This is such an amazing service... I found out from MyHeritage that my great grandparents had lied to my grandma for essentially her entire life about where she was born. They "lost" her birth certificate and this was back in the 1920s, so records getting lost wasn't that unheard of, so her "duplicate" was essentially the state issuing a new one on the basis of "dude trust me" and got it issued to say that she was born in Brooklyn. Well, digging through MyHeritage to find the immigration records for my great grandparents, I kept getting frustrated, because I knew that they had to have come across before my grandma was born... well, nope, they came across when she was less than a year old, the records from Ellis Island very clearly indicates that it was a family of three who immigrated, my great grandfather, my great grandmother, and my grandma. Her place of birth that was listed on the Ellis Island records was Glasgow. So, if Scotland ever gets its independence and makes the same deal that Ireland has done of giving automatic citizenship to anyone who can prove that their grandparents were born in the country, I'll be slapping on my kilt and packing my bags for the highlands.
I said that for years. Sears already had stores like everywhere that could have been used for 'shop to store' or 'store pickup'. Plus returns would have been super easy - take it to your local Sears.
Sears WAS Amazon. The Sears catalog transformed commerce over a century ago. And when the Sears catalog should have transformed to the Internet, they were too late since they were trying to protect the stores.
Yea they could have used all the meta data they had from the catalog data and put it in their ecommerance business before Amazon took hold. Instead they just trashed it all.
They definitely were the Amazon of their time, especially in the late 19th and 20th century, they just failed due to the fact they didn’t modernize their stores, equipment, or including a good online store, as well as their parent company, who also owned Kmart, which also failed due to similar reasons.
This one hits hard. My dad got his tools at Sears. All of our appliances were from Sears. Our furniture was from Sears. Car service and tires were from Sears. My clothes were from Sears. Oh and the Wish Book! I spent hours and hours every year going through the toys, circling what I wanted for Christmas. 🎄🎁 I never imagined Sears would be gone, but it is. Sad consider Pennys is still clinging to life.
I’m a young man; Pennys was my first job in high school, though only the old man in the kitchen appliances section called it that by the time I was hired.
@@DiamondKingStudios The Adam Walsh Tragedy KILLED SEARS in my opinion. His Sad and Tragic Abduction and Murder by Ottis Toole at the Hollywood/Miami SEARS store turned into a PR Nightmare, and ironically 1981 turned out to be the FINAL Year where SEARS was in Black. They Soon saw Profits and Store Sales and Revenue SINK. People also mostly quit going to SEARS with their children because they were so traumatized and bothered by the Case, SEARS did very little to combat Fears that Children would be snatched and lost forever inside SEARS stores, until 1983 when they saw TWO straight Years of Sales Declines and sinking profits, that's when SEARS Panicked and Ran to Congress to find a Way to create a Ecosystem for Stores that prevented Lost Children from being lost or Kidnapped, this led to the Create of "Code Adam". By 1984, SEARS had finally begin to recover financially and were successfully able to put the PR Nightmare of Adam Walsh behind them, but the damage had already been done. The Large Warchest SEARS Roebuck had gradually vanished throughout the 80s and Turnover Rates for Employees Ballooned. By the Early 90s, Sears Roebuck was in Red. They were falling, but got lucky in the mid 90s and had a brief recovery and come back, but in 1999, they started Falling again, but even HARDER. From the Turn of Millennium, it was Downhill for them at the point, which they NEVER recovered. By 2005, SEARS was NO longer turning a Profit and Kmart soon became the Anchor Dragging everyone down into the Ocean.
I worked for Sears, I saw what happened from the inside of the company. They hired a CEO that only had experience as a hedge fund manager. As soon as he got in, he started liquidating every bit of the company, selling the Craftsman name to Chinese manufacturers, closing stores, everything he could do to milk every cent out of the company before destroying it. The moment they put him in the position of ceo, that was the final nail in the coffin. And this was in 2016 if my memory serves me correctly
@@digitalphoenix72 fun fact … Eddie Lampert and Steve Mnuchin (who was appointed Secretary of Treasury and given $400 billion in cares act money to distribute to companies during Covid restrictions) were college roommates. As George Carlin said about these MFers “it’s a big club and you (the populace) are not in it”. No doubt when Mnuchin handed out billions, strings were attached.
I also worked at Sears as a service technician for almost 10 years starting in 2004, and I agree, you could literally see the company going downhill. It made no sense, because the company had generations of brand loyalty that held Sears high as a company. I worked with people that came from Montgomery Wards, and even they said that Montgomery Wards naturally declined, while the downfall of Sears was like it was purposely tanked.
@@Insane-Howl-Cowloh god that’s where I saw it too! Because I live in Florida they played that ad nearly the entire year since we need a/c at all times.
I am just over 40 now so I think this is early 90s. One time my dad made me go in with him to replace a Craftsman socket I had broken. Honestly I had been mistreating the socket when it broke. I had ground down an extension and had it chucked up in an old corded impact style drill. Might have been a masonry drill. I was using it to try to turn over a lawn mower I found in someone's trash. I released all the smoke from the drill and cracked the socket. My dad beat me as per usual. Making me explain to the sears guy was part of my punishment I am certain. Pretty sure the dude saw my situation and went well beyond the warranty. He gave my dad his new replacement socket and then went through some boxes and worked me up a pretty dang decent tool kit from old display model stuff. He told my dad it was a thing they did for future customers. He put it all in a dented but functional tool box and gave it to me. Dude gave me my childhood of taking stuff apart and putting stuff together.
My Dad was also a jerk who habitually humiliated his kids. That type of person develops bad health problems and so he died a painful death from prostate cancer. Moral of the story: be good and kind to your loved ones.
My brother owns a house that was ordered from Sears Roebuck and shipped, disassembled, in a box car. My grandfather helped haul the parts by horse drawn wagon. My brother found all this out when he was working in the attic and saw the markings for assembly.
I talked to a former Sears store manager. I asked if I was wrong in thinking that since Sears was the original "Amazon," they should have bought Amazon. He agreed that yes, they should have returned to their roots.
My grandfather was a repairman for Sears. Back in the 50's, he would 😢 all over new york and New Jersey to repair their products until he retired in the 90's. when he heard that sears was officially kaput in 2019, He lost his insurance policy as a retiree with along with any other bonuses he worked for.
I was rewatching your Kmart video when this one dropped. I love the personality you inject into these videos. Can you do Montgomery Wards at some point?
This. Especially since Montgomery Ward was SEARS main Competitor for 100 years. FYI, Montgomery Ward was about 20 years older than SEARS. Having started in 1873.
@@JohnZombi88 Hey, John! Thanks for crawling out of your grandparents basement for a rare showing. Perhaps you could put such enthusiasm into finding an actual girl but I mean, you can't. Not to worry though, bruh. I'm sure you survive on pornhub, chip fingers and xbox just fine, don't ya?
My parents bought a Kenmore over-the-range Microwave oven that died a couple years ago and since we can't return it to Sears (ours closed in 2018) we've been using it as a snack cupboard.
I have a Kenmore dishwasher. It still works fine, but I'll never get back the $200 I paid Sears for the extended warranty right before they shut down in Canada.
