What's sad is they had everything to become Amazon, if they had just put it together in time. They already had a catalogue that contained virtually everything under the sun, they had an accurate inventory system that could tell them where every item they offered was in the world, they had a shipping and distribution network that was unmatched, they had every tool to succeed in the modern world. If only they had put the catalogue online and made it searchable, then hooked a credit card processor up to it. That's all it would have taken. But they didn't, and Amazon did, and that was the writing on the wall for Sears.
Sears owned Prodigy, an internet service provider back in the 1980s. And they owned Discover, a credit card company. They had everything they needed to evolve into what Amazon is today. They had at least an entire decade head start. They could have put their entire catalog on Prodigy in 1985 and processed Discover card payments on it. Then when the World Wide Web emerged in the 1990s, they could have migrated their catalog onto that. They could have been selling everything from luggage to clothes to jewelry when Amazon was still trying to figure out how to just sell books.
I have been thinking the exact same thing. Amazon was just the sears catalog with a website, at least initially. I’m wondering if Sears ever made any attempt to go online, and why it failed.
I think you are right, Sears could have been Amazon. I think the hurdle would be that Amazon lost a lot of money along they way as it focussed on growth. If you're a startup, venture capital is willing to give you funding as long as you can keep growing. But if you're the CEO of a legacy retailer like Sears, it would proably by tougher to get the board to go along with investing huge amounts of money in a new thing, burning up all the profits from your existing business. I think the focus is more on the short term, on generating a return for the shareholders
Those huge shifts in how they do business really needs the original founder or another visionary in control to achieve that. Once that person leaves and control goes to management focused on quarterly bonuses it doesn't happen.
My mall still has it Sears location, not open but abandoned. It’s interesting that all the Illinois stores are closed when many of the people I knew shopped at Sears more than JC Penny and Macy’s.
When you think of it Sears used to sell home kits from the 1920's to 1940's. You could order a pre-cut modular home delivered. They invented the Sears catalogue. Many older people remember the time we spent flipping through that catalogue. You just called in your order and it was delivered. Satisfaction or money refunded was their guarantee. Why the heck management could not embrace the computer age and prosper is really strange.
In the 50's, I remember how exciting it was ti go to Sears, especially the hardware/tool department. I am willing to bet the old crusty dogs led to the decline, not bringing in young blood and ideas that resonated with new times of internet buying. Walmart stole the business model, does both, but is the coldest place on Earth to go buy stuff.
Both sets of my grandparents still had outhouses even in my youth. And both had Sears catalogs on the shelf by the seat. They had to explain to me why they were there. They told even though they actually had TP in there by then, they kept the Sears catalog there for nostalgia.
I'm 40 years old. I remember Sears, Kmart, and RadioShack, how bustling those places were, how modern their equipment was and it was so awesome to look at displays of everything and thinking how cool it looked, new VCR models every year that looked more flashy than the year before, and definitely better than what we had at home. I remember the shopping malls even up to 2000 so stocked with stores. Yes the rise of online shopping is convenient but you do lose something with these old walk-in stores going under.
It wasn’t just online shopping that did in Radio Shack, they also ran their stores horribly. That one-two punch was the death of many legacy businesses.
@cdevidal Radio Shack started sinking when they decided to concentrate on phones and forgot about their bread and butter. I worked for them from 1978-1982. Those were great days!!
I worked for Sears many years ago. They stopped listening to their customers, associates and vendors. They devalued people and management didn't invest in the stores or employees. They instead focused on cost-cutting and eventually killed the business. They will eventually fade from view...
I also worked for Sears, and they actually stopped giving pizza parties and started giving soda parties instead. I believe that is what really led to the downfall of the company. It is tough to say what exactly did more damage, but the other thing to consider is that they also were meanies.
I worked for them as a kid in the stockroom. The manager was so terrified of the general manager during inventory. She always had too much stock told me to throw it all away. I would sell bicycles, scooters, exercise equipment I made more money doing that than working.😂
This is incredibly depressing for me. My parents both absolutely loved sears and I’ve got so many memories of shenanigans in their stores. Rest in Peace Sears.
In Moline, IL, my Dad worked for Sears from 1962-1997, but not in the retail sector. He fixed TVs and VCRs back when they were worth fixing at the SEARS Service Center. It kept us living well, and we had about 8 refurbished TVs in the house at any given point after 1982 (I was born in '78) Great store, too. We used to drive there in our Cutlass Cruiser station wagon.
I'm 63 years old. I grew up with Sears. I remember going with my parents to Sears Xmas shopping as a child. Sitting on Santa's lap. Enjoying all the lights and decorations. As an adult, the tool dept were I bought all my Craftsman tools and lawnmowers. My family shopped at the same Sears for 50 years. My Aunt worked there for 15 years.. l watched as that building was demolished and replaced with another. Lot's of memories. . . All gone.
76.5+ here. I remember the boating items. They sold triangular pennants. A cocktail glass meant a party onboard, come over. A battleaxe for when a Mother- In - Law had boarded.
The only reason Sears closed was because the CEO wanted to liquidate every piece of real estate after selling off all their brands, Kenmore, Craftsman, etc.
@@Justin_Beaver564 It was already a dinosaur when those 50yo's were born. Brands can occasionally cross generations and completely change sales models (like how they went from catalogs to stores), but it would be rare to do it twice.
