Greg's Corner

Sears: The Ghost of Christmas Past

There once was a time, in the days before publicly available internet, that this was a magic time of year. The once powerful retail outlet Sears would release their massive Christmas catalog known as the Wishbook. At the time, this was every kid’s favorite time of the year as the Wishbook allowed the kids of America to see all the new hot toys for that year’s Christmas.

Fast forward to today and Sears is mostly an afterthought when it comes to holiday shopping. These days most of us will either take to Amazon to avoid the crowds, or will brave the crowds of Walmart to try to get a reasonable deal. So what happened to Sears? For the most part, the internet happened to Sears.

Every year, we hear about how Sears is on the verge of bankruptcy but have survived another year somehow. This year they made deals with Amazon to sell their Craftsman and Diehard brand of products. However, in the online space, Sears barely has a presence. This was a company that was founded on the premise of easy mail order so you would think that it would have easily pivoted to the online marketplace. Instead, it doubled down on its brick and mortar stores and cancelled its catalogs back in 1993. That was one hundred years after the founding of Sears & Roebuck. Now in yet another attempt to survive, Sears is closing many of their Kmart stores, which they purchased back in 2004, again placing their faith in brick and mortar.

Sears had the potential to modernize their business and could have been Amazon before Amazon. Instead, they’ll soon be a reminder that no business lasts forever no matter how successful they may have been in the past.