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Post by kims on Jul 4, 2024 18:51:29 GMT
...which shortened to Sears. It was quite innovative, what happened?
Vincent Price was recruited to select artwork to be sold at Sears which middle income families could afford.
In the late 80s, they launched Prodigy a kind of fore runner of today's internet. At one time going on the internet was facing a dot on an empty screen-you had to know what website and its address to get there. Prodigy had a menu similar to today, there were some games, read mysteries, check sports scores-an incredible amount of data available. And there was messaging. Good grief, you could be at Sears, go to the public computer, log on and check messages, look something up.
My theory of the slow fall of Sears was when K-Mart bought it. A relative worked for K-Mart from fifties till the eighties when a new breed reined at K-Mart. It went from making a profit by providing good value to stock price being the focus. Costing cutting killed service in stores. Once in early 90's I went in the store and not an employee in sight, not even a cashier. Customers decide everything was free. The merchandise became cheap and shoddy. Sears at one time one of the best places to buy appliances and tools became the bad K-Mart with another name.
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Post by topbilled on Jul 4, 2024 19:18:14 GMT
It may be too much to expect some stores to last forever. I grew up in the midwest and Montgomery Wards was a popular retailer in the midwest (and other parts of the country). It was like a second J.C. Penneys, so if you could not find what you wanted at Penneys, you went to Wards, or vice versa. When Wards went out of business in the early 2000s, that was kind of sad to see.
Sears had a much slower decline, because it was a huge company for decades and it took awhile for it to completely 'fall' and become less relevant.
But before Montgomery Wards and Sears came and went, there was Woolworths. I remember those stores dying in the late 80s and early 90s. They were eclipsed by K-Mart. And K-Mart was eventually eclipsed by Target and Walmart.
Now I'd say Target and Walmart are gradually being eclipsed by Amazon. Ten years from now Amazon will lose ground and something else will come along.
Maybe the ones that make me a bit more sad, are the grocery store chains that go out of business. I feel like those brands were more identifiable, because chances are, you went to your favorite grocery store more than you went to your favorite department store.
A few days ago I went with my neighbor a nearby Fry's grocery store. I hadn't been to a Fry's in over five years, because I tend to go to a local marketplace instead where things are fresher. I was a bit shocked to see how run-down the Fry's was...it was like nobody really cared anymore. There was no real logic to where things were stocked on the shelves. I had to go up and down many aisles to find what I wanted. I got the feeling they were in the process of reorganizing, maybe to make it more like Costco. But it didn't seem like a success. If this is how the Fry's chain are operating in other places, they won't last.
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Post by NoShear on Jul 4, 2024 19:30:25 GMT
...which shortened to Sears. It was quite innovative, what happened? Vincent Price was recruited to select artwork to be sold at Sears which middle income families could afford. In the late 80s, they launched Prodigy a kind of fore runner of today's internet. At one time going on the internet was facing a dot on an empty screen-you had to know what website and its address to get there. Prodigy had a menu similar to today, there were some games, read mysteries, check sports scores-an incredible amount of data available. And there was messaging. Good grief, you could be at Sears, go to the public computer, log on and check messages, look something up. My theory of the slow fall of Sears was when K-Mart bought it. A relative worked for K-Mart from fifties till the eighties when a new breed reined at K-Mart. It went from making a profit by providing good value to stock price being the focus. Costing cutting killed service in stores. Once in early 90's I went in the store and not an employee in sight, not even a cashier. Customers decide everything was free. The merchandise became cheap and shoddy. Sears at one time one of the best places to buy appliances and tools became the bad K-Mart with another name. With your mention of Vincent Price in the context of Sears, kims, I thought of I AM LEGEND: Richard Matheson's Robert Neville 'shops' at a Sears in the 1954 novel if I correctly recall reading. (Vincent Price, of course, starred in the original movie adaptation of the apocalyptic vampire tale.) |
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Post by galacticgirrrl on Jul 5, 2024 0:36:01 GMT
...which shortened to Sears. It was quite innovative, what happened? Vincent Price was recruited to select artwork to be sold at Sears which middle income families could afford. Neat! I had no idea.  |
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