@@IAmMisterTterevel If you can find a good appliance repair shop, or a good Electronics repair shop, there is a very high chance they can fix it. They all work the same way. Also-WARNING- If you decide to junk it, you can't dump it in the garbage bin or dumpster. EVERY Microwave oven has one deadly toxic component. It is usually marked or painted with pink or purple marks. Inside that module is Beryllium. A VERY, VERY LETHAL CHEMICAL. If that module gets cracked open, The Beryllium can blow all over and contaminate EVERYBODY! Take the oven to a hazardous waste or "e-waste" facility. Most (not all). Microwave oven repairs are often not very difficult. The failed part is usually an electric fuse, a thermal fuse (possibly 2 of them). The switches are often common failure items. If you spend 1. to. 2. hours on the web you can probably learn enough to be successful in fixing your unit. You might also find a schematic diagram taped inside the housing. Or on the web. Make SURE the big capacitor is discharged before you do anything else. Actually. The power plug should be pulled from the wall. Watch a TH-cam to learn how to discharge the big size capacitor. The only dangerous part is the klystron. This has the Beryllium in it. Stay AWAY from it. Good Luck. Start with Wikipedia. Thank You Douglas Lee - Electronic Design Engineer Minneapolis. Minnesota Phone. ,612 206 0123
The main reason why Sears survived here in Mexico is because, unlike in the US, malls ("plazas") aren't dead here. There are new plazas being built all the time which are always pretty busy, keeping companies like Sears and RadioShack alive.
Also because Mexico has lower costs of living vs. the US and Mexico is full of Mexicans sharing a common culture and bond. America used to have that before 1965 but now we are a multi-culti, low-trust, high cost of living, dystopia.
I’m calling bs on this one. I’ve probably been to over 20 malls just on the east coast of the United States alone, and only two of those malls were completely dead.
“Eddie and the people working with him were all just idiots.” As a former employee of Kmart (pre-Sears) and the later abomination that was Sears Holdings Corporation that may be the most charitable thing anyone can say about that whole debacle of a merger.
My nana worked at Sears until around 2016. She was in her late 80s. She has since passed but I live in a small area, and tear up when I meet random people who remember her there from years of service. To her, Sears was the quintessential American retailer. I'm glad she didn't see her store get turned into an urgent care and then a spirit halloween
I wish I could go up in the attic and find one of those old Sears Christmas catalogs just for the memories. Actually Sears had one thing going for them that no other store seemed to have and that was that Sears would also come out and repair appliances that they sold, and for years my parents kept warranties for stoves, refrigerators and ovens, and we always took the lawnmower to be serviced every summer. Good memories.
You missed the part where the final management strategy was to have their own stores compete with each other for resources. Basically, they divied up money in the opposite way they should have and thus became a money sink...instead of trying to help underperforming stores make more money, they gave the money to the stores that were doing fine. This was in the 2000's, so no Amazon didn't sink them. They didn't help, that's for sure, but internal management of this type is no way to run a store. It's the old story about the guy who studied the planes that didn't get shot down in ww2. Everyone else did the Sears thing which was suggest that they armor up the spots that are covered in bullets instead of noticing that the planes that came back weren't shot in certain places and THOSE are the places you add the extra armor.
What I'm notice killed ALOT of these businesses are what I wouldn't say was bad leadership or anything like that but the 1919 ruling of Dodge V Ford, where essentially it came to an idea that The people, the business and ethics were not a priority and that the bottom line had to be meeting expectations of shareholders and ensuring that it was a profitable prospect for them, rather than the common consumer.
Well, they do have a fiduciary responsibility. How would you feel if you gave me your money and I used it without regard to the fact that you expected a return on your investment? And, if I do do that, what are the chances others are going to do the same and give me their money when other companies will do what is best for a return on their investment?
As an 80s bay and a Chicago native Sears was a magical place in the early to mid 80s. As they fell off ironically my family started shopping at K-Mart until they too fell off.
I fondly remember Montgomery Ward. They were Half Assed when compared to Sears. The Ironic thing is that MW is even older than SEARS. They started in 1873.
Sears, kmart, ames, Montgomery ward in that order when I was a kid. We also had 2 grocery stores in my little town. The grocery stores are long gone but we have a black and yellow store.
When I was a kid in the 1970s, we had Woolworths, Newberry, and JC Penney in addition to Sears and Montgomery Ward. Only Penney is still around, and they've seen better days.
As a Mexican I can confirm that while shopping online is a thing and is growing quickly, people still like to go outside and watch what they're about to buy in person. This specially applies to furniture, appliances, and big consumer electronics like TVs and audio systems, it's RARE when people buy those online. This is anecdotal of course but I used to work on a medium size regional department store and clients generally didn't choose shipping even when it was free or charge, people wanted to buy what they desired and leave the store with said product on the same day even if they had to pay for a third party shipping service (generally just s guy with a big truck lol).
Sears is the real-life Jedi Order. Complacency and hubris, often the most powerful organizations end up eating themselves into starvation dying from the inside out.
I love the amount of information that you include in these as well as the humorous bits, makes it easy for me and probably many others to retain and enjoy listening to and watching, please keep up this good combo and good work
I live in Stockton and I can’t believe the local Sears store stayed open as long as it did. I think the last time I went in there to buy something was maybe 5 years ago and it was around Christmas time and it was practically empty in there.
They're still out there. You just got to buy one already built. They are surprisingly well put together. I live outside Pittsburgh and I work on those homes from time to time.
I worked for Sears Automotive for several years. Several SA locations operated nearly independently of the main stores and were strong earners even when the main stores had weak periods. But they got in trouble over issues relating to internal and external promotions forced on them, fraud and even BBB traps. It was severely restructured and began to have difficulties. I left after they started dropping hours of experienced staff and bringing in low paid and inexperienced people, which further degraded both customer service and employee livelyhood. This was just a few years before the company started the steep decline.
I did a full documentary of my local Sears and even did some abandoned exploration on it also. My Sears was a stand alone big box store from 1960 and served generations. It's now demolished.
Okay - I was belly laughing with the streetcar defense - I stumbled across your videos with a bunch of your train videos, and really like the retail history you've been doing.
It's not brutal, but more like a slow, cumbersome, abysmal and almost somewhat comedic demise. Like they had about 30 years to turn around but somehow they were oblivious to almost everything.
It all begin on Monday July 27,1981 in the Miami suburb of Hollywood,Florida. At the popular SEARS. The Disappearance, Abduction and Horrific Slaying of 6 Year old Broward County Resident, Adam John Walsh. This is what Killed SEARS. This Tragedy, it became a Tumor that very very slowly ate away at SEARS and destroyed them.
Omg, I haven’t thought about Sears Grand in yeeaaarrrss. I remember when they opened the first and largest sears grand near my house. They made such a big deal about it. Now it’s an At Home, Planet Fitness, and Burlington .
In the 1970s my father sold furniture at sears, when Sears sold EVERYTHING, and made enough for my mom to stay at home and raise 3 kids. Our clothes came from Sears, our furniture came from sears and most of it has lasted until today.
