To grow up in the 80’s was to see the last dying embers of the American dream. Now we live in a dystopian novel ruled by our corporate overlords. Fuck this.
I can agree to that. I only remember glimpses of this long gone era during the 90s with zombie stores scattered around in Los Angeles : Woolworth, Newberry, Treasure Hunt.
When I was a preteen, a hundred years ago or so it seems, my friend and I would go to Woolworth's to sit at the soda fountain and get banana splits. It was an awesome place. I miss places like that.
I've been to most of these places though I hadn't heard of a few of them. I miss Borders, Sears, Circuit City and Radio Shack the most. We also had a lot of regional retail chains in New England that went out of business. We all blamed everything on Walmart but I now realize if Walmart hadn't come along Amazon would still have put most of them out of business. Netflix killed blockbuster and their competition. I didn't really go to blockbuster much. There was a video rental store across from my apartment that was much more convenient. They had a better selection to. But the rental cost was expensive. $4 for 48 hours rental but if you were even a minute late there was a $5 per day late fee. They only gave a slight discount for renting 4 videos at a time ($1 off to make it $15 to rent 4) and they always used high pressure sales tactics to get you to buy a bag of popcorn for $7, a 2 liter bottle of Coke (their only flavor) for $5 and candy at $4 per package. For some reason they thought they could charge as much as movie theaters when there was a grocery store down the street that sold all that for less than half the price. So I asked the manager about when he would start getting DVD's in instead of VHS and he said that he wasn't going to be getting them because nobody had DVD players and the DVD's would cost $100 each to buy and it was a fad like laser disks and nobody would want them in a year or two when they realized that VHS were vastly superior. Two weeks later I was in line at Walmart to buy my first DVD player for $39 at their Black Friday sale and inside was a coupon for Netflix disc rentals by mail and I think it was something like $10 a month and I could keep four discs out at a time without any late fees and so I tried it out and by January that video store had a going out of business sign in front. Obviously I was not the only one. One business after another dropped because the management was too stupid and too arrogant to see the writing on the wall in time to make changes needed to stay in business.
There's so much that came from Sears when I was growing up. Even now there's a ton of things in my parents' house from Sears. A number of appliances and nearly all my Dad's tools were Sears.
You mean that generic modern architecture and those people stocking Sprawlmart shelves who try to avoid eye contact with customers because they know you're going to ask where an item is?
Sears & Roebuck was one of our families favorite stores. Whenever we went there my Mom & Sister took off together and headed for the clothing department. My Dad and Me headed for the Tools and Hardware department. Practically all my tools were from Sears. Shopping online has its advantages but seeing and holding something or trying on clothes before you buy them has a distinct advantage also.
Absolutely. Sears had ALL the huge warehouses in place around the country and a Catalog that had just about everything in it. What they Didn’t have was forward minded Management that were up for the work it was going to take to move slowly away from brick & mortar stores towards the future internet market. I actually remodeled my Wife’s kitchen with Sears knocked down self-assembly kitchen cabinets that, get this, were made of Birch Hard Wood. When I was finally done my wife literally cried and she made me whatever I wanted to eat for Years.
On a surface level that might appear so. But Amazon started from the ground up and redid everything. Imagine constructing a new building that could have all the newest features like central air, double reinforced concrete slabs, liquid crystal windows to regulate sunlight, etc. Right next to it is a building that's a hundred years old with none of those newer features, accumulated debts due to building repairs, and had become infested with bugs and rodents. The public from the outside sees the older building and laments how it was there first and should have been able to capture all of the tenants that the new building did, but just sits there half empty and slowly wasting away. Sears was stuck with a lot of infrastructure, financial, and managerial issues that prevented it from becoming Amazon.
@@ijustawannaprivicie8031 True. Looking forward to the next Amazon type of company with new features like beaming stuff to your living room or no longer ordering by touching a device and you just think about what you want lol. Sears really did have a great thing going. Sears Christmas wish book is something kids today will never get to experience. Always the best times when that catalog vame in the mail. Me and my sisters would argue over whose turn it was to look through it. Of course we would never really get much from it either lol.
