<story><title>Sears&apos;s History Predicts Almost Everything Amazon&apos;s Doing</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/09/sears-predicts-amazon/540888/?utm_source=atlfb&amp;amp;single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasode</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;In 1993 they closed their mail order division. In 1995, Amazon launched.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;If one compresses the timeline, it does seem like Amazon killed off Sears when in reality, Sears was already getting killed off in the 10 years before 1995.&lt;p&gt;In the 1980s...&lt;p&gt;- Home Depot, Lowes, Builders Square, etc home improvement stores were taking away business from Sears power tools (Craftsman)&lt;p&gt;- Best Buy and Circuit City were taking the consumer electronics business and appliances.  Less customers buy Sears Kenmore.&lt;p&gt;- Target, Walmart, Williams-Sonoma, etc were taking housewares (pots, pans, etc) business&lt;p&gt;- consumers (especially kids) didn&amp;#x27;t want &amp;quot;department store brand&amp;quot; clothing from Sears&amp;#x2F;JCPenney because they were &amp;quot;uncool&amp;quot;.  They wanted the boutique brands (Guess jeans, Calvin Klein, etc)&lt;p&gt;- peak mall traffic was 1986 and malls started dying off after that.  An easy way for me to remember that point in time is the 1985 movie &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Back to The Future&amp;quot;.&lt;/i&gt;  When you watch the DeLorean spinning around the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall, remind yourself that you&amp;#x27;re seeing &amp;quot;peak mall&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;- credit-cards criteria were loosened and easy credit was expanded.  Sears no longer had a captive audience with the Sears credit-card that kept shoppers within Sears&amp;#x27; &amp;quot;walled-garden&amp;quot;.  Before 1990s, if a young person had zero credit history, one of the first credit cards one attempted to get was the &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Sears department store credit card&amp;quot;.&lt;/i&gt;   Once one built up credit history with it, he&amp;#x2F;she could then try to get Visa&amp;#x2F;Mastercard.  In the meantime, they used the Sears card to &lt;i&gt;spend money at Sears&lt;/i&gt;.  To contrast the difference, today an 18-year-old college student can get a Visa&amp;#x2F;MC &lt;i&gt;without a parent&lt;/i&gt; as a cosigner.  That type of easy credit approval for a person with no job was unheard of in the 1960s&amp;#x2F;1970s.&lt;p&gt;There were lots of competitive forces that Sears&amp;#x27; management didn&amp;#x27;t respond to long before Jeff Bezos arrived on the scene.</text></item><item><author>michaelt</author><text>I read an interesting forum post about Sears a few years back [1]&lt;p&gt;TLDR: In 1985 Sears had vast mail order experience, co-founded an ISP (Prodigy), and had their own credit cards (Discover). All the components they&amp;#x27;d need to dominate online retail. In 1993 they closed their mail order division. In 1995, Amazon launched.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.metafilter.com&amp;#x2F;62394&amp;#x2F;The-Record-Industrys-Decline#1742245&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.metafilter.com&amp;#x2F;62394&amp;#x2F;The-Record-Industrys-Decline...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Steko</author><text>Ben Thompson goes all the way back to 1962 to chart the forces that would end up killing Sears:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;1962 was perhaps the most consequential year in retailing history: in Ohio the five-and-dime retailer F.W. Woolworth Company created a new discount retailer called Woolco; S.S. Kresge Corporation created Kmart in Michigan; the Dayton Company opened the first Target in Minnesota; and Sam Walton founded the first Walmart. All four were based on the same premise: branded goods didn’t need the expensive overhead of mass merchandisers, which meant prices could be lower. Lower prices served in turn as a powerful draw for customers, driving higher volumes, which meant more inventory turns, which increased profitability.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Sears, which had introduced a huge number of those brands to America’s middle class, first through their catalog and then through a massive post-World War II expansion into physical retail, was stuck in the middle: higher prices than the discounters, but much less differentiation than high-end department stores. By the time Buldak gave his statement the company’s fate as an also-ran was sealed, even though no one at Sears had a clue: Buldak’s stated mission of being “an integrated, powerful specialty merchant, with brand names and our own lines of exclusive merchandise” failed to consider whether customers gave a damn.