He bought the brand when it was already in distress. Like ToysRUs, Saxs, BedBath, and countless other retailers, it could not compete in a modern retail environment or innovate.
The internal guts of those old registers is an IBM 386. I saw because I was asked to help the technician during my shift back in 2015. The inventory handhelds we used were so old that there was only one business that still sold the paper tape for the printers. For the whole store there were only two printers for the handhelds to be plugged into, which was a nightmare during the annual inventory audit. The batteries for the handheld were all refurbished because that supplier had gone out of business years before I started working at Sears.
I'm trying to think about the kind of devices that have processing weaker than a 386 and it's hard to. For example, about once per month I'll see a video pop up about running Doom on something like a refrigerator or HVAC panel and it's running faster than it would on a 386, which would be in the teens of FPS or lower and at 50% size.
What's funny about the comment on the tools 2:40 is that tools was one of their most successful businesses. SEARS started the exclusive tool brand Craftsman, which is now a widely popular tool brand. Many found it convenient, and Craftman became such a success that they branched away from SEARS. So yes, many did go to SEARS for tools; that was kind of what made them notable, while the women shopped and men could get their tools.
One could argue that's one of the things that helped kill Sears. For the the longest time, Sears essentially had a monopoly on premium quality tools sold at the retail level. Once big box stores like Lowes started selling tools that were almost as good for less money, Sears lost one of the few advantages it had left.
There was a guy who invented a tool, it was like a squeeze ratchet wrench but I forgot what it was called. He made them here in the U.S. and sold them at sears stores. It's all he did. Without warning one year, sears stopped renewing his contract. That same year, he saw his product, made in China now, in a sears store. I hated sears from that moment on.
The big selling point for Craftsman was that they had a lifetime warranty and any Sears would exchange them...on-the-spot, no receipt, no questions asked. It was great for things that can break from time to time even with normal use (socket adaptors, for instance). You could literally find some ancient, broken, rusty wrench somewhere and so long as the 'Craftsman' name was halfway legible, walk into any Sears and get a new one. I once burned up a Craftsman rotary tool attachment (knock-off Dremel) through sheer abuse and they still replaced it, which impressed me. I have heard that Home Depot/Husky is similar but I haven't broken a Husky tool to find out.
@hibob841 On the TV show American Chopper, they literally bought a large craftsman wrench, brand new, torched it to bend it at an angle they needed for one job, took it right back and they replaced it.
I remember as a kid (1970’s) how my brother and I looked forward to the annual Sears Wishbook and fought over who got to look at it first. For the younger generation, there was no Amazon/internet.
same story with a twist every turkey day my aunt would bring a 1972 sears catalog that had a mans penis showing in the mens clothing section .. my whole family of women..lol would pass it around , all the way till 1999 when the family all fell apart.. people died other people did get monies and anger brew.. true story though..
@@tarpanc34 When I was 10 or so a friend from across the street came to the door very excited. There was a secret club and we were going to be in it, the first members. There were even secret documents! I could not wait to see where this was going and was fully prepared to join my new life of intrigue and mystery. Our first mission of course was to view the secret documents. We went to where he had carefully hidden them, in a manilla envelope behind the air handler in his family's basement. He had cut out the section of the Sears catalog that showed women models wearing the bras for sale.
I’m in my mid 60s and when I was a kid Sears was the place to go for families when they needed anything and everything. When we moved from Southern California to Illinois in the late 60s, we spent every weekend at Sears buying furniture for the new house clothes appliances Everything.😢
It is shocking to me that there are only 12 Sears stores left in the US. Growing up there were probably 4 Sears stores within driving distance of our house. Most were at various malls and one was a free standing store in the inner city. The one in the inner city had a lunch counter where you could buy a fresh hamburger. I attended a charm school for teenage girls at Sears when I was 13. My parents purchased all their appliances at Sears. The brand name for Sears appliances was Kenmore.
My washer and dryer are both 1980s era Kenmores that I bought about 8 years ago. Parts are no problem as there must have been a lot of leftover new old stock. In 8 years the only problem was the timer went out on the washer I refuse to buy new stuff which are overpriced and totally unreliable (learned the hard way on that about 20 years ago)
Just 15-20 years ago Sears was me any my husband's go-to department store, and there were several nearby. Tools, clothes, mattress, dishwasher, washer/dryer, bedding sets, car service - we got a lot there. Some we even still have. It was a precipitous collapse.
@@williewonka6694 That was in the 1970s so it was a different era. Charm school was also probably a middle class thing it was about teaching a young girl to be a "lady". I am African American as were my parents the charm school was at the Sears in the inner city so all the girls taking the class were also African American. There were about 12 girls in the class. Our graduation from the class was held in an auditorium on an upper floor at Sears. We walked a runway for our families wearing clothes from the "juniors" dept at Sears.
I'm 60 now and muse that when I'm 80, and another generation comes along, i'll be sitting in my rocking chair telling the kids about how we used to pile in the 'ol V8 station wagon, no seat belts, drive to ( Sears ) and buy everything INSIDE a building (!) Yes, clothes, tools, appliances, jewelry, kitchen stuff, washing machines...then go downstairs and pick it up and take it home with you !!!! " Sure, Grandpa, and I bet they showed movies outdoors while you sat in your car !".....
they still have the support of chicago who without fail 100% of the time always calls our tallest building the sears tower even though it was renamed to be the willis tower
Thank you for sharing this. Going to dying malls and stores like this kind of depresses me. I was a kid in the 90s and I never would have guessed then that malls and Sears would eventually fade.