@@ijustawannaprivicie8031 Au contraire: Sears already had all the infrastructure in place that Amazon had to build over 20 years. All Sears needed to do was put their catalogue online. Thousands of existing Sears stores nationwide could have served as pickup and distribution centers. Many of the stores would have still closed as online shopping diminished the need for brick and mortar stores, but Sears would still be one of the leading retailers and Amazon would be known just as a river in South America.
Dang,I miss Sears .It was the department store of my childhood ( 1970s) I remember the Christmas catalog coming to our house in the mail every fall and my parents going to shop at their brick and mortar for everything from car tires to TV sets ,and washing machines
Same here. Making that Christmas list annually was awesome. Realizing Christmas was only once a year, I sold frozen sweets and candy to buy my own toys until Christmas.
I miss Steigers in Eastfield, Holyoke and Downtown Springfield. Johnson's Bookstore, too! I really miss Hickory Farms in these malls in the 1970s/1980s at Christmas time. Wow.
Yeah, I remember W.T. Grants. .Funny, the things you remember.For me, It was that they had wooden plank floors and it was a BIG store! Certain parts of the floor would "squeak" as you walked them. I used to drop to one knee and SPY on the ppl downstairs by peering through the gaps in the planks. They used to put tar between the planks to stop that squeak, but the shopping cart wheels would wear it away.
@@davidgoodman6924 , lol if I knew how. I still can't work my phone right. I don't google, tweet or surf. I'm what's known as a non-tec person. I miss the days when all phones worked the same and ya just changed the chanel. Ya know, the simple life.
I renovated my kitchen and bought all 4 appliances from Sears, That was 5 years ago. I was feeling even then business was not good so I wanted to help. Sorry to see that Sears is gone. I liked Kmart as well. Dislike wallmart.
I loved KMart. Their clothing was higher quality than Walmart. I actually loved all their merchandise. I shop at Walmart, but only because it is convenient and quick to get in and out. Everything is in one building.
I miss block buster I remember being a kid an every Friday we would go pick up 3 movies an Fri sat and sun we would have family movie nights...them were the good ol days
I miss video stores in general though we had cable TV come in town it still was nice to choose and pick what you wanted to watch instead of what the movie channels choose for you.
I remember the first video rental store in my hometown opened in 1983. I told my mother she could rent video taped movies; she didn't believe me. The place was called "Captain Video," but the store's owner was told that name was already taken. It was renamed Major Video, and was a popular place to go back in the 80s. But, you must admit, the video rental industry was doomed to obsolescence from the start. Entrepreneurs had to come up with a better way to rent movies, and they did.
This video almost made me cry. Woolworth’s store was MY FAVORITE place to go when I was a child (I’m 60 now). ToysRUs was then a favorite place for my children to go (they’re 24 and 20 now). I actually remember 90% of these stores‼️❤️. Memories to take to my grave.
@@mrs.dr.spencerreid3992 - I believe the corporate HQ was in Massachusetts. In it's peak, they had over 180 stores in the US, mostly on the east coast with a few stores in the mid US.
An old man in my town here in KY owns a RadioShack. When they were closing down, he refused. He asked to keep the name for the one location, and he purchases the products to fill the store with. Him, and his wife still work there to this day.
I used to get the radio shack catalog and then one day it stopped coming. I was upset. I loved that catalog. So I went to Radio Shack and asked for a catalog and they told me they don't do catalogs any more and I should go to their website. Problem was I didn't have a computer and that was before our public library had pubic computers. I just wanted to buy some replacement parts for my stereo that I got there a few years earlier. He simply told me to go on line and order them there. I repeated that I had no access to the internet and asked if he could order them for me and he flatly said "We don't do that here, go on line!" That was the last time I stepped foot in a Radio shack. The arrogance of this and other chains is what killed them. Borders refused to do any customer service at all. I wanted a newspaper from Florida and they carried them but always sold out quickly. I offered to pay in advance for an entire year and I'd just come buy every Friday to pick up the previous Sunday's paper. They told me I'd have to come in every Wednesday to pick up the paper at that time IF they hadn't sold out by then but they could not hold any item regardless of my offer to pay in advance. I was unable to go on Wednesdays due to work. I explained that to them and he told me I should subscribe to the paper. Problem was that newspaper didn't mail out subscriptions out of state so his suggestion was pointless. I have seen this pattern time and again with most of the retailers listed in this video. This is why Amazon is so successful and pretty much destroyed many of these companies. The ones that went out of business before Amazon became a thread would have gone out due to Amazon eventually. I rarely buy things in brick and mortar stores anymore because of Amazon. I got fed up with high prices, low quality, poor selection and rude or non existent sales people.