Fun fact: Very early on, Sears was the Amazon of it's day. You shopped by a physical catalog, ordered by mail, telegram, or by phone, and then you got your items shipped to you. Now, take that catalog, make it a website? That's Amazon. The more things change, the more you notice life is still the same.
Sears would allow a family to finance large purchase’s like a washer and dryer, they’re prices weren’t bargains but a young family could afford the payments- then everyone started offering financing and it was a race to the bottom…
I remember sears had a policy that if something was mis-priced or had no price tag you would get 10% off. When i asked for my 10% off discount in an item with no price tag the cashier was super annoyed and peoceeyto aegue with me for several minutes until finally putting in the discount. I think it happened to be a manager who was going to get in trouble. Fact is that about 10% of the store had no prices on it.
Never should’ve merged with KMart….Two failing,,flailing walking corpses slowly rotting right in front of all of us….Eddie Lampert is the worst kind of investment banker vampire…bleeding the corpse dry until its just a husk
The defunct mall in The Heights, Houston Texas is getting torn down right now. The Sears sign was the first structure to go. I thought of this channel as I drove past the empty set.
This is why Sears as a whole needs to be sold to another company or even spun off into its own company which either one step terminates the decades long merger with Kmart
Management was out-of-touch by the '90s. They should have purchased or teamed up with an Amazon-type online retailer back in the '90s when they discontinued their famous Wish book.
You wanna know why SEARS spinoff Chains Grand and Essentials failed? Its pretty simple really: These chains would have be awesome and worth getting hyped over IN 1993. Sears Kmart Holdings launched these failed Chain Spinoffs over a DECADE too late.
I live a few miles from one of the last remaining sears locations, it’s pretty weird to see how spaced out everything is due to lack of inventory. The mechanic section out in the parking lock is completely abandoned and that entire section of the mall parking lot is hardly used
The killing of the iconic, once beloved Sears Catalogue in the early 1990's was a symbolic beginning of the end for me. I just couldn't of cared less about Sears after that point. Radio Shack did a similar cheapening down their own Catalogue, at the same time which was a favorite of mine personally. My worst fears for both stores came true.
Speaking of which, I would love to see a Downfall of Radio Shack video! There was one right next to the Kmart that was a mile from my house! (It’s a burrito joint now).
Kmart: " Well our ship is sinking, lets buy another failing ship to suffer with us together as we both go under!" I thought that merger was odd and sad. Bye, bye to both. :(
I have family in Mexico, and while online shopping is definitely a thing, a lot of parts of Mexico are still quite rural. For instance, for major appliances and electronics, if I wanted to buy something, I'd have to go to Puerto Vallarta, which is a couple of hours away from where I have family, and then take it back. Growing up in the US though though the 80's and 90's, this one gave me a bit of nostalgia. We used to get our clothing at Sears and Montgomery Ward, among other stores :P I remember playing with the computer in the men's shoe department to make "custom Florsheim dress shoes."
My uncle used to run the QC lab for Sears, if you have ever seen the "happy man" ads starring Armin Shimmerman, he is mentioned both by name [Pete Menningen] and you can dee him in the lab scene in the back on the right around halfway through. Quark played my uncle in a commercial.
I had to look it up out of morbid curiosity: not only is the Sears that was closest to me growing up, and possibly the one my uncle first started at [79th & Jeffery in Chicago, South-East side] still open, it somehow is a 24-hour location!
I remember flipping through the Wish Book at age 8 (1992?) and seeing an electric guitar… it kind of altered the path of my life. Lol Lampert saw the one thing that was most valuable to Sears, their real estate holdings, and he pounced. And he made a lot of money doing it. I don’t like him.
The tragedy here is that Sears didn’t recognize and build on its single greatest strength - the Kenmore and Craftsman brands. My family used nothing but Sears brands for decades, and so did the families of just about everyone I knew. Fridge frizzled? Drill diminished? Stove smoking? Go to Sears and get another, and it’ll last you 20 years! Sears should have doubled down on the Whirlpool partnership, touting its brand loyalty and reliability in ads. They should have stopped being all things to all people and just put the spotlight on what they did best. Instead, they bought out Kmart, tried to focus on TVs and computers (Hello, Best Buy is RIGHT THERE) and put the noose around their own necks. Now, they’re gone and I have a crappy fridge bought at a big box hardware retailer that shall remain nameless, wishing to God that the old Whirlpool Kenmore was still around.
they where acquired by francisco partners in 2021, their privacy policy states they wont sell or license your genetic data to 3rd parties but francisco partners is a huge tech investment firm so your genetic data will probably be used and sold in some way
The last time I went to Sears, I was buying some shirts for work. There were only a couple of people ahead of me in line, but it took twenty minutes before it was my turn to check out. When I got there I found out why it was taking so long. The cashier immediately started asking me if I wanted to sign up for a credit card. I said no thanks, and she kept asking. After four or five go arounds, I finally had to yell "I don't want it!" to get her to ring up my shirts so I could leave. Never went back.
Sears in the 90s used to have a program where if you bought children's Levi's you could return them for the same size. For a parent if a boy who always got holes in the knees I was able to save so much money on jeans. When they stopped doing that I started shopping elsewhere, so they lost my other business over it, and I had bought a lot of different products until then
yup also complaceny - i bet many in the company were sounding the alarm but the big brass brushed them off "meh we dont need to worry about any new "world wide web" FADs. Go away, Carl. I am busy with my secretary. Close the door on your way out"
@@kneel1 The Adam Walsh Tragedy killed Sears. The Case Haunted the ENTIRE company and in my belief ultimately is what caused their Terminal decline and slow gradual sinking.
@@Tornado1994 Wow, I'd never heard about that before. I had no idea that the guy from AMW had been part of a violent crime and that he was personally invested in crimes being solved.
I used to buy both my jacketd and my tools at the local sears, which only closed in the past 5 years. I'm only 26, but I still saw them fairly popular in the 2000s.
Sears also had a division that developed their store sites and shopping centers called Homart. Homart built many very successful malls, and owned a huge amount of real estate that eventually became more valuable as land that could be redeveloped than as store sites. Sears became a land play in its last days.
Mexico still shopping out : "Since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, Mexico has seen an explosion in the number of shopping malls"
I remember, in the early 2000s driving my Ford Ranger to the Fort Wayne Sears and buying a drill press. They had the best power tool selection around. I still use the drill press.
Sears being bought by K-mart…… that explains a lot actually Sears Management: “bro we’ve done nothing and we’re all out of ideas this ship is sinking fast we’re done for” K-mart: “want 11 Billion dollars? We can apply the K-mart strategy and save it!” Sears: holy shit what??!??!?…. Uhhhh….. Seriously….?? Good luck with that thank you very much pleasure doing business with you! K-mart: what a beautiful acquisition let’s do nothing with it just like always! It’s amazing sometimes how people this stupid end up on top of a multibillion dollar empire
Eddie intended to bankrupt Sears from his first day as CEO. He got the Sears valuable real estate as collateral forfeited when Sears could not pay a loan he made to Sears.
While Sears was struggling at the time they compared to Kmart was in better shape barely mind you since they didn't file for bankruptcy prior to the merger but hard to say that if both stores would still survive if the merger didn't happen.
