company that I liked be next? Nooooooo...! I bought every appliance in my home from Sears over the years - stoves, refrigs, washers and dryers, water heaters, etc, darn it, and was happy with their service, including installation by people who knew what they were doing! I'm not about to order major appliances on line, wait for them to be delivered, (hoping they were sending what I ordered), then try to find someone to get them all hooked up correctly and pay their fee. Everything was included in the price at Sears, and they were always competitive and less than two miles from my house. Where are people shopping these days? I can buy new clothes at lots of places, but not major appliances!
A lot of lifetime warranties have the condition you have the original receipt because the odds of anybody having it are low.
Craftsman line of Tools was /being sold to Stanley Works headquartered in New Britain CT , 5 exists from here.
It’s pathetic that some posters try to turn everything into a Right/Left — “look how bad the left is” thread. Any excuse to bash the other side. No wonder the country is in such trouble. I used to go to Sears and Montgomery Ward many decades ago. And, as you said, Sears failed to adapt to the changes in the market. A lot of other big retailers had the same problem: K-mart, Montgomery Ward, and a host of others. There was a time when Craftsman tools were worth owning, but today they are cheaply made. I also thought Sears’ prices were really high in some cases. For instance, I needed a special sealer last summer and Sears’ price was about three times what others were selling it for. Screw them. Then, I was puzzled when Sears took K-Mart over, since Sears didn’t seem to be doing very well, itself, at the time. I still think that was a huge mistake. They just seemed to make a lot of bad decisions, and that has gone on for decades.
] Yep. It is kind of sad, that everything seems partisan when it isn't. Things have changed, its a new world out there but it was a new world 50 years ago from the previous 50 but I'm not privy to how it was before that. I miss coca cola bottles with a pop off top. I like riding sandy roads, sitting under a tree and spring turkey hunting. I also like fishing salt water creeks where some days you never see another boat. Fortunately I still live near places where all those things can happen. But we can't just let the rest of the planet invade us without some sort of orderly fashion, and highly scrutinized vetting. I probably won't be on this side of the grass in 30 years. I'm pretty sure this is a good thing, I hate to see my world go to hell in a hand basket.
Nice try but this has nothing to do with Trump. Sears has been going down hill for the last few years.
Just think about it. Those companies were ran by highly educated and very well-paid executives. Maybe lower-paid and less educated people would have done a better job.
Yeah, maybe people who actually cared about the company they worked for, instead of feeding their own never-ending greed and worrying only about getting an ever fatter paycheck.
I boycotted K-mart a long time ago after going to them numerous times for their sales only to be told they were out of stock. The last time I went there was on opening on the first day of a sale and none of the things advertised that I wanted were in stock. A few years later they were sued over that but I never went back. Use to buy all my hand tools at Sears along with most appliances. My Craftsman garden tractor is still going strong after 17 years. One thing I didn't like was they would advertise something I'd want, but they would have a slightly different stock number for the same item sold in different stores. So if I saw something I wanted, I'd have to go to different stores to find the one that had that exact stock number. The nearest Sears is about 1/2 hour away and it's almost empty. The wife says they are the only ones who sell a piece of clothing she likes. The last thing I remember buying there is a vacuum a few years ago.
Sears is no longer hip or cool. If you look at the Lowes or Home Depot commercials they actually make DIY look like a fun experience and it gets people into the stores.
All global supply chains are being "de-humanized". There will be two types of work: so judgemental thayt people cannot trust a machine, and so underpaid that its too expensive to automate. The age of work is ending. A new model is required to circulate the capital generated by economic activity into consumption that feeds economic activity.
There is no doubt here. They will fail. It is a certainty! Even a store like Best Buy will not survive and be gone in the next 5 to 10 years unless they redesign who and what they are. Bricks and mortar stores must be viable to survive. Sears is not this.
More like going down hill for two decades now. So for the partisan ideological gaboomkas here take your pick and blame Monika's Boyfriend, Little W, or POTUS BO.
This happened because of liberal policies that favored imported goods, It drove Craftsman into a tailspin because foreign labor was so cheap. The entire thing can be traced to the policies of the Johnson administration allowing cheap steel into the country that started the demise of American industry. If I could get away with it I would piss on LBJ's grave.
Trump isn't as stupid as Obama. The failure of Sears/Kmart will serve as an example. It will also open opportunities for other companies to step into those markets. It will strengthen other retailers and the displaced workers will be absorbed by the free market.