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stratechery.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;walmart-and-the-multichannel-trap&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;stratechery.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;walmart-and-the-multichannel-tr...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Sears&apos;s History Predicts Almost Everything Amazon&apos;s Doing</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/09/sears-predicts-amazon/540888/?utm_source=atlfb&amp;amp;single_page=true</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasode</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;In 1993 they closed their mail order division. In 1995, Amazon launched.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;If one compresses the timeline, it does seem like Amazon killed off Sears when in reality, Sears was already getting killed off in the 10 years before 1995.&lt;p&gt;In the 1980s...&lt;p&gt;- Home Depot, Lowes, Builders Square, etc home improvement stores were taking away business from Sears power tools (Craftsman)&lt;p&gt;- Best Buy and Circuit City were taking the consumer electronics business and appliances.  Less customers buy Sears Kenmore.&lt;p&gt;- Target, Walmart, Williams-Sonoma, etc were taking housewares (pots, pans, etc) business&lt;p&gt;- consumers (especially kids) didn&amp;#x27;t want &amp;quot;department store brand&amp;quot; clothing from Sears&amp;#x2F;JCPenney because they were &amp;quot;uncool&amp;quot;.  They wanted the boutique brands (Guess jeans, Calvin Klein, etc)&lt;p&gt;- peak mall traffic was 1986 and malls started dying off after that.  An easy way for me to remember that point in time is the 1985 movie &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Back to The Future&amp;quot;.&lt;/i&gt;  When you watch the DeLorean spinning around the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall, remind yourself that you&amp;#x27;re seeing &amp;quot;peak mall&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;- credit-cards criteria were loosened and easy credit was expanded.  Sears no longer had a captive audience with the Sears credit-card that kept shoppers within Sears&amp;#x27; &amp;quot;walled-garden&amp;quot;.  Before 1990s, if a young person had zero credit history, one of the first credit cards one attempted to get was the &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Sears department store credit card&amp;quot;.&lt;/i&gt;   Once one built up credit history with it, he&amp;#x2F;she could then try to get Visa&amp;#x2F;Mastercard.  In the meantime, they used the Sears card to &lt;i&gt;spend money at Sears&lt;/i&gt;.  To contrast the difference, today an 18-year-old college student can get a Visa&amp;#x2F;MC &lt;i&gt;without a parent&lt;/i&gt; as a cosigner.  That type of easy credit approval for a person with no job was unheard of in the 1960s&amp;#x2F;1970s.&lt;p&gt;There were lots of competitive forces that Sears&amp;#x27; management didn&amp;#x27;t respond to long before Jeff Bezos arrived on the scene.</text></item><item><author>michaelt</author><text>I read an interesting forum post about Sears a few years back [1]&lt;p&gt;TLDR: In 1985 Sears had vast mail order experience, co-founded an ISP (Prodigy), and had their own credit cards (Discover). All the components they&amp;#x27;d need to dominate online retail. In 1993 they closed their mail order division. In 1995, Amazon launched.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.metafilter.com&amp;#x2F;62394&amp;#x2F;The-Record-Industrys-Decline#1742245&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.metafilter.com&amp;#x2F;62394&amp;#x2F;The-Record-Industrys-Decline...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chipperyman573</author><text>&amp;gt;today an 18-year-old college student can get a Visa&amp;#x2F;MC without a parent as a cosigner.&lt;p&gt;FWIW, when I was 18 I had to get a secured card[0] and I was barely able to get it (I had to go to my bank twice to appeal the decision). It&amp;#x27;s definitely different from 40 years ago but it&amp;#x27;s not super easy for most college students, and a lot of it came down to the fact that I had a few grand sitting in a checking account and a job that paid $12.50&amp;#x2F;hr. Some of my friends who didn&amp;#x27;t have that got flat out declined multiple times (I have one friend who has applied for three different cards and she&amp;#x27;s been denied all three times, with no credit history at all).&lt;p&gt;[0]: Basically, the card had a $500 credit limit and you had to give the bank $500 for a year, after a year if you&amp;#x27;ve made all your payments they give you your $500 back. It still sat in my savings account generating &amp;quot;interest&amp;quot;, but I couldn&amp;#x27;t spend it</text></comment>