I wouldn't have either. Sears was a big retail giant it's like thinking about Ford going out of business it's jsut something you think is unimaginable.
My Sears story: Way back in the late 1970s, when I was a young foolish man, I'd brave the cold of winter in the thinnest of jackets. That year was particularly bitterly cold and my dear mother got me the nicest, hooded winter coat from Sears - The Men's Store. That coat served me well over the years and it's always been the best at keeping me warm. Fast forward to almost 50 years later. The coat hangs on our coat rack ready to serve. It's zipper is missing a few teeth, so you have to start the zipper carefully. Most of the flap closing buttons are gone and it's somewhat soiled, but still it serves. It's my winter work coat and I wouldn't be without it. It's still the best, working on the car out in the cold or shoveling or blowing snow. The coat continues to keep me warm. Mom chose well, it's a nice, functional memento form the past, she'd be pleased. Sears always had good products.
I’ve got a coat I still wear from JC Penny from 2007 I think. It’s still in good condition, zipper still works fine and on all the pockets too. I think it cost $30 back then, was an after Christmas sale. The day after Christmas used to be just as big for shopping as Black Friday. That coat would probably cost $100 now or more.
Honestly that has nothing to do with Sears. Nothing is made with quality anymore. An item from the dollar store back in the 70’s holds up better than anything modern these days. You gave Sears too much credit. 😂 My parents have many NON-Sears items from back in the day that are holding up. Has nothing to do with Sears.
Major backroom vibes. Especially the first one with the broken elevator and escalator. I was half expecting it to turn into analog horror. Great work. Glad these got documented while they're still around.
The downfall of Sears is one of the most perplexing. The failure to embrace e-commerce when it's naturally an evolution of the mail order model they grew and thrived off of for so many years. Even with the decline in foot traffic, having a large location in nearly every city enables them to carry lots of inventory to fulfill site to store or last mile delivery orders.
I knew years ago they were in trouble but I thought like today they would still have like 200-300 stores left. I wonder if they could ever take the Toys R Us route at a comeback.
@@FallicIdol Yep. All they had to do was include the web address and put reference numbers next to all the products and they would of been set to transition into the 21st century. But instead they cancel their catalog, which was iconic, and go to in store only purchases when everyone else was moving away from stores.
I’m 81 and I remember when Sears was Sears, Roebuck. When that big thick catalog came they had everything you’d ever need. We counted the days until the Christmas toy catalog came in the mail and what a joy that was. We read it from cover to cover. Their craftsman tools with the lifetime free replacement. Their Kenmore appliances were top of the line. Sears die hard car batteries. They didn’t keep up with the times, they failed due to poor management. Paying executive’s outrageous wages, and they didn’t know what they were doing. The worst thing they did was buying K-mart, that didn’t work for either company.
My dad travelled around the country opening new Sears stores. I remember .that at one time in the 1950's, the company was allowing employees to submit photos of their children. If they had the "cute" factor, they could be used as models in the catalog. My father submitted photos of my sister & me, but we were rejected as being too thin. lol
Up here in Canada ,our Sears stores were a time machine to 1979. Nothing had been updated in decades. Some ceiling tiles had waterstains and remained there ,never to be replaced. I saw where one infant spilled something in the bedding department carpet in 1981. The stain was still there as the store closed in 2018. Bathroom taps were likely from the 60's and and you had to push them down when turning . Over the years various departments disappeared,. The candy counter ,video rental ,key cutting ,the restaurant, the gas bar and the automotive departments all gradually vanished until there was nothing really left to cut.
@@YourSorryagain pretty much. Some became obsolete,like the video rental, but the Sears ones closed years before most video rental outlets closed.The restaurants became luggage departments in some ,but mostly became fixtures storage .But gradually all those cuts caught up .The hair stylist area was just roped off. It got walled up when someone was found sleeping/living in there in the darkness. Those stains WERE noticed . Ceiling tiles that get stained but never replaced are another way to tell if the owners give a Damm. Stains like that remain for years are easy to spot. Most managers become oblivious.to them .
@@Chris-dz3rs this is eerily similar to what is happening around Walmarts in my neck of the woods in Eastern Canada, the auto mechanics have been replaced with storage for the store, same for the photography studio and the photo section, even the McDonalds have been converted into storage space. Last time I went for electronics, they didn't even have wired USB mice nor keyboards (both bluetooth and wired) on hand. My bet is Walmart is the next Sears or Zellers.
@@Cairannx same things have happened to the Walmart in Fairview Park Mall in Kitchener. Hair stylist ,McDonald's, tire dept all gone. Our Cambridge dept lost tire ,hair and photo to covid.
Sears store near me in Houston was opened in 1947, closed in July few years ago, it was always busy and full of people, bought many items there for the home which I still have, some of the clerks there had been with Sears for decades and were proud of it
Thanks for the video. Both my uncle and grandfather managed Sears stores here in Illinois. My uncle worked his way up and managed entire regions for the company, in fact (prior to his untimely passing), he likely would have been the next COO. I'm glad they are both passed now because they would be crushed to see what's left of Sears now.