I knew in 2010 Sears was circling the drain. My mom had paid for a gold standard warranty on an apartment refrigerator.. after a year the freezer stopped working and it took eight calls to their customer service, including one where the “technician” try to stuff a paper towel into the drain pipe, for me to just realize my sick mother had been scammed. this left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth and angered me for years.
I remember one of the last times I went to my local Sears that was in the Fingerlakes Mall. They had some of the oldest computerized cash registers I've even seen. No icons, just plain white/blue text on a black screen. Cashing out always took F O R E V E R. The spot where Sears used to be went from being an RV dealership, to the spot where Spirit Halloween pops in during the Halloween season.
Sears Canada still did the catalogue in the 90s. I was born in 1994 and I remember being 3-4 years old and going through the Christmas catalogue to circle toys I wanted for Christmas.
My aunt worked at Sears for years selling appliances. She had gotten it as her "first job" while still in high school AND at the time the store was just opening and looking for work! She worked there her whole life. She bought the appliances that were put in our house when the house was built. We also bought all of our tools and lawn equipment from there and it was one of the places we most frequently bought clothes (right up there with J.C Penny's at the same mall). My aunt retired in 2012 but HAD BEEN critical of Lampert and some of the things the company was doing in those last years. Yes, she lost her retirement pension when Lampert got rid of them. As for the store, it closed in 2017, and a few years later in 2021, the whole mall closed!...
Reminds us of Ames Department Stores closing up shop over mismanagement that affected the company, acquisions of failing enterprises and the 2002 Chapter 7 Bankruptcy
Amazon literally followed the Sears game plan using an electronic catalog instead of a physical catalog. The next logical step for Amazon is to establish brick and mortar stores which won’t be far off now that they have local distribution centers
I've only recently found your channel. I admire someone who loves something, trains and railroads, that much as to have such prolific output. My personal reason for being here, on the other hand, is your wonderfully relatable, humorous, vastly entertaining, and, far from least, informative videos regarding retail institutions such as Sears. A joy to have such reliable entertainment to pass the evenings before bed. My congratulations and thanks for so generously working on our behalf.
Sears-K Mart felt like Penn-Central at the time. I was in a Sears in San Salvador, El Salvador recently. It brought back some memories but it was not the same. The famous Sears brands were missing.
Yeah this is giving us flashbacks about other once defunct retail chains being bought out by other companies, groups and third parties with retail experience, and making a comeback, with Ames Department Stores planning on making a comeback in the near future
The fact that they got rid of Craftsman tools, was pretty much the death knell for them. I worked at a Sears in Annapolis, in the late 90's, and they were then located in a dead shopping center. We used to be able to pinpoint to the exact second, when the store would go dead. It was so bad, that the security guards would come over to where the video games were, and would challenge us regular employees, to a few matches. Found out many years later, my brother-in-law worked at the same location, but we never met until my husband and I started dating.
Living in Mexico here, the Sears close to me is alive and well inside a local mall, doesn't appear to be struggling and has decent traffic. It's very common to go to the mall and shopping centers here just to stretch the legs and browse, and yes, online shopping is alive and well, but unlike the US, most shopping centers are quite close to home, so it's just easier to go to the store, grab what you need instead of waiting a few days for the delivery. 👍
Sign up for a 14-day free trial and enjoy all the amazing features MyHeritage has to offer: bit.ly/HistoryInTheDark
I will apply, *only* if you make videos for T&P 610 and N&W 1218. :)
@@HistoryintheDark Having both a sponsor and Ads on a video is greedy
This is such an amazing service... I found out from MyHeritage that my great grandparents had lied to my grandma for essentially her entire life about where she was born. They "lost" her birth certificate and this was back in the 1920s, so records getting lost wasn't that unheard of, so her "duplicate" was essentially the state issuing a new one on the basis of "dude trust me" and got it issued to say that she was born in Brooklyn. Well, digging through MyHeritage to find the immigration records for my great grandparents, I kept getting frustrated, because I knew that they had to have come across before my grandma was born... well, nope, they came across when she was less than a year old, the records from Ellis Island very clearly indicates that it was a family of three who immigrated, my great grandfather, my great grandmother, and my grandma. Her place of birth that was listed on the Ellis Island records was Glasgow. So, if Scotland ever gets its independence and makes the same deal that Ireland has done of giving automatic citizenship to anyone who can prove that their grandparents were born in the country, I'll be slapping on my kilt and packing my bags for the highlands.
My heritage is great I highly recommend people to try it
@@SowerValler TH-camrs need money, too
Sears should have been what Amazon has become. Too many missteps and being late to the party killed the once great and dominant company.
I said that for years. Sears already had stores like everywhere that could have been used for 'shop to store' or 'store pickup'. Plus returns would have been super easy - take it to your local Sears.
Sears WAS Amazon. The Sears catalog transformed commerce over a century ago. And when the Sears catalog should have transformed to the Internet, they were too late since they were trying to protect the stores.
Yea they could have used all the meta data they had from the catalog data and put it in their ecommerance business before Amazon took hold. Instead they just trashed it all.
They definitely were the Amazon of their time, especially in the late 19th and 20th century, they just failed due to the fact they didn’t modernize their stores, equipment, or including a good online store, as well as their parent company, who also owned Kmart, which also failed due to similar reasons.
And when I reference their parent company, I’m referencing how they didn’t seem to care much about the state of the stores.
This one hits hard. My dad got his tools at Sears. All of our appliances were from Sears. Our furniture was from Sears. Car service and tires were from Sears. My clothes were from Sears. Oh and the Wish Book! I spent hours and hours every year going through the toys, circling what I wanted for Christmas. 🎄🎁
I never imagined Sears would be gone, but it is. Sad consider Pennys is still clinging to life.
My first 2 credit cards were JC Penny and Sears
I’m a young man; Pennys was my first job in high school, though only the old man in the kitchen appliances section called it that by the time I was hired.
@@DiamondKingStudios The Adam Walsh Tragedy KILLED SEARS in my opinion. His Sad and Tragic Abduction and Murder by Ottis Toole at the Hollywood/Miami SEARS store turned into a PR Nightmare, and ironically 1981 turned out to be the FINAL Year where SEARS was in Black. They Soon saw Profits and Store Sales and Revenue SINK. People also mostly quit going to SEARS with their children because they were so traumatized and bothered by the Case, SEARS did very little to combat Fears that Children would be snatched and lost forever inside SEARS stores, until 1983 when they saw TWO straight Years of Sales Declines and sinking profits, that's when SEARS Panicked and Ran to Congress to find a Way to create a Ecosystem for Stores that prevented Lost Children from being lost or Kidnapped, this led to the Create of "Code Adam". By 1984, SEARS had finally begin to recover financially and were successfully able to put the PR Nightmare of Adam Walsh behind them, but the damage had already been done. The Large Warchest SEARS Roebuck had gradually vanished throughout the 80s and Turnover Rates for Employees Ballooned. By the Early 90s, Sears Roebuck was in Red. They were falling, but got lucky in the mid 90s and had a brief recovery and come back, but in 1999, they started Falling again, but even HARDER. From the Turn of Millennium, it was Downhill for them at the point, which they NEVER recovered. By 2005, SEARS was NO longer turning a Profit and Kmart soon became the Anchor Dragging everyone down into the Ocean.
