SEARS The Original Amazon

When I was a child, six or seven I loved to leaf through the SEARS catalog and dream about being a farmer or mechanic. The specialty catalogs were even better, they went to great detail on farm equipment or tools, and a dozen other categories. Today the SEARS Holding Corporation is real estate rich and cash flow poor. How did such a marketing, retailing leader, and behemoth commit suicide?

Why didn't it adapt sooner?

What drove the board to eschew the emerging trends of ecommerce? What prevented them from utilizing its vast distribution network and capacity to beat Amazon at the new etailing game?

Bezos is still losing money and carries huge debt, if it wasn't for AWS it might even have failed by now. SEARS is not profitable, its' recent fire sale of the Craftsman brand is sad, the 900 million dollars buys them a few months of burn. There is no return from this spiral, it's over the cliff and will fall to the bottom of the crevasse.

There is no happy ending. Perhaps ten years ago if the senior management of SEARS in a fit of pique decided to radically change everything, but change while constant is resisted by most.

If the shareholders revolt and demand a value preservation plan immediately the SEARS board should re-purpose its real estate into condos, industrial, or office space while it can. If it did it for every piece of its real estate it might have enough to stay in retailing but as an online entity. But if it stays in the brick and mortar retail space it better out hustle Amazon through mortgaging its assets, tech, and vendor relationships. If it raises 10 billion and reissues the digital SEARS catalog of 1968 offering live chicks to kit houses then it might reinvent itself and survive. I am skeptical.