This was a hit to the nostalgia, growing up in the 90's my mother loved SEARS and took us there all the time and every year we had out pictures taken there at the portrait center.
We took our 1 year old to Sears for a fancy portrait in 1986. While she was an exceptionally beautiful child, it was a fantastic shot. There was no hipster irony to getting a photo portrait done at Sears. It was just good value for the money.
I was a salesman for sears. Losing craftsman is what did them in. Another issue with sears is it tried creating its own online marketplace to compete with companies like Amazon. Sears would sell merchandise online, cheaper than in their own stores. That’s why the stores started dying.
@@MamaCarola1 They did. In fact we as salesman lost 30% of our commission whenever we had to use the code to price match in our POS system. A lot of employees quit because they were losing money on sales price matching Sears website.
About 1959, as a child, I was allowed to pick out my own Christmas gift from the Sears catalog. What a thrill it was, as we only had 2 catalog stores in our small town (the other was Montgomery Wards). To this day I remember exactly what I got. I loved the big Sears store when we moved and was very sad to see it close. My mom, grandma and I enjoyed shopping there. We used to say “you could build your own house, and furnish it when ordering from Sears”! It is very missed!
Back in the 70's, I worked for a company that was in the same situation as Sears. As we were winding down, the worst performing stores were closing. Employees and merchandise was moved to the remaining stores. Repeat again. Over the course of a couple of months, only one store remained. It closed on Saturday. On Monday, one location reopened under a different name, with most of the same management. Old Employees were hired as new employees with different wages and no benefits. I assume the leases worked the same way. Our main product supplier was now financing the new venture. The company expanded and did pretty good for a number of years. Without me. I moved on to better things.
my late dad bought a sander from then in late 50s, we still have it, best one we ever had, all metal construction, they sold great metal tool boxes too
@@bobbobby1846 Yes, and I have bought some from there and had good luck with them, but I'm still not 100% convinced the quality is as good as Craftsman stuff from the Sears days.
You have to go back much further then when Fast Eddie took over. Probably go all the way back to the early to mid 1980's. Sears just lost focus in Chicago and started the tend of cutting and tossing things out for short term profit for the shareholders and the corporate offices. I remember my father as a manager for Sears saying things that all the corporate want is profit for the quarter and not reinvest in the company. Back then they spun Allstate Insurance off. Then start in the partnership of Prodigy.
From 0:47-1:01 you visited our dead Sears!!! It's amazing to see our Sears on here. God, that closed almost a decade ago... Sebring, Florida in Lakeshore mall (The mall itself is dying too.) Thanks for visiting us at our small town!!!
Great video! I first learned what a "Panzer Dragoon" was on the second floor of a Sears store kiosk in mid '95 and that moment had a huge impact on my game preferences in following years.
Good old Sears. It always blew my mind that the company that created shopping from home wasn't the first one to plant their flag in the online marketplace. How they failed to see what the Internet would become is a mindbender. Then again, a friend of mine went to work there after retiring from the military and she only lasted a couple months. She told me the place was jacked, especially her fellow managers and there was zero accountability to go with zero motivation among the employees. We were a Sears home. My family moved here in the early 60s and one of my earliest memories from that time was going to Sears and stocking our home. Everything was Kenmore in our house and the washer, dryer, and refrigerator my Dad bought that night were all still trucking along when I moved out in the mid-80s. We even had a Kenmore stereo, which was really a Pioneer system in a fancy cabinet. Man, did that thing rock. I blew out the left channel playing the Black Sabbath Paranoid album so loud they heard it at the schoolyard a couple blocks away. Dad was not impressed though, and I had to work off the cost for the guy to come out and restore it to its normal operation. We bought our school clothes there and I still have my Craftsman tools I bought in the mid-80s. To quote Time Allen: "Darn right Sears." Time marches on I guess. RIP Sears, I miss combing through the catalog, looking at that five-speed bike I never got.
Sears fought to stay as they were, rather than seeing the future and seizing it. Yes, it would have meant divesting themselves of retail space, or repurposing it. Nobody wants to see their job disappearing, or being redefined to require someone with different talents. And Sears was stodgy. As I recall, at one time they required their executives to wear white dress shirts, no colors. People anchored to the past deny themselves the opportunity to sail into the future.
1920s tea and biscuits for the rich my nickel den lights to day or two an Archie Bunker was on the range good old days government takeovers Christmas disappearing because of 2010 recession man but Sears lasted a lifetime couldn't wait to get the Sears catalog look at the radios the young children's section what's the pajamas in the appliances made in America God bless the iconic store computers that take over because they are young people want to do everything with the internet from buying to selling God bless stamp of approval USA on durable goods in the 80s still we remember America took pride in their appliances Sears was open from 8:00 until 6:00 at night and if they didn't have it you had to order in the catalog thanks for the memories the Midwest remembers😊
Purchased a Moped there in the late 50s and drove it up and down our long driveway a hundred times everyday (I was about 11 or 12). It took me a few weeks to figure out it had two speeds at which time the driveway no longer imposed its limits.