@@DiamondKingStudios Not very very much longer I will wager you.
I wouldn't bother with them even if any were still in my area 😊
@@DiamondKingStudios👎
I worked for Sears, I saw what happened from the inside of the company. They hired a CEO that only had experience as a hedge fund manager. As soon as he got in, he started liquidating every bit of the company, selling the Craftsman name to Chinese manufacturers, closing stores, everything he could do to milk every cent out of the company before destroying it. The moment they put him in the position of ceo, that was the final nail in the coffin. And this was in 2016 if my memory serves me correctly
Eddie loaned money to Sears with Sears’ valuable real estate as collateral. He wanted Sears to go bankrupt.
I worked for Sears nearly 8 years. It was a guided planned collapse, Eddie Lampert was the architect.
@@digitalphoenix72 fun fact … Eddie Lampert and Steve Mnuchin (who was appointed Secretary of Treasury and given $400 billion in cares act money to distribute to companies during Covid restrictions) were college roommates. As George Carlin said about these MFers “it’s a big club and you (the populace) are not in it”. No doubt when Mnuchin handed out billions, strings were attached.
I also worked at Sears as a service technician for almost 10 years starting in 2004, and I agree, you could literally see the company going downhill. It made no sense, because the company had generations of brand loyalty that held Sears high as a company. I worked with people that came from Montgomery Wards, and even they said that Montgomery Wards naturally declined, while the downfall of Sears was like it was purposely tanked.
LMFAO i remember that "I'll call now" commercial playing all the time
@@10-5playz same. Ads back in the 80s and 90s just hit different.
I was just thinking "didn't I see that on Cartoon Network the other day"? Then I remembered that was about 15+ years ago.
@@Insane-Howl-Cowloh god that’s where I saw it too! Because I live in Florida they played that ad nearly the entire year since we need a/c at all times.
Aye! Fellow Floridian. Nice. Same though. That commercial is "SEARed" into my brain.
I often think about it when I open the refrigerator. Lol especially if it's a hot summer day.
I am just over 40 now so I think this is early 90s. One time my dad made me go in with him to replace a Craftsman socket I had broken. Honestly I had been mistreating the socket when it broke. I had ground down an extension and had it chucked up in an old corded impact style drill. Might have been a masonry drill. I was using it to try to turn over a lawn mower I found in someone's trash. I released all the smoke from the drill and cracked the socket. My dad beat me as per usual. Making me explain to the sears guy was part of my punishment I am certain. Pretty sure the dude saw my situation and went well beyond the warranty. He gave my dad his new replacement socket and then went through some boxes and worked me up a pretty dang decent tool kit from old display model stuff. He told my dad it was a thing they did for future customers. He put it all in a dented but functional tool box and gave it to me. Dude gave me my childhood of taking stuff apart and putting stuff together.
Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes it's a Sears uniform.
If it were today, he'd likely be arrested for abuse.
My Dad was also a jerk who habitually humiliated his kids. That type of person develops bad health problems and so he died a painful death from prostate cancer. Moral of the story: be good and kind to your loved ones.
Great story..hope the guy had a good life & yourself.
My brother owns a house that was ordered from Sears Roebuck and shipped, disassembled, in a box car. My grandfather helped haul the parts by horse drawn wagon. My brother found all this out when he was working in the attic and saw the markings for assembly.
The kit houses are cool
They were the original "Tiny Houses"
@@annchabassol5804Not “tiny” - but you did have to unpack the box car they came in, in less than a three days to clear the rail line.
I talked to a former Sears store manager. I asked if I was wrong in thinking that since Sears was the original "Amazon," they should have bought Amazon. He agreed that yes, they should have returned to their roots.
Not me remembering the whole Sears commercial at the beginning, word for word 😂
My grandfather was a repairman for Sears. Back in the 50's, he would 😢 all over new york and New Jersey to repair their products until he retired in the 90's. when he heard that sears was officially kaput in 2019, He lost his insurance policy as a retiree with along with any other bonuses he worked for.
I was rewatching your Kmart video when this one dropped. I love the personality you inject into these videos. Can you do Montgomery Wards at some point?
This. Especially since Montgomery Ward was SEARS main Competitor for 100 years. FYI, Montgomery Ward was about 20 years older than SEARS. Having started in 1873.
I nominate Borders! They were everywhere at one point, and then kaboom!
My wife and I met at Sears. I worked at the portrait studio, she worked in the men's dept. Best thing I ever picked up at Sears!
She was the best thing I ever picked up too. Thanks bro
@@JohnZombi88 Hey, John! Thanks for crawling out of your grandparents basement for a rare showing.
Perhaps you could put such enthusiasm into finding an actual girl but I mean, you can't. Not to worry though, bruh. I'm sure you survive on pornhub, chip fingers and xbox just fine, don't ya?
You must get a lot of traction out of that line. I like mine too. My husband and I worked in the county jail together. So I met my husband in jail.
Glad you found something great at Sears, I miss them Craftsman tools set..
I heard there reopen certain locations, what a total lost like K-Mart
Congrats all of you!
My parents bought a Kenmore over-the-range Microwave oven that died a couple years ago and since we can't return it to Sears (ours closed in 2018) we've been using it as a snack cupboard.
But it served you well I assume.
I have a Kenmore dishwasher. It still works fine, but I'll never get back the $200 I paid Sears for the extended warranty right before they shut down in Canada.
@@IAmMisterTterevel If you can find a good appliance repair shop, or a good Electronics repair shop, there is a very high chance they can fix it. They all work the same way. Also-WARNING- If you decide to junk it, you can't dump it in the garbage bin or dumpster. EVERY Microwave oven has one deadly toxic component. It is usually marked or painted with pink or purple marks. Inside that module is Beryllium. A VERY, VERY LETHAL CHEMICAL.
If that module gets cracked open, The Beryllium can blow all over and contaminate EVERYBODY! Take the oven to a hazardous waste or "e-waste" facility.
Most (not all). Microwave oven repairs are often not very difficult. The failed part is usually an electric fuse, a thermal fuse (possibly 2 of them). The switches are often common failure items.
If you spend 1. to. 2. hours on the web you can probably learn enough to be successful in fixing your unit. You might also find a schematic diagram taped inside the housing. Or on the web.
Make SURE the big capacitor is discharged before you do anything else. Actually. The power plug should be pulled from the wall. Watch a TH-cam to learn how to discharge the big size capacitor. The only dangerous part is the klystron. This has the Beryllium in it. Stay AWAY from it.
Good Luck. Start with Wikipedia.
Thank You
Douglas Lee -
Electronic Design Engineer
Minneapolis. Minnesota
Phone. ,612 206 0123
@lauriepenner350 Yeah, that's gone.
That sears commercial was a CORE memory lol
Right, that commercial stuck with me throughout the years now that I think about it. Good times.
The main reason why Sears survived here in Mexico is because, unlike in the US, malls ("plazas") aren't dead here. There are new plazas being built all the time which are always pretty busy, keeping companies like Sears and RadioShack alive.
