Hold On To Your Assets

Where did you shop for your gifts this holiday season? Probably on Amazon and not at Sears since they are now bankrupt. How could that happen when Sears had a catalogue of nearly 2,000 pages where you could buy everything from cribs to coffins? Sears used to be the place that set the pace for American retailing. At its peak Sears was once the largest retailer in the world. Its headquarters was once the tallest building in the world. It was the biggest employer in America. Its huge catalogue made the company be the biggest publisher once. So, what the hell happened to this giant company?

For much of the 20^th Century Sears dominated the retailing industry. Sears was founded 125 years ago and was Sears, Roebuck and Company. It was founded by a guy named Sears who was a big shot in railroads. He saw the post office thriving in package deliveries so he started selling just about everything through the mail. He was the supplier to small towns across the country. In 1925 they started opening physical stores wherever there were cross roads since everyone was buying cars by then.

Then Sears offered job benefits like profit sharing and generous pensions and their employees stayed at their jobs for decades. Today sure people have jobs but they are part time jobs working full time hours with no benefits, no job security, no unions and no pensions. You could even order your holiday cakes and cookies once from Sears. So what happened?

Sears became inwardly focused and never dove into the internet business that extensively. Then other giants came along like Wall Mart, Home Depot and Amazon. It didn’t help that a Trump like billionaire investor took over the company and ran it into the ground. In 2004 Adam Lampert merged Sears with Kmart and that killed the company. Then the new guy sold off sears signature brands and real estate. He sold Craftsman, Kenmore and Diehard and 2,300 stores. Of the many locations only about 500 are open today.  

In 2005 the company could have been big again since Amazon wasn’t a competitor then. All that selling off hurt the company and they  never recovered. Sears gave away their business instead of threw themselves on the internet. The remaining stores are still open this holiday season. So our New Year’s resolution should be not to be afraid of change and hold onto your assets.