I remember going to Sears with my mother to buy Christmas Lights. It was so exciting. All the trees were up and the entire department was so pretty. I still remember that day 50 years later. My mother wanted to be sure we replaced the old big style lights with the cooler "Italian" lights. Sears was THE place to go for appliances and tools. THE PLACE.
My father hates shopping and going to stores. Straight up despises it. Sears was the one exception I could recall. I would usually tag along with him to enjoy the video games/electronics area. I remember how packed and festive those stores were. I'll always remember fondly seeing a Virtual Boy the first time, playing the Sonic & Knuckles demo with other kids to see how far each of us could get before it reset, and seeing PaRappa The Rapper when PS launched. They had something lost in retail... Experts that knew their products and were paid on commission. I remember going to get a suit for my first communion and this old man assisting my father and I, measuring me, and fitting me. Guy called 10-year-old me "Sir". The time I spent in those Sears catalogs too... Wow.
A lot of places still use their old IBM 4690 systems because it's cheaper than rebuilding everything from scratch, I used to work at Walmart and we still used IBM registers and same with Costco. I've seen them using IBMs. Although a few years ago they sold that part of their business to Toshiba who still supports it for legacy customers but recently stopped accepting new orders and they're working on a Linux based replacement for it. Even the new self checkouts at Walmart (at least in Canada) are made by Toshiba.
Same here. I worked at shoprite from 2021-22 and they had systems that were maybe only slightly newer than these in the video. My mom works at cvs and it looks like they use the same computers as in the video.
Being a kid of the 80s I grew up going to Sears. Was a hot spot for my parents in terms of clothing, shoes and appliances. What my opinion is on its decline was simply it not bothering to update its approach to customer service, product availability and presentation since the early 90s. It updated until that point and just stopped. Outlier products like tools, appliances, tv's and video games were far too overpriced considering you can get better prices next door or down the street. Around the early 2010s employees just seemed to stop caring bc the store gave them no incentive to do so. It feels like they all just gave up, period. It Was basically a thrift store by the end. Unfortunately they did this to themselves out of sheer apathy.
@@kevinc8955 I'm not sure how old you are, but that was one the great selling points of Sears back during 70's 80's and into the 90's. It was the ultimate one stop shopping. You could buy a suit, get your brakes changed, buy a TV , a washer and dryer, toys for the kids, a kitchen aid mixer all under one roof. Sears was great to go to . and as a kid in Septmeber every kid waited for the Sears Christmas cataloge to come. It was Amazon in physical form. it's a shame Sears was the best back in the day
@@kevinc8955 I'm not aware of Sears ever selling oil filters, aside from the ones they installed in the auto center. But yeah, Walmart does that very successfully. Not everyone wants the shirts walmart sells, but most people get something there. I used to buy a lot of tools and clothes at Sears, but both went to crap long before they closed.
Nostalgia... This video made me sad. I remember when going to Sears as a kid (uh 4 to 5 decades ago) was a treat to get something! Now, seeing this makes me feel not so young as I once was. But that is life. Thanks for sharing.
My friends mom used to work as a manager in Sears. She was lucky that she was near retirement and did retire when they closed the branches in British Columbia. I actually liked going there as a kid. They had a small video game section and I would go through the aisles. Also at the time they had the Jessica Simpson brand and at the time, it was a fairly new brand.
I bought my Microwave (Kenmore) at Sears about 24 years ago. It is still running and used multiple times a day. At my elderly parents' home, I think we have gone through (as I always buy them a new one when it breaks) 5 microwaves during that same time. - A bit more innovative management and they could have been Walmart or Amazon.
And that’s why they’re bankrupt. While you bought 1 microwave every 24 years someone else is buying one every 5 years because that manufacturer is shittier
I retired from Kmart after it acquired Sears. You did an excellent job making this video, and I got depressed seeing how the business has gone to Hell. I couldn’t bear to watch the entire video, but thanks for your great work.
Customer: "but how do I get back down to the first floor if I go up the escalator?" Employee: "there's a disturbing circus clown holding a bunch of balloons who will show you where the creepy back stairwell is, you can't miss him because he'll be chasing you the whole time" 🤣
My wife's grandmother passed away recently and I found a 1940 Sears catalog in great condition. You could buy a wood stove, tractor and new dress. They were truly the Amazon of their day.
So sad. I worked for Sears from 1978 to 1986 first in a free-standing store in St. Davids, PA and then at the King of Prussia Mall. It was my first real job and I enjoyed it. It helped pay my way through college and then as a second job.
I remember that store in saint daviids. I met richard nixon in the store in the early seventies. He was a nice man, and the store was nice to and spacious and well stock. It had plenty of people in there.
I worked at the Sears catalog in the Sears at Columbia Mall in Maryland. The place was badly run on a skeleton staff and this was about 1982! The year that the wish book featured the cabbage patch kids on the cover. Then Coleco shorted Sears Roebuck on the dolls that Christmas. I had to tell parents on Xmas eve that there were no dolls to be had. I am sad to see this happen but truly, I expected this back in the 80's.
I was supposed to get a cabbage patch kid from that sears in 82 .I ended up with a handmade version and a real coleco version sometime in 83 by then all I cared about was gijoe.