Sears auto centers were such rip off artist ! I worked for them and seen crooked repairs and overcharging for service's daily , management hated me for calling out the rip offs of customers and they eventually terminated me for it
I would perfect my Xmas wish list by starting it in January so by the time Xmas hit, I had rewritten the catalog with everything in it on my list. Good times in the mid/late 80’s.
Sears also had catalog outlet stores. For small towns those were super amazing. You could could go there and they had every catalog , all the speciality ones as well as the big ones that were all up to date.. you could order Anything from any of the catalogs and it would get delivered to the outlet for free. I ordered all the appliances for our kitchen that way. New stove and fridge, washer and dryer, water heaters and water conditioner, the mainSears store was 300 miles away but with that catalog outlet it was just a few miles. It had a big impact on our town when it closed those outlet stores.
I remember those. I called em "Baby Sears" when I was a little kid. Last one I remember seeing was in Louisburg, NC. And I think it was in operation until just a few years ago.
I worked for Blockbuster Video for 13 years, and it was the single most fun job you could have. What tanked us was a fallout with either Paramount or Universal, where we couldn't get titles from the studio anymore, and at the same time, mail-order Netflix had selection we could not match. Blockbuster really believed the 'hand-held satisfaction' factor would never go out of style, and they were SEVERELY mistaken. I worked in the Hoboken NJ store in 2007 when we had a literal million-dollar renovation--only to shut down less than a year later. I still have nostalgia pangs, knowing my kids will never have such an awesome, easy job where making use of your esoteric film knowledge was a selling point/appreciated skill set. They were actually a great company to work for. Rest in peace BBV #22035 (Laplace, LA).
Ironic how so many people want Blockbuster to come back, which gives credibility to the adage "you don't know what you've got until it's gone". Sometimes if I get lost in thought, I can still psychosomatically smell the inside of a Blockbuster and how easily they routed other rental stores because of how admittedly reasonable Blockbuster's prices were. Their membership was, if I'm remembering correctly, the only thing that theoretically COULD be a bit pricey, but compared to other places, you saved money in the long run.
You can't blame it all on the internet. I stop shopping for kids' toys when they all and I mean all are made in china. There is not quality or anything worth keeping.
The truth is…that if you remember all these stores as well as I do…then you have gone the way of these stores just as much as me. The world I grew up in changed, the people changed. And I have to say…I liked it a hell of a lot better back then than I do now. America was strong and productive…now…it’s embarrassing.
@@haroldwilkes6608 Harold. You nailed it…you can’t go home. I was just telling my girlfriend…they retired all the ships I served on…they retired the planes I flew in as aircrew…and they no longer wear the dungarees I wore since boot camp. With my ships turned into scrap metal, my favorite stores forgotten and taken over by online shopping….and beautiful women referencing me as Grandpa….it just feels like it went so fast. Nice to meet you. Raven
@@ravenopenheart2649 Two of the Air Force bases I served on are closed too. But the B-57 and C-130 are still around so there's hope. And dungarees? I haven't heard that since I wore them as a kid. Thanks for the memory.
You both aren't alone. I may be a youngster of...wait, let me do the math...58 but so many of the things I enjoyed are gone. I should've seen it coming when they closed Weymouth Air Base (Massachusetts) when I was still a wee lass in my 20's. Don't get me wrong, I like shopping online but I miss having more than 2 choices of where to buy large appliances and having more than Walmart to buy affordable things when I go out. Off topic but I also hate having to make sure with my daughters what I'm saying is politically correct because I don't mean offense by it, it's just how I grew up talking.
Service Merchandise was a fun store. Looking at everything behind glass then get on their computers to order your stuff and finally waiting for your name to be called so you could watch it roll out of tge backroom on a conveyor. Kind of archaic by todays standards but lots of fun.
I really miss these places. Everyone are not crazy about the internet AND Amazon.🤷🏽 I love going to the store and being hand's on with what I want to purchase.
Nothing beat Kenmore merchandise back in the day. I still have my Sears Kenmore vacuum also. It was expensive when I bought it back in 2004 but it still works like the day I bought it.