Also because Mexico has lower costs of living vs. the US and Mexico is full of Mexicans sharing a common culture and bond. America used to have that before 1965 but now we are a multi-culti, low-trust, high cost of living, dystopia.
@@OriginalBongoliathindeed
@@OriginalBongoliath America has always been multi-cultural. We are a nation of immigrants. Always has been. Always will be. Be proud of that.
I’m calling bs on this one. I’ve probably been to over 20 malls just on the east coast of the United States alone, and only two of those malls were completely dead.
@@midgetwthahacksaw Native Americans like excuse me.
“Eddie and the people working with him were all just idiots.” As a former employee of Kmart (pre-Sears) and the later abomination that was Sears Holdings Corporation that may be the most charitable thing anyone can say about that whole debacle of a merger.
My nana worked at Sears until around 2016. She was in her late 80s. She has since passed but I live in a small area, and tear up when I meet random people who remember her there from years of service. To her, Sears was the quintessential American retailer. I'm glad she didn't see her store get turned into an urgent care and then a spirit halloween
I’m glad she didn’t see that too
Dude, now I want a deep drive into the fall of service merchandise.
Does anyone else remember when Chicago’s Willis Tower was originally called the Sears Tower?
Been there quite a few times and it was, is and forever shall be the Sears Tower. 😉
@@jarrodkopf6813 heck I remember taking a school field trip to Chicago watching them build it. Good times 👍
Yep and it will always be the Sears Tower to me. It just sounds better and that's the name that was put on the "Tallest Building Record" not Willis.
I didn't even know it had a name change. I've been calling it sears tower for 35 years 😅
Y'mean Ron White's Big Ol' Goddamn Building?
I wish I could go up in the attic and find one of those old Sears Christmas catalogs just for the memories.
Actually Sears had one thing going for them that no other store seemed to have and that was that Sears would also come out and repair appliances that they sold, and for years my parents kept warranties for stoves, refrigerators and ovens, and we always took the lawnmower to be serviced every summer. Good memories.
You missed the part where the final management strategy was to have their own stores compete with each other for resources.
Basically, they divied up money in the opposite way they should have and thus became a money sink...instead of trying to help underperforming stores make more money, they gave the money to the stores that were doing fine. This was in the 2000's, so no Amazon didn't sink them. They didn't help, that's for sure, but internal management of this type is no way to run a store. It's the old story about the guy who studied the planes that didn't get shot down in ww2. Everyone else did the Sears thing which was suggest that they armor up the spots that are covered in bullets instead of noticing that the planes that came back weren't shot in certain places and THOSE are the places you add the extra armor.
What I'm notice killed ALOT of these businesses are what I wouldn't say was bad leadership or anything like that but the 1919 ruling of Dodge V Ford, where essentially it came to an idea that The people, the business and ethics were not a priority and that the bottom line had to be meeting expectations of shareholders and ensuring that it was a profitable prospect for them, rather than the common consumer.
Well, they do have a fiduciary responsibility. How would you feel if you gave me your money and I used it without regard to the fact that you expected a return on your investment? And, if I do do that, what are the chances others are going to do the same and give me their money when other companies will do what is best for a return on their investment?
@@KRAMITDFROGYou get Apple and Tesla who haven’t paid a dividend…
As an 80s bay and a Chicago native Sears was a magical place in the early to mid 80s. As they fell off ironically my family started shopping at K-Mart until they too fell off.
I remember that Sears central AC ad. We didn't used to have as brutal summers back then as we do now. 🥵
@@ShanetheFreestyler global warming
I remember sears. And Kmart. 90s malls man. That was a vibe
Miss looking through the sears christmas catalog when i was younger 😢
Growing up, it was Sears or Montgomery Ward, that's it. No other stores existed for my family.
I fondly remember Montgomery Ward. They were Half Assed when compared to Sears. The Ironic thing is that MW is even older than SEARS. They started in 1873.
sounds pretty ass tbh 😭
Sears, kmart, ames, Montgomery ward in that order when I was a kid. We also had 2 grocery stores in my little town. The grocery stores are long gone but we have a black and yellow store.
When I was a kid in the 1970s, we had Woolworths, Newberry, and JC Penney in addition to Sears and Montgomery Ward. Only Penney is still around, and they've seen better days.
As a Mexican I can confirm that while shopping online is a thing and is growing quickly, people still like to go outside and watch what they're about to buy in person. This specially applies to furniture, appliances, and big consumer electronics like TVs and audio systems, it's RARE when people buy those online.
This is anecdotal of course but I used to work on a medium size regional department store and clients generally didn't choose shipping even when it was free or charge, people wanted to buy what they desired and leave the store with said product on the same day even if they had to pay for a third party shipping service (generally just s guy with a big truck lol).
Hope you're packed. 40 days til November 5th ✅✅✅
@@starmnsixty1209 or what? You're just gonna sit behind a keyboard and do nothing.
I miss trying on shoes. I always have to send them back.
Sears is the real-life Jedi Order. Complacency and hubris, often the most powerful organizations end up eating themselves into starvation dying from the inside out.
Who’s the Palpatine and Anakin/Darth Vader in this metaphor?
I am so here for the way you opened this video with one of my strongest childhood TV commercial memories. Cool.
I love the amount of information that you include in these as well as the humorous bits, makes it easy for me and probably many others to retain and enjoy listening to and watching, please keep up this good combo and good work
I live in Stockton and I can’t believe the local Sears store stayed open as long as it did. I think the last time I went in there to buy something was maybe 5 years ago and it was around Christmas time and it was practically empty in there.
Now I'll never get that SEARS mail order house I always wanted 👎
They're still out there. You just got to buy one already built. They are surprisingly well put together. I live outside Pittsburgh and I work on those homes from time to time.
I worked for Sears Automotive for several years. Several SA locations operated nearly independently of the main stores and were strong earners even when the main stores had weak periods. But they got in trouble over issues relating to internal and external promotions forced on them, fraud and even BBB traps. It was severely restructured and began to have difficulties. I left after they started dropping hours of experienced staff and bringing in low paid and inexperienced people, which further degraded both customer service and employee livelyhood. This was just a few years before the company started the steep decline.
I did a full documentary of my local Sears and even did some abandoned exploration on it also. My Sears was a stand alone big box store from 1960 and served generations. It's now demolished.
0:17 - Oh man, do I remember when that commercial was on TV all the time.
@@Insane-Howl-Cowl yeah, I still hear that ad in my head, at least the couple parts.
Omggggggggg memory unlocked. 🤯
Okay - I was belly laughing with the streetcar defense - I stumbled across your videos with a bunch of your train videos, and really like the retail history you've been doing.
It's not brutal, but more like a slow, cumbersome, abysmal and almost somewhat comedic demise. Like they had about 30 years to turn around but somehow they were oblivious to almost everything.
It all begin on Monday July 27,1981 in the Miami suburb of Hollywood,Florida. At the popular SEARS. The Disappearance, Abduction and Horrific Slaying of 6 Year old Broward County Resident, Adam John Walsh. This is what Killed SEARS. This Tragedy, it became a Tumor that very very slowly ate away at SEARS and destroyed them.