I live near the last location toured in the video, i's been in disrepair for the last couple of years. I still remember walking into the store simply out of boredom with some friends, and the outside music completely stopping. It was almost like entering another dimension. We have a few other big department stores (Macys, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth, and Bloomingdale's). Since it's a more "upscale" mall, I don't know if they're looking for a replacement or what, but it is definitely completely different from the rest of the mall. It's wild watching it still stand while, for example, our Amazon store lasted only a year to a year and a half.
This makes me very said. Sears was my 80 year old father's favorite store. I could never go wrong buying him a gift card from the store year birthday and christmas.
Yeah.....My grampa was pretty much a self-taught engineer, and his tools, lawn mower, and home appliances all came from Sears. I literally live 10 minutes from a farmhouse ordered from a Sears/Roebuck catalog.
I took advantage of my local sears closing. By the time it actually closed, I had ended up setting up an entire wood shop in my garage for 30% of the price. Sad to see but glad they still live on in my garage.
Yeah we have a dying department store called house of Fraser in the UK. They sell furniture with massive discounts so im thinking of just getting stuff for my new place there
Sears is still a thing in my country. There are 3 standalone stores from what i know. I dont know if they franchised them or sold the rights of name and brand, but outside the US its still going I have nostalgia with it because a trip to a Sears in Chicago with my mom usually meant a good time in my childhood
There was a time when a complete kit to build a house was available from Sears. I had the pleasure of touring one a few years ago. Seems like I read that the more recent management when Sears was still strong was pitched to go online with sales but management had no vision for the future. We are all a little worse off for it. Their inventory wasn't particularly high end but it was solid quality that most everyone could afford whether clothes, furniture, appliances, (very good) tools or kitchen goods.
I grew up in the 70's/80's ...the mall was always the epicenter of social activity...We met friends there, shopped for the latest trends, found very unique stores, spend a long time in the book stores to find the perfect one, and made it a complete Friday evening by later going to a movie that was in the Mall...Today is sad...malls are closed, kids only talk to each other by text, and everything is bought online while you wear your underwear...There is no community...no excitement...no interaction...just sadness
And everyone is more hostile. Everyone needs to be on a side whether it be racial, political, sexual to divide us thanks to media and corporate America. Human life has been devalued and soft on crime policies are incentivizing violence further destroying people's quality of life.
You need to go outside. People still go to malls and interact all the time. Just because you didn’t have texting back then in the 1920s doesn’t make it the end of the world.
2:20 It is actually the opposite. Sears used to be considered a flag ship store. Flag ship stores brought customers to the shopping mall, not the other way around. Amazon was the driving factor behind malls closing, but Sears didnt help.
I remember going to Sears with my mom when I was little. They had a candy stand in the downstairs area. And of course we couldn’t wait for the Sears Wish Book to come every Christmas!
It's all terribly sad for somebody who grew up in the 70s and 80s. I'd spend months looking through the Christmas catalog as a kid. I remember they even got Tony Dorsett to pose for their section carrying NFL licensed gear. And I can't begin to tell you how much of that gear I saw in elementary school on other kids especially coats, hats and gloves. My grandfather had power tools he bought in the 50s and 60s from Craftsman that he was still using in the 80s. My grandmother had a Kenmoore washer and dryer set and so did my mom. To think that all of that disappeared it must be like watching the end of reliable transcontinental passenger rail service for my parent's and grandparent's generation.
We bought all new Kenmore appliances in 2010. Finally had to replace the fridge last year. We had a Kenmore washer and dryer for 25 years before we replaced them with new Kenmores a number of years ago.
They sank like the titanic in Canada about 10 years ago. I remember they were the store to go to. Including Sears Auto Centres, in the 90's they started heading south in customer service, Contracting out, Then in Calgary in the 2000's there was a scandal with Sears Auto Centre, a W5 hidden camera story about a car that was taken into Sears in Calgary, all the car needed was a battery cable needed tightening up, the mechanic ended up replacing the front suspension, new battery at more than $1200.00 cost. The car was inspected and came out in worse shape than it went in, and all it needed was the battery cable tightened up. Then they got find by the government for a tire sale, saying 40% off, when actually you were only saving $4.00 a tire. They ended up selling of the Auto Centre to Cal Tire. Mike Myers [Dr. Evil] did a commercial for Sears Canada in the mid 2000's. His brother worked for Sears for 30+ years so he did a commercial for them. It was funny.
I feel even worse about losing Sears knowing the company was eviscerated by the greed of (I think) one man. Maybe the company was destined to fail by that point anyway and he just accelerated the decline by cashing out when there was still something left, or maybe he caused the decline, but it's sad either way.
Its one thing to have a company go down fighting but the owner intentionally gutted the company. The same thing happened to Toys R Us. Its like the scene in Goodfellas when Paulie becomes a partner to that restaurant
Man, this makes me feel sad. I loved going to Sears. It was such a great store back in the day. Sadly we lost ours a few years back. The building remains, but the mall it was attached to was demolished some time around 2010. It's unreal seeing the interiors of those other stores and how similar they were to the one I frequented. Bet those white floor tiles are still in place. Hard to believe a retail giant like Sears was unable to adapt with the times and maintain its status at the top.