My mom still uses a rolling canister vacuum from Monty wards she got in 88 along with a hot air popcorn pumper she got there. And my aunt still brews coffee in a perculator coffee pot from wards. Good stores good products.
I really missed Circuit City. I’ve bought most of my major appliances there. Sadly when they were nearing the end I bought a new Car CD/Radio from my local store and I was their last installation customer in the Shop.
I was an installer at the circuit city in Boise Idaho and was there for ten years and was there the day they closed… still a bit sad. 😢 at least I still get to work on cars but still not the same.
I bought my first home cd player at circuit city back in the late 1980s never had a problem with it, only recently had to get rid of it due to no room in new house I loved that player. Really regret letting it go.
They need to make a PART 2 on this subject. I remember these stores plus many others that disappeared over time: Orange Julius, G. Fox, Ames, Zayre, Caldor's, Sage Allen, Grant's Department store, Levitz Furniture ...
I love how the pic used for the 1st Blockbuster says “No Late Fees” on the window. It seemed like assessing late fees was the only way Blockbuster made any money! They were ridiculous!
@ cyntersl... , Thier policy of walk-ins had priority on movies that other customers had on reserve was a crock , I had reserved a movie waited 4-5 days got the call it was in got there too pick it up somebody had walked in n got it .
Don't recall the anvils but we loved the mailman when he brought a new catalog. I remember in the late 1970s when the men's underwear section caused a stir. Seems someone was bad in the photography department, you could see a few of men's family jewels. That was a hoot.
I am 67 and the Sears in Louisville, Kentucky used to have a Christmas Tree and Santa set up every Christmas in their basement. I was always way too afraid to talk to Santa but they had an awesome Train set up that I loved watching.
Very interesting video. But what about Motorola, Kmart, Marshall Field’s and Payless shoes? A follow up video with 15 more businesses would be great. Thanks for sharing.
Payless drug stores were great too before rite aid got them. I got my first boombox there in early 80s and grab bricks of cassette tapes and later video tapes for recording. And that smell of peat moss or lawn fertilizer will always be in my memory.
My hometown of Kankakee Illinois built every piece of furniture and every appliance sold at Sears! 2 Roper appliance factory's and a huge kroehler furniture factory. Employed thousands of people through generations. All good middle class jobs! All destroyed in the mideighties. The same people complaining about unions then are complaining about China today
I remember Montgomery Ward, Builders Square K-Mart and not to be forgotten Gemco. I remember Gemco's were a grocery store/department store combo like Walmart stores of today...
We still have a Sears near us and its been doing ok. I went to Sears all the time with my mom to get clothes, shoes and even sometime toys and much more. It’s really so sad how all these stores that really were so popular came coming down. I like Amazon but it really did take a lot of these stores down and it can be nice to get stuff online but it really has made so many people lazy. Like really you can buy a car on your couch. Just crazy how the times have changed. I would of loved to live in the 80s or 90s.
My dad was transferred a lot when I was a kid, but wherever we moved there was an A&P. My mom always got the store manager to stock Luzianne coffee with chicory.
Ah yes...Sears. It took my parents YEARS to pay off their revolving charge. When I was stationed at GLAKES, there was a small mall just off the main base. In it was a Sears store. Remembering my parents'predicament, I have the store a wide berth. Then I came back to my room after Navy classes, I found a bill...from Sears. I went to the store and spoke to their accounts clerk. She told me in order to correct the error, I had to give her a Sears account number. I told her I didn't have a Sears account. She said there was nothing she could do unless I gave her a Sears account number. So, I tore up the bill, shoved the pieces at her and said, "I don't have never had and don't want a Sears account. Figure it out." and left. Small wonder they went out of business.
This video made me so sad. So many iconic brands that had their time and place in American and Worldwide retail history. Each store mentioned brought back so many memories. It is amazing how much the internet and companies like Amazon and Netflix have changed the retail landscape forever. Makes you wonder what the next generation of retail will look like in the future. Thanks for creating this video.
I remember my grandma would give my brother and I different color pens to circle the things we wanted in the Sears catalog. It kept us busy for hours . 😊
Buster Browns and saddle oxford shoes. I had to polish those shoes every night.. Ha ha ha, they wore well but I hated those things. Funny, they are a good memory now.