@@Tornado1994now his dad sells placebo pills in late night infomercials.
Back in the day Craftsman tools were once known as the poor man’s Snap-on. Now it’s a joke,thank you Eddie Lambert!
"Too big to fail." 😂😂😂 Famous last words. Just like "unsinkable."
Omg, I haven’t thought about Sears Grand in yeeaaarrrss. I remember when they opened the first and largest sears grand near my house. They made such a big deal about it. Now it’s an At Home, Planet Fitness, and Burlington .
In the 1970s my father sold furniture at sears, when Sears sold EVERYTHING, and made enough for my mom to stay at home and raise 3 kids. Our clothes came from Sears, our furniture came from sears and most of it has lasted until today.
Damn I'm only 31 but that commercial intro hits hard now.
Fun fact: Very early on, Sears was the Amazon of it's day. You shopped by a physical catalog, ordered by mail, telegram, or by phone, and then you got your items shipped to you. Now, take that catalog, make it a website? That's Amazon. The more things change, the more you notice life is still the same.
Sears would allow a family to finance large purchase’s like a washer and dryer, they’re prices weren’t bargains but a young family could afford the payments- then everyone started offering financing and it was a race to the bottom…
I remember sears had a policy that if something was mis-priced or had no price tag you would get 10% off. When i asked for my 10% off discount in an item with no price tag the cashier was super annoyed and peoceeyto aegue with me for several minutes until finally putting in the discount. I think it happened to be a manager who was going to get in trouble. Fact is that about 10% of the store had no prices on it.
I always am so surprised when I think about sears closing down! It was everywhere and had everything. I still can't believe they fell off
Never should’ve merged with KMart….Two failing,,flailing walking corpses slowly rotting right in front of all of us….Eddie Lampert is the worst kind of investment banker vampire…bleeding the corpse dry until its just a husk
The defunct mall in The Heights, Houston Texas is getting torn down right now. The Sears sign was the first structure to go. I thought of this channel as I drove past the empty set.
Sears and Kmart made the mistake of investing in other retailers instead of modernizing their stores
Correct.
True
This is why Sears as a whole needs to be sold to another company or even spun off into its own company which either one step terminates the decades long merger with Kmart
Management was out-of-touch by the '90s. They should have purchased or teamed up with an Amazon-type online retailer back in the '90s when they discontinued their famous Wish book.
You wanna know why SEARS spinoff Chains Grand and Essentials failed? Its pretty simple really: These chains would have be awesome and worth getting hyped over IN 1993. Sears Kmart Holdings launched these failed Chain Spinoffs over a DECADE too late.
I live a few miles from one of the last remaining sears locations, it’s pretty weird to see how spaced out everything is due to lack of inventory. The mechanic section out in the parking lock is completely abandoned and that entire section of the mall parking lot is hardly used
I’m 52 and growing up I’d say 90% of our shopping was done at Sears and K-Mart.
The killing of the iconic, once beloved Sears Catalogue in the early 1990's was a symbolic beginning of the end for me. I just couldn't of cared less about Sears after that point. Radio Shack did a similar cheapening down their own Catalogue, at the same time which was a favorite of mine personally. My worst fears for both stores came true.
Speaking of which, I would love to see a Downfall of Radio Shack video! There was one right next to the Kmart that was a mile from my house! (It’s a burrito joint now).
I grew up circling things in both Sears and JCPenney Wish Books for Christmas
Hang on to any if you still have any. They're antiques now.
@@starmnsixty1209 oh believe me I wish I had. Long gone
Short term profits, stupid credit cards, stupid warranty prices, up selling repairs on things not broken, etc..
Kmart: " Well our ship is sinking, lets buy another failing ship to suffer with us together as we both go under!"
I thought that merger was odd and sad. Bye, bye to both. :(
I love these videos and your voice is so good! Keep at it brother! Stay off the trains keep to these videos🫡
I remember hearing a joke from a comedian who worked at a Sears in New York. He was there during the time of the Libyan missile crisis.
What was the joke?
I have family in Mexico, and while online shopping is definitely a thing, a lot of parts of Mexico are still quite rural. For instance, for major appliances and electronics, if I wanted to buy something, I'd have to go to Puerto Vallarta, which is a couple of hours away from where I have family, and then take it back.
Growing up in the US though though the 80's and 90's, this one gave me a bit of nostalgia. We used to get our clothing at Sears and Montgomery Ward, among other stores :P I remember playing with the computer in the men's shoe department to make "custom Florsheim dress shoes."
My uncle used to run the QC lab for Sears, if you have ever seen the "happy man" ads starring Armin Shimmerman, he is mentioned both by name [Pete Menningen] and you can dee him in the lab scene in the back on the right around halfway through. Quark played my uncle in a commercial.
I had to look it up out of morbid curiosity: not only is the Sears that was closest to me growing up, and possibly the one my uncle first started at [79th & Jeffery in Chicago, South-East side] still open, it somehow is a 24-hour location!
You're killing it with these videos recently.
I remember flipping through the Wish Book at age 8 (1992?) and seeing an electric guitar… it kind of altered the path of my life. Lol
Lampert saw the one thing that was most valuable to Sears, their real estate holdings, and he pounced. And he made a lot of money doing it. I don’t like him.
Been on a binge of the death of stores I've mostly never heard of before 🤣
Love your videos! xx
The tragedy here is that Sears didn’t recognize and build on its single greatest strength - the Kenmore and Craftsman brands. My family used nothing but Sears brands for decades, and so did the families of just about everyone I knew. Fridge frizzled? Drill diminished? Stove smoking? Go to Sears and get another, and it’ll last you 20 years! Sears should have doubled down on the Whirlpool partnership, touting its brand loyalty and reliability in ads. They should have stopped being all things to all people and just put the spotlight on what they did best. Instead, they bought out Kmart, tried to focus on TVs and computers (Hello, Best Buy is RIGHT THERE) and put the noose around their own necks. Now, they’re gone and I have a crappy fridge bought at a big box hardware retailer that shall remain nameless, wishing to God that the old Whirlpool Kenmore was still around.
Eddie Lambert ran both stores to the ground. He was more interested in the real estate side not the retail side
100 years ago Sears was the Amazon of its day. They even sold houses that you could assemble
Hopefully myheritage isn’t like 23 and Me where the entire leadership team sells the consumer base info to other companies then leaves the company
they where acquired by francisco partners in 2021, their privacy policy states they wont sell or license your genetic data to 3rd parties but francisco partners is a huge tech investment firm so your genetic data will probably be used and sold in some way
They even used to sell houses in their catalogues. There's still a lot of them being lived in today.
The last time I went to Sears, I was buying some shirts for work. There were only a couple of people ahead of me in line, but it took twenty minutes before it was my turn to check out. When I got there I found out why it was taking so long. The cashier immediately started asking me if I wanted to sign up for a credit card. I said no thanks, and she kept asking. After four or five go arounds, I finally had to yell "I don't want it!" to get her to ring up my shirts so I could leave. Never went back.