That is odd because I worked at a mall where my store is the only building standing, and the Sears and JC Pennys were all demolished, including the whole mall sub- buildings. My store had a TV, and electronics department that outsold both JC Penny and Sears combined. I mean, I was making a lot of overtime loading big TV sets into little Hondas, Toyotas, and small four door cars that you would see at the Circus, and the Clowns would all come running out of. Those TV salesmen made all the money, and I got nothing but the headaches telling customers their twenty seven inch TV would not fit through the door frame, or trunk for that matter. Nobody ever wanted to have their items delivered for $20 back in the 80s. You really learned a lot about people who refused to accept something so logical. You can't put a square peg in a round hole. That is what is was really about. An IQ test that most would fail, and the result was an angry customer who could not be reasoned with, and go off huffing and puffing, and sometimes going to the HR office to complain about how badly you behaved, and all you did was tell them a big square box could not go through the door frame, or fit into the trunk. It was a total nightmare job at times.
Ugh, that is maddening to hear people react with such cluelessness. I don't envy your experience. I once worked for a garden supply warehouse, and we'd get customers who wanted an entire pallet of potting soil in the back of their mini truck. The suspension was totally squashed, yet they didn't seem to think it a problem. Yikes. But yeah, apparently our Sears was built before the mall, and was still in operation even after the mall was taken down. It struggled on for another few years until finally shuttering for good. @@tomodonovan5931
I'm amazed that they still have a handful of stores left! I thought that brick & mortar store's were completely gone. I personally like the old style check-out computer to match the Sears nostalgia. Thanks for the memories, as soon that's all they will be. Have a great day!! Illinois, USA
i worked for spirit Halloween and obviously we take over abandon buildings, and too think one of our store's was once a thriving sears is a run down building, is insane
My first job in high school was working at a Sears. From '98-00. I actually used that beige POS terminal during my time there. A lot of interesting memories of those days.
@@brando8086 It wasn't a bad after school part time job. Hence why I stayed so long. Also I really liked the people I worked with and it made the shifts go by fast. I only quit because one day after the holidays the men's department was left a mess and I was the only one working. I didn't have time to clean up and said I would come in a bit early the next day to pick up. I got in and the manager was mad about the mess and threatened to write me up. So I said screw it as I wasn't being appreciated for the hard work I had done the day before. I quit on the spot after that.
I was at Southcenter mall south of Seattle recently and walked by the Sears and thought “Didn’t they go out of business?” This video makes me want to go in and see what’s going on in there. Southcenter is hopping. I grew up with Sears, but the last time I bought anything there was in the 1990s. It’s sad to see these staples of my childhood go the way of the dodo, but survival of the fittest applies to businesses as well.
My dad worked at a Southern California Sears as a salesman in the automotive department in the 70s. He earned 6% commission on his sales PLUS a base amount per week. Often he came home with the princely sum of $400 a week. That bought a lot of groceries 50 years ago. Us kids wore Toughskins jeans (Sears brand) because they were guaranteed not to wear out in the knees (guess who found a way to wear out the knees?) so they'd be replaced for free. Our tools were Craftsman, our washer and dryer were Kenmore, and of course the car had Roadhandler tires. We were a Sears family. Even my grandmother (Mom's mom) worked at another Sears as customer service. I remember going to that Sears with Mom to purchase my first Girl Scout uniform. Many years ago husband and I went to a Sears for something or other and were extremely disappointed with the travesty the place had become. The employees were on the phone, and ignored us. When we did get one's attention, and asked a question, we were basically blown off. Then one day we heard about Sears selling off their iconic brands. That's when we knew it was only a matter of time.
Sears must Re-brand the stores into Tools -Home Services like Installation, repair & guarantees of equipment , and ditch everyting else ( maybe keep the work clothes , gloves and Working accesories ) , with this move , I think Sears can outlive their current status
My first job after college was with Sears, in the IT department. They had a resurgence with their "softer side of Sears" campaign. It's astonishing to see what the once mighty company has become.
That old cash register brought me fond memories. The little curved part under and behind the receipt printer is where all my dodgy checks would go. Good times.
This is all so hard to believe. Growing up on the north side of Santa Barbara CA I rolled past the front doors of the Sears lower deck at their La Cumbre Plaza location, to and from school on my bike daily, circa late 70's. The place was always jamming with customers, as I got routinely scolded by the security guy to walk my bike through the mall. Seeing these pics of the general traffic through and around the 3 Sears' you visited blows me away. I hardly call any of that well-trafficked; they all look completely dead to me. The La Cumbre Plaza Sears is now converted into an apartment complex or some such thing, I hear tell. I've long since moved away, so I'm going on hearsay with that one. It is remarkable how the department store and shopping mall culture of decades past has been all but completely gutted. Thanks for the informative stroll down memory lane.
I remember my parents taking me to one in seattle in the early 90s, and playing a NES version of Tiny Toon Adventures on a demo Kiosk. It was awesome, and I even got to use some naughty words to impress some of the older kids hanging around. THANK YOU SEARS
The Palm Beach Gardens Sears has an insanely long lease on that spot. They’ve been locked in a war with the mall itself for years. The Gardens Mall has accumulated a lot of high-end stores (Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tiffany) and would LOVE for Sears to pack its bags and go. Sears, in turn, wanted to sublease one of its floors to Dick’s Sporting Goods. The mall did everything in its power to put a stop to that. After years of litigation, which is still ongoing, Dick’s finally pulled out, and Sears is still trucking along. The case is set for trial in August 2024.