B&N has managed to keep afloat for years but they've had troubles. I been reading about it in papers. Switch board members and managers a few times. My main problem with them and yes, I do try to support them since they are local but most of the time they don't carry what I'm looking for. Have gone to their information desk searching for either book, series or a magazine and after looking through the computer they tell me they don't carry that publisher. I ask if they can order or special order because I don't want to have to go through Amazon I'd rather give my money to them but I'm told no. That's one of the reasons why they are having problems the other and Amazon does this also is they both push strongly Kindle. I can't read ebooks.
Many of there problems start with management taking on debt to expand to quickly. For me personally it just hasn't felt like Christmas for over a decade. All the dead malls towns hardly decorate, high end stores gone etc
I live in a small town that still managed to have most of the stores on this list. Now they're all gone; along with the local mom & pop shops. All we have left is Walmart, Home Depot, Kroger and a few others not worth mentioning. 😩🤢🤮
The exact same thing has happened in most urban shopping areas in small to medium sized towns. Walmart comes in and they literally run the small independent stores out of business. It’s really sad because back in the old days when we walked into those small stores They Knew Your Name and they waited on you like you were Royalty. Try that at Walmart.
@@michaelrief4424 Walmart grocery stores don't even have cashiers after 8PM anymore. I don't normally go there and when I went there, I couldn't believe that they only had self checkout lanes open. Sheesh, talk about lack of customer service.
@@Primalxbeast Walmart is not what I consider shopping. It’s more like a mad house of people buying crap they don’t need and buying way too much food and mostly food that’s not good for you. I haven’t been in a Walmart in 30 years. I used to go there back when Sam Walton was in charge but now it’s an outlet for Made in China. Not for me.
The same people who say " I buy it off line it`s cheaper , shops are a rip off " are the same people who moan about the empty city centre and boarded up shops . i used to love going into the city centre and catching up with mates , having a coffee and doing some shopping , now due to social media everyone knows everything you have done hour by hour , so here would be nothing to talk about if you did ever meet face to face .
@@jackilynpyzocha662 They are still there but they're not the same if you know what I mean. Most have been changed to strip malls that you can see as you drive by. The last true mall that I saw was several years ago when I lived in Austin, Texas. Forget name of if nut it was 2 or 3 floors now that's a mall.
Robert Sears was a depot agent for ( I believe ) the railroad in North Redwood Minnesota there. In his line of work he came across some unclaimed pocket watches. Thats how Sears Roebuck was started.
The afterglow of the blue light special cart wanes slowly into the night of our memory. For the longest time it was the only "mart" we had in our town. Miss those layaway plans that was the only way we got a lot of clothing and electronic items before we got rent to own stores.
I can remember my late Grandmother taking me into Woolworths so she can buy her new sewing kits and garments etc. then came the treat of the afternoon, the ice cream parlor, located inside the store, where my sweet tooth was filled with the favorite delight of a shared banana split.
And you didn't go broke buying a banana split. Now they price them as if they were Starbucks---or maybe the living standard was a lot higher back then.
Hush Puppies (Wolverine World Wide) is ~ 15 miles North of me in Rockford, MI, a well-off bedroom community of Grand Rapids MI. I wear their Merrill shoe brand and love them. They are SO WELL made...
when radio shack first opened in 1970 at the beaver valley mall they had several isles of electronic parts before they closed one drawer of parts .every time i went in the store all they wanted to do is sell you cell phones
in 1980 if you had told me that sears would be on this list i would have laughed at you i thought they were as financially stable as a mountain then about 10 years before the announcement they would close the local store i knew something was wrong like a doctor diagnosing a terminal ill patient i could see it coming . and knowing there was nothing i could do to stop it
Back many years ago , one Sears employee mentioning to me that K-Mart purchased Sears . I said it must be the other way around . But a day later I found it’s true and hard for me to accept such reality for a moment.
Oh, my dad made those all the time. He made me a transistor radio when I was a teenager and I had it for years. My friends and I would walk endlessly around the block in Chicago with our radios in the 60's. Good times!
