Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire self destruction through poor management

That's been a standard tactic of Sears for a long time. I worked for them at the auto center from 1986-89 when I was in college. They'd go after someone when they were about two years from retirement, they'd do everything they could to find a BS reason to fire him or force them to quit so they'd get off the hook for the pension.

It's simple make or sell a good product and people buy it
Appliance that were Kenmore, lawn mowers, craftsman tools etc. all turned to junk it's that simple sell crap and you go out of business

You are right , however their trying to get into the Chinee tool market against established competition did not help them. They would have been better off to drop their line of tools entirely.

Mike

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.

My grandfather, who died in '90 did all his business at Sears.

From tires to tools to suits to appliances.

All his woodworking tools came from there also.


My how the times have changed.

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

RC,
I hope you're having a fine day there and that the family and llamas are all happy and well fed.

The "hedge fund manager" is the issue with Sears.

For a similar selling off of assets to cover debt, look into what happened to the Pacific Lumber Company. Hostile takeover of a successful business, then it ended in bankruptcy after pillaging assets (not real estate in this case, but timber)

Profit drives our economy and sometimes takes its toll in ways we don't like.

I liked Sears for the convenience. Sure Snap-On tools are great, but need something on a weekend or break a socket, Head to Sears, as you can't just get the Snap-On truck there on a phone call. And as others have mentioned, their Kenmore stuff was nothing to sneeze at, their "Roadhandler" tires were private labeled Michelins or Bridgestones (as I recall being told), I bought many a pair of quality leather work shoes there, and so on.

Sure will be different without them.

Geno

Now that Playboy is outta the nekkid girls bidniz, mebee Sears could take up the slack. The trip to the outhouse would never be the same.

If they go down, I wonder how long their online parts store will stay open. I have a lot of older Craftsman stuff and I buy parts from them on occasion. They're not the cheapest but I sure can't fault their service.

Five months ago we opened a sears credit card and bought a queen size name brand mattress. It came with a 90 day comfort exchange if we didn't like it. We didn't like it. Called for an exchange. when they came to pick up our mattress we found 7 large staple wires protruding from the side about an inch. It then became a warranty issue but they were going to leave the new mattress and take away the bad one, except they brought a twin not a queen. They wanted to take both back to the warehouse but we told them we were to old to sleep on the floor for the three weeks it would take to get the right mattress. Three weeks later after at least a dozen calls to Sears explaining to different customer service(?) reps who could not transfer us to a manager but promised us they could handle the problem only to find the did not have the authority to do anything, they were to bring the right mattress. Only problem was they dropped it in the mud and it was still a twin not a queen. Another four weeks goes by with no mattress and many hours spent on the phone with customer service (???) reps not being able to connect us with a manager and not being able to help us when a manager calls my wife. She got an earful. We got our money back since we had already paid off the credit card. We went out that day and bought from another store who delivered our mattress in two days.

Sears going under, I wonder why. I know we will never buy there again. Once great line of tools they stood behind is now a bunch of China made crap. Customer service is a joke. They are getting what they deserve.

Yeah, but who needs a catalog nowadays. Even in rural areas cell phone coverage is getting so good and folks are always using their phones in the head, everyone will switch to "video" on the little screen!

Geno

Divested myself of all remaining Sears power tools many years ago. Their practice of making it a hassle for outside repair shops and individuals to buy parts while charging exorbitant prices for their service was a deal killer for me. And that was before other brands surpassed their quality by leaps and bounds.

Retail giants of old travel thin ice when they take customers for granted. How they treat their employees can be an advance indicator. Bad management has many faces. JC Pennys isn't far behind.

My employer isn't in retail, but it suffers from the same disease. Retirement is looking better every day.

I still have all my old sears craftsman woodworking tools.

Planer joiner.
Belt disk sander.
Router table.
400 pound table saw.
Radial arm saw.

Plus a bunch of old power and hand tools.

They lost any new business with me long ago. If it ain't cast iron precision equipment or quality to match the old stuff I'm outta there.

Going down the tubes?
Good!
They deserve it.

I think I've visited our local Sears at best a handful of times in the past decade. Every time I left with the sense their staff was painfully incompetent.

Despite everyone's glee at watching a fine old store go down the tubes, it will be a shame to see it go.

I still have the Craftsman dial calipers my father bought me for Christmas in 1981, it's still going strong and is the only caliper I've ever needed. Same same with some older Crafstman socket sets and hand tools.

Always liked their straight forward grading system - Our "good" something, our "better" something and our "best" whatever. Made it pretty easy to do a comparison of quality/price for whatever level of stuff one needed.


Guessing that management needs to close those stores and cheapen their products to make sure their salaries, perks and bennies remain undisturbed. Someone at the C level will get a very big year end bonus for this as well.

I ain't happy seeing it go down.
But after what they've done I won't lament it either.

I will miss it, however.

Yeah.. used to be able to buy anything through Sears catalogs.

They must have sold bathrooms on a different page.

Kmart was a failed company with access to credit. They used that credit to buy a successful company, Sears.

Kmart was tone deaf to their customer's desires and clueless about technologies like point-of-sale/bar codes.

The colossal incompetence and hubris of Kmart management tanked Sears as well.

Kmart should have been allowed to die, just like the TBTF banks should have been parted out in a rational, controlled way.

Prob still had out houses in those days.