So many appliances in our house (still operating today) came from Sears. Previous owners in the 1980s went to Sears & Roebuck for our bathroom sinks, toilets, showers, cabinetry, kitchen sink, oven/range & hood, washing machine, clothes dryer (all Kenmore brand). Took out a loan with Sears to remodel the kitchen. Even the roof was replaced by Sears in 1975. They left all the manuals, receipts, and warranty info.
7:15 Back in 2004 I was working for IBM and personally performed the POS refreshes for two of the local Sears stores (now long since gone). The terminals have been cosmetically the same on the outside since the 1990s. The only thing that's ever changed out is the middle computer unit itself, keeping everything above and below it unless there's a component that fails (which is usually the receipt printer). But even then, the motherboards and hard drives are themselves usually refurbished and probably not much better than a Pentium III. Two factors are at work here keeping this old stuff in place: 1. The counters themselves dictate the shape and placement of the terminals. Sears wouldn't be able to maintain its rigid aesthetic without incurring additional costs (which they could never afford when they were going down the tubes); 2. The backend controller in each store is even more of a legacy beast, dating back to the 1970's. So all that's really needed up front at the registers is a terminal program with a minimal GUI to direct the clerk to different modes. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the POS's running in these last few stores have been refreshed any time in the last decade.
Went to one a few years ago, exchanged a few broken tools, and bought some more tools. The selection was starting to suffer but was still decent and you could tell it was still keeping useful to the public. Sad they missed the internet changeover from mailorder>mall>online progression.
The old computer thing: it usually is easier to keep what is working instead of migrating all databases on new software. Years of databases! There were government computers running DOS until very recently for this very reason.
Government can be really slow to upgrade. Working for a real estate listing company in the early 2000s we would still receive data on massive reel-to-reel tapes from some counties. Had to maintain this ancient machine just to read the data. I left in 2002 and it was still that way; for all I know it STILL is.
@@NUTZJ98 Oh I am talking about this specific brick and mortar store's databases: Just because a Sears you know converted their data with years of invoices, receipts and accounting, doesn't mean this specific one did... They might even run a mix when having part of data, say, HR, on new systems, while keeping old invoices in some ancient format. Imagine any big organization with a huge archive, for example BBC: just because one of their offices already digitized decades, maybe centuries of archives, doesn't mean all of them did, at least not at the same time. It's usually both the cost and the hassle to have everyone drop what they're doing and spending weeks moving old stuff without getting any real immediate benefit from that.
I assume every generation gets to mourn that passing of aspects of their childhood. Usually, the next generation gets its own thing, and you have to accept the fact that you cannot live vicariously through your kids. But I see my own kids as being a bit deprived not really having a replacement to malls, record stores, arcades, etc, as places to hang out with friends in person. I always imagined I'd take my kids to places like that, as my parents did for me. But everything is online or takeaway. And of course that's what's killing Sears, etc. I can't even take my kids out to a nice pizza parlour as a treat. And it does leave me feeling a bit mournful.
I was a kid/teenager in the 80s and you could see the corporate crackdown on being a place to hangout start to form. We spent our money there, but that wasn't good enough.
The local pizza parlor in my hometown closed sometime in the past few years. Fun memories of going there with my brother's baseball team and playing in the little arcade. It's sad that there is almost nothing that lasts long enough for traditions to span generations. Things just come and go.
Sears was America's original national retailer when towns were small and manufacturers couldn't afford to do sales and support. Sears did that by rebranding manufacturer's products with names like Kenmore and Craftsman. When the products broke Sears would also do the service. But during the 1980s branding became important and Sears' business model fell apart. People wanted name brands like Sony, not products rebranded with Sears' names. Now most products like appliances are garbage made in Asia. When they break they are thrown away and replaced instead of repaired. So Sears' advantage of providing service and support no longer mattered.
This is why Jason Graves is one of the best retro gaming channel, Because he’ll go the extra mile to even take you all the way down to Miami to one of the other last Sears left in America! MAN THE NOSTALGIA! Remembering shopping there all the TVs in the west side of the store with all the display cases of the gaming section with random games scattered abroad in there of everything from SNES to PS2 and huge power tool selection of Craftmens Tools to the crappie Hobi Lawnmovers that sound like dying cats
There's a sears where I used to live not so along. I'm from a small town called "coatzacoalcos" in veracruz, México, there's a sears there, I didn't knew they were so rare until now lol.
I worked at Sears in 2018, and we definitely used those old pos systems, they had the worst "touch" screens imaginable that you basically had to punch for it to read your finger and they were very slow.
When I would go to my grandmother's house in the 1970s she had a Sears fence that went around the property, not sure how long it was there because it already looked old in the 70s, I went by the house in 2008 and the fence was still there.
The Coral Gables and (formerly) Cutler Ridge Sears were two of my favorite stores to shop at as a kid. Also spent some time at the Northside Mall Sears, but don't remember much.
Our SEARS closed about 3 years ago. During that final year I'd occasionally walk around it while listening to vaporwave and mallsoft tunes. It was an experience, I miss it.
I learned MS-DOS at a Sears (when they sold early 386/486 computers) and played one of the first Super Nintendo's at a Sears. It's sad to think it all fell apart in such a short period of time.