Thanks for the info about Hecht's; you never see them on these business shows and they were huge in the DC area. I shopped in the first Border's in Ann Arbor as a college student. Too bad they couldn't keep up with the times. To be honest, once amazon came along, it would be rough going. The big bookstores focus on the middle market and popular titles. I understand. But if you have interests in academic, scientific, or other niche areas, it wasn't worth your time going in. I can get books in a variety of fields online; I can'I do that in a brick and mortar building. It's still sad to see them disappear. I shopped in Tower over the years as well. Nothing is forever. What? A&P is out of business??
I'm glad Blockbuster is now out of business. Once, I put the video in their outside drop off. A few days later, I'm given 'a fine' from the company because the staff didn't bother to check it in. I was pissed and demanded -and got, my fine reversed but was ordered to bring the video in from there on. That same story had a slew of board employees screamed, 'check in your bag' literally the second I walked into the stores. They were expensive and thought that they were beyond going out of business. Like I said, I am so glad they failed while Netflix has taken over.
I've shopped at 10 of these 15 famous brand name retailers. So sad to see them all out of business. At their heights, you had excellent selection, good prices, and outstanding service by knowledgeable staff. These stores provided entry level employment to millions of people. I guess now, people will have to be satisfied with listing on their resumes that they worked in an Amazon warehouse. For that and so many other reasons, I will never "shop" online with Amazon -- or at a Wal-Mart either. They could easily do a Parts 2, 3, and 4 of this, covering other famous now-gone brands like Montgomery Wards, Gimbels, Eatons (in Canada), and all the various brand names that Macy's swallowed up -- like Marshal Fields. And restaurants too. Such a loss.
As of February 2021 they were less than 30 Sears stores left. They were in Lansing Michigan right up until 2019 when they closed. The problem is they sold a bunch of crap nobody wanted, and their service towards the end was terrible. Their auto center is now being used as a Covid testing site for one of the local hospitals
Yep, I bought broken Craftsman tools at auctions and sent them in to be replaced...they did. I still have a Sears suit and a couple of cooking pans though, tough as nails. Their stuff was too good.
I miss Borders book store. There was one in the River Park Shopping Center. I also miss Woolworth's, they were on the Fulton Mall, and in Fashion Fair Mall here in Fresno.
@@mikegehre570 I worked at Weinstocks in 1974 as a gift wrapper. It was for the Christmas season. I loved Gottchalks. I shopped in their discount store in Manchester Mall. I miss both those stores too!
That Woolworth's store they kept showing on K St. is located in Bakersfield, CA. They're still open as an antique store with a fully operating lunch counter with good food.
I lived on 86th street where the new flagship gambles was erected. They installed a huge romanlike white marble floor on the first floor. This was in the 1980s. Just months later they closed the whole thing down. We all wondered. Was it the marble floor?
Toys R Us is supposedly coming back via Macy's. There's a documentary about Tower Records-- "All Things Must Pass". The company is not entirely defunct, at least not by name or logo. It's still very visible in Japan & is apparently making an on-line comeback as well. Nothing is mentioned here about the link between Sears & K-Mart. Both businesses seem to be on their last legs. A great memento of Fotomat is an unforgettable scene in the classic 1993 film "Short Cuts".
The booksellers understandably had closed down because reading skills taught in most schools today had eroded to the point of no return, with even the teachers themselves beginning to sign up for remedial studies in the use and understanding of the English alphabet!
Don't hold your breath. The current owners of Toys R Us have already tried this failed. Even if they managed to get it off the ground, Amazon with crush them. As for Blockbuster, what major studio is going to think "great idea" lets let them stream our content? Another way to ask that is what major studio doesn't already have their own streaming platform?
When Blockbuster revealed that 19% of it's revenue came from late fees, that was their downfall. They were strict on the time table even when kids rented under their parent's account and the parents had to pay the late fees.
Who remember waldonbooks? We didn't get a borders until 2000s so W was the chain to go to in the mid 90s here. The day mgr was so cool and so knowledgeable with his beard and buddy Holly glasses. He ordered so many books and carried a great slew of graphic novels where I got most of the best ones to own. I miss you Rich....
K sorry I'm commenting again but that A&P photo from New Orleans on St. Peter Street hit me in the feels. Except we called it 'the A&P' because that's what we do to language in Louisiana.
Perhaps the history of these companies should be studied by all MBA students, though I suspect that mistakes will still be made by many companies in the future.