Sears in the 90s used to have a program where if you bought children's Levi's you could return them for the same size. For a parent if a boy who always got holes in the knees I was able to save so much money on jeans. When they stopped doing that I started shopping elsewhere, so they lost my other business over it, and I had bought a lot of different products until then
You deserve way more subscribers. Keep up the good work!!
Another corporate dinosaur that failed to move quickly enough when the market changed.
yup also complaceny - i bet many in the company were sounding the alarm but the big brass brushed them off "meh we dont need to worry about any new "world wide web" FADs. Go away, Carl. I am busy with my secretary. Close the door on your way out"
@@kneel1 The Adam Walsh Tragedy killed Sears. The Case Haunted the ENTIRE company and in my belief ultimately is what caused their Terminal decline and slow gradual sinking.
@@Tornado1994 Wow, I'd never heard about that before. I had no idea that the guy from AMW had been part of a violent crime and that he was personally invested in crimes being solved.
I used to buy both my jacketd and my tools at the local sears, which only closed in the past 5 years. I'm only 26, but I still saw them fairly popular in the 2000s.
Ahhh, a cozy spot on the couch, my favorite snack, and another episode of History in The Dark.
Sears also had a division that developed their store sites and shopping centers called Homart. Homart built many very successful malls, and owned a huge amount of real estate that eventually became more valuable as land that could be redeveloped than as store sites. Sears became a land play in its last days.
I was helping With Sears Warehouse Pouring the Floor And they was putting all Those broken Craftsman tools in floor
Mexico still shopping out : "Since the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, Mexico has seen an explosion in the number of shopping malls"
I remember, in the early 2000s driving my Ford Ranger to the Fort Wayne Sears and buying a drill press. They had the best power tool selection around. I still use the drill press.
in Chattanooga,TN they had a Sears Essentials store which was like Wal Mart but it lasted about 10 years . closed about 5 years ago..
omg that first commercial just unlocked a core memory.....
Sears being bought by K-mart…… that explains a lot actually
Sears Management: “bro we’ve done nothing and we’re all out of ideas this ship is sinking fast we’re done for”
K-mart: “want 11 Billion dollars? We can apply the K-mart strategy and save it!”
Sears: holy shit what??!??!?…. Uhhhh….. Seriously….?? Good luck with that thank you very much pleasure doing business with you!
K-mart: what a beautiful acquisition let’s do nothing with it just like always!
It’s amazing sometimes how people this stupid end up on top of a multibillion dollar empire
Eddie intended to bankrupt Sears from his first day as CEO. He got the Sears valuable real estate as collateral forfeited when Sears could not pay a loan he made to Sears.
I think it failed because of the corporate raider ass that bought it with Kmart. No intention of doing anything with them but picking the bones clean.
It was on its way to the grave long before then. When the merger happened it was described as two drunks holding each other up.
While Sears was struggling at the time they compared to Kmart was in better shape barely mind you since they didn't file for bankruptcy prior to the merger but hard to say that if both stores would still survive if the merger didn't happen.
@stephenholloway6893 honestly though Kmart should just have rebranded under Sears. Kmart just seemed tainted around that time.
@@stephenholloway6893 Sears First Bankruptcy Filing was on November 17,2008.
@Tornado1994 That was for if I recall was for another division of Sears not the mainline US division but still it took place after the Kmart merger.
I knew in 2010 Sears was circling the drain. My mom had paid for a gold standard warranty on an apartment refrigerator.. after a year the freezer stopped working and it took eight calls to their customer service, including one where the “technician” try to stuff a paper towel into the drain pipe, for me to just realize my sick mother had been scammed. this left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth and angered me for years.
Another video that brings back memories 🥺👍.
Can't wait for your video on the TUSS-GAH-G airmen of WW2
I remember one of the last times I went to my local Sears that was in the Fingerlakes Mall. They had some of the oldest computerized cash registers I've even seen. No icons, just plain white/blue text on a black screen. Cashing out always took F O R E V E R. The spot where Sears used to be went from being an RV dealership, to the spot where Spirit Halloween pops in during the Halloween season.
Sears Canada still did the catalogue in the 90s. I was born in 1994 and I remember being 3-4 years old and going through the Christmas catalogue to circle toys I wanted for Christmas.
My aunt worked at Sears for years selling appliances. She had gotten it as her "first job" while still in high school AND at the time the store was just opening and looking for work! She worked there her whole life. She bought the appliances that were put in our house when the house was built. We also bought all of our tools and lawn equipment from there and it was one of the places we most frequently bought clothes (right up there with J.C Penny's at the same mall). My aunt retired in 2012 but HAD BEEN critical of Lampert and some of the things the company was doing in those last years. Yes, she lost her retirement pension when Lampert got rid of them. As for the store, it closed in 2017, and a few years later in 2021, the whole mall closed!...
What happened to Sears? Two words. Eddie Lampert.
Reminds us of Ames Department Stores closing up shop over mismanagement that affected the company, acquisions of failing enterprises and the 2002 Chapter 7 Bankruptcy
But Sears Canada unfortunately closed entirely in January 2018
Amazon literally followed the Sears game plan using an electronic catalog instead of a physical catalog. The next logical step for Amazon is to establish brick and mortar stores which won’t be far off now that they have local distribution centers
I've only recently found your channel. I admire someone who loves something, trains and railroads, that much as to have such prolific output. My personal reason for being here, on the other hand, is your wonderfully relatable, humorous, vastly entertaining, and, far from least, informative videos regarding retail institutions such as Sears. A joy to have such reliable entertainment to pass the evenings before bed. My congratulations and thanks for so generously working on our behalf.
Is this a bot? 💀
@@littlesparrowMe? No, just a guy who likes the channel. And said so.
Sears-K Mart felt like Penn-Central at the time. I was in a Sears in San Salvador, El Salvador recently. It brought back some memories but it was not the same. The famous Sears brands were missing.
The way you said “my heritage” made it seem like yours specifically.
Btw, the Burbank Sears actually came back from the dead recently
Yeah this is giving us flashbacks about other once defunct retail chains being bought out by other companies, groups and third parties with retail experience, and making a comeback, with Ames Department Stores planning on making a comeback in the near future
We still have Radioshacks in Mexico aswell. 😂😂😂
After working for Sears roughly for a year as a kid. And stumbling upon your channel, I was waiting for when you would do a video on Sears. Awesome.
The fact that they got rid of Craftsman tools, was pretty much the death knell for them. I worked at a Sears in Annapolis, in the late 90's, and they were then located in a dead shopping center. We used to be able to pinpoint to the exact second, when the store would go dead. It was so bad, that the security guards would come over to where the video games were, and would challenge us regular employees, to a few matches. Found out many years later, my brother-in-law worked at the same location, but we never met until my husband and I started dating.
Living in Mexico here, the Sears close to me is alive and well inside a local mall, doesn't appear to be struggling and has decent traffic. It's very common to go to the mall and shopping centers here just to stretch the legs and browse, and yes, online shopping is alive and well, but unlike the US, most shopping centers are quite close to home, so it's just easier to go to the store, grab what you need instead of waiting a few days for the delivery. 👍
Fuckin ESLs
Opening commercial unlocked a memory. I knew that whole thing, word for word. Advertising is scary.