Tribute to The Passing of an Old Friend

It is with melancholy that I mark the passing of an old friend.  This companion was in my home when my children were born.  The friend clothed my family, delivered Christmas presents and even mowed my lawn.  That's why I despaired when the news broke about the demise of iconic retailer Sears.

Our relationship began when I was a child.  The arrival of the Sears Christmas Catalog in our home was met with shrieks of joy.  My siblings and I pored over the toy section, dreaming of Santa Claus and Christmas morning.  By Christmas day, the catalog was dog-eared and tattered from use.

After Princess Dianna and I were married, one of our initial purchases was a Kenmore washer and dryer.  It survived two babies in the era before disposable diapers, chugging almost nonstop to clean cloth diapers.  Those sturdy machines, like many Sears appliances, lasted 15 years.

I acquired my first lawn mower from Sears after buying my first home.  The first set of tires I purchased came from Sears.  When the battery died in my car, I made a trip to Sears for a DieHard.  The first tool box and tools I owned were Sears' Craftsman.  (I never did learn how to operate them.)

Sears products were the gold standard for reliability.  If an appliance ever stopped working, there was a local store with a repair person to fix it.  Even small towns had a Sears outlet.  At the height of its retailing empire, there were nearly 1,000 Sears stores stretching from coast to coast.

The retail Goliath was born more than a century ago when a former railway station agent (Richard Sears) and a watchmaker (Alvah Roebuck) partnered together to become Sears, Roebuck and Company. They launched a catalog of watches and jewelry in 1888 and incorporated in 1893.

From those humble beginnings, Sears branched out from watches into a full blown retail company, offering clothes, appliances and products for cars.  Its beloved catalog ballooned to 532 pages, serving as a consumer Bible.  Not to mention that it was used as toilet paper in the era of outhouses.

The firm sold stock in 1906 in the first initial public offering for an American retail firm.  The same year it opened a 40-acre logistics center in Chicago, then called the Seventh Wonder of the World by admiring business leaders.  Sears became a symbol of America's burgeoning economic strength.

As consumers tastes changed, Sears altered its business model launching its first retail stores in the 1920's.  By 1931, Sears stores surpassed the cherished catalog in sales and revenue.  Sears introduced its own brands, including Craftsman, DieHard and Kenmore and began selling Allstate insurance.

These were the glory days when Sears topped $1 billion in sales in 1945, which equates to $14 billion in today's dollars.  The company even debuted a mail-order automobile in 1952 manufactured by the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation.  It was named the Allstate.  A year later lagging sales caused its death.

By 1969, Sears claimed the title as the largest retailer in the world.  To crown its achievement, the innovative company began construction on the world's tallest skyscraper, the 110-story Sears Tower, in Chicago.  It was completed four years later, dominating the Windy City's skyline.

Like the soaring corporate building, Sears was rocketing into the retailing stratosphere.  However, its meteoric rise in the world of retail became a giant bullseye for a teeming gaggle of competitors eager to enter the lucrative sector.  Sears' leaders ignored the threat and embarked on a buying binge. 

In the 1980's, Sears expanded into everything from stocks, real estate, credit cards to a pre-Web portal known as Prodigy.  During this stage, the company lost focus on its core retailing business as an upstart competitor Walmart began to syphon customers with lower prices.

The downward spiral was officially recognized in 1991 when Walmart supplanted Sears as the nation's top selling retailer.  The final chapter was written on October 15 when Sears Holdings Corporation filed for bankruptcy.  The firm listed $6.9 billion in assets and $11.3 billion in liabilities.

Sears downfall is a cautionary tale for today's Herculean companies.  No business is too big to fail. Sears reacted too slowly to competition, lost touch with its loyal customer base, expanded into businesses far afield from its core strength and failed to invest in its retail stores and product lines.

I admit, like many former Sears customers, I haven't peeked in one of its retail stores in decades.  However, I still mourn its passing.  Sears was part of my childhood and adulthood.  Now that its gone, all that remains are cherished memories of trusted products that made our family's life better.

Rest in peace old friend.