I don't think tool sales was/is the made or break of Sears.
No, it was trying to sell women's clothing and curtains. Remember the "softer side of Sears" campaign?
Core competency is a concept accountants just can't grasp. You can't run a business without numbers, and you can't run a business by the numbers. As long as accountants are in charge, a business will decline.
Women's clothing was in Sears from the beginning. The original catalogs had about everything you could imagine, including clothing. A country person could easily get by if he had to buy everything he owned from Sears.
When this area was settled in the early 1900's, a lot of the houses built were Sears kits. They were quality houses and many are still standing.
I remember the Sears catalog being thicker than our phone book in a town of 32,000 when I was a little kid.
And it was printed on what seemed like tissue paper. Yes, there was a reason for that.
When the family was done ordering, the catalog went to the outhouse for "re-use".
(reduce, re-use, recycle is NOT a new concept!)
Geno
