Goodbye Forever Sears!

**Danny** · July-02-21, 04:05 PM

The last Sears Dept. Store in Michigan located at Westland Mall in Westland, MI. will be closing its doors for good. What a dreadful blow for traditional brick and mortar stores.

Let's blame Amazon!

Here is source.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/bu...er/7817617002/

**Pam** · July-02-21, 06:02 PM

Let's not blame Amazon. Sears was going down even before Amazon became so popular. Places like Lowes, Home Depot, Wal-mart, Kohl's, Target etc. took business away from them.

**Jimaz** · July-02-21, 06:28 PM

Now we'll have to buy our rancid ponchos from Mexico.

Frank Zappa - Camarillo Brillo

...Is that a real poncho?...I mean Is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?

**CassTechGrad** · July-02-21, 07:43 PM

And I thought I was the only person left in the world who remembered that song. RIP Suzy Creamcheese

**Honky Tonk** · July-02-21, 07:53 PM

Originally Posted by CassTechGrad

And I thought I was the only person left in the world who remembered that song. RIP Suzy Creamcheese

It can't happen here.

Calling all vegetables.

**13606Cedargrove** · July-02-21, 08:50 PM

Originally Posted by Honky Tonk

It can't happen here.

Calling all vegetables.

Watch out where the huskies go and don’t you eat that yellow snow.

**LongGone06** · July-03-21, 08:24 AM

Originally Posted by 13606Cedargrove

Watch out where the huskies go and don’t you eat that yellow snow.

…all you Catholic girls…

**jcole** · July-03-21, 08:32 AM

Just me and my pygmy pony, ridin' the lonely dental floss

**313WX** · July-03-21, 09:45 AM

Related to this subject, there's only 1 Kmart left in the entire state of Michigan.

It's actually a Big Kmart in Marshall.

**Hermod** · July-03-21, 11:22 AM

Sears and Montgomery Ward dominated the mail order business, but decided to phase it out. They were Amazon before Jeff Bezos was born.

**313WX** · July-03-21, 02:56 PM

Originally Posted by Hermod

Sears and Montgomery Ward dominated the mail order business, but decided to phase it out. They were Amazon before Jeff Bezos was born.

They were both Chicago-based companies too.

**shovelhead** · July-03-21, 09:23 PM

Sears was it's own worst enemy. The corporate decision to rid it's stores of well paid sales professionals in their stores, replacing them with low paid help was one of many failures. And no, I was not one of them nor ever did work for Sears. I started buying tools at Sears when I was about twelve, the store just amazed me at that time.

The "new" face of Sears at that time was ill trained and in many cases didn't gave a damn about the products they sold, all they were concerned with was getting their hours in. My final "WTH" moment came about when I attempted to have a Craftsman power tool replaced as their recall notice stated. Their "register operator" refused to replace it, took a phone call to the store manager to get that handled.

Sears and Mongomery Ward were our "go to" place via catalog stores, catalog orders or an infrequent trip to a large city while living in the rural Southwest in the 70's/80/s. By the late 90's that had turned 180 degrees, it became a fight to get a problem resolved whether a warranty or a maintenance agreement issue performed.

Their ill-advised cheapening of the products they were known for like Craftsman tools, their ending the long relationship with Whirlpool for appliances also led to their downfall. Probably the bad publicity surrounding the Sears Auto Centers in the early 2000's didn't help either.

My opinion the K-Mart merger was the death rattle for the chain, that and the Board of Directors figuring that their real estate holdings were more valuable than stores that actually sold merchandise.

**bust** · July-03-21, 10:10 PM

Glad I got my Craftsman tool cabinets before I could no longer.
Years earlier, my ratcheting magnetic screwdriver with exchangeable bits stored in the handle, a great gift.
Craftsman was good quality, as I'm sure every Detroiter above a certain age knows.

Yet my customer experience buying the cabinets illustrates what went wrong.
Delivery took weeks, they couldn't specify when it would arrive, there would be nowhere to leave it if I were not home.
One arrived damaged upon delivery, badly dented, the top compartment would not open without a rough scrape.

I wasted hours upon hours on numerous customer "support" channels without getting anywhere. No one I talked to seemed empowered except to read from the same go nowhere script.
It wasn't until I managed to talk to a manager and faked I could impactfully complain that they agreed to replace the damaged item.
A badly coordinated pickup, and a month or so later, a poorly coordinated delivery, I finally received what I paid for.

Don't like Amazon, but ever since Sears fell into the clutches of private equity and vulture hedge funds who decided customer relationships don't matter, they've been so terrible I no longer felt bad shopping at Amazon, where despite the rest they try to get the customer experience right.

Now if only they offered tool cabinets as good. As far as I know, they don't.

**masterblaster** · July-04-21, 03:48 AM

This is another sad blow for Westland Mall. They lost Macy's a few year ago.

**jcole** · July-04-21, 09:00 AM

This is going to date me, but oh well. My BIL was a Men's Haberdashery salesmen back in the 60's and made enough money at Sears to feed his family of 4 and own a home while my sister stayed home. I also remember going there with my dad to buy ammo of his guns and he taught me how to identify the caliber of some long guns by the size of the barrel. He would ONLY buy is tools there, all of our housepaint came from Sears and a lot of our clothes. Fast forward about 30 years, and you couldn't find a salesperson, the clothing was awful and about the only thing we went there for was tires or paint, and even that wasn't the same. The Sears powers that were really screwed the pooch.

**Zacha341** · July-04-21, 09:06 AM

^^^ Haberdashery? That dates us right there. Some people don't know how huge that industry was. Pretty wild that Hab was a such distinct specialization [for men and women] within stores and as stand-alone shops. Hah!

**EastsideAl** · July-04-21, 03:35 PM

Sears went the way of seemingly all American businesses from the the '70s or so onward. Replacing quality products at prices affordable to working class people and professional employees paid a living wage, with poorly-made overpriced junk and 'casual' minimum wage labor. All for the siren song of temporarily enhanced profit margins and extra cash in execs pockets - until the house collapsed and they were fired, that is.

Sad story, but the end for Sears has been obviously coming for years. The last act has been the private equity vultures cashing in on their real estate holdings as they emptied out and choked off the stores. I'm frankly surprised to hear that there were any left open around here.

**mikefmich** · July-04-21, 04:07 PM

First bird gun, a Wingmaster from 7 Mi & Mack. My memory says Ted Williams was doing a promotional at the store that day.

90% of my hand tools. I backed away from their power tools around 1980.

Nothing lasts forever but the rocks.

**JBMcB** · July-04-21, 04:21 PM

Originally Posted by shovelhead

Sears was it's own worst enemy. The corporate decision to rid it's stores of well paid sales professionals in their stores, replacing them with low paid help was one of many failures.

That is also what happened to Circuit City. My coworker was working the car stereo installation department when it happened. All the high-earning sales staff, whom were high-earning because they made a ton of sales, were let go in the span of a month. The following quarter was one of the worst the store ever had, and sales never fully recovered.

**Danny** · July-05-21, 05:31 AM

Originally Posted by Pam

Let's not blame Amazon. Sears was going down even before Amazon became so popular. Places like Lowes, Home Depot, Wal-mart, Kohl's, Target etc. took business away from them.

I still blame Amazon.

**jcole** · July-05-21, 09:32 AM

Do you blame Amazon for Wards demise too?

Originally Posted by Danny

I still blame Amazon.

**Meddle** · July-05-21, 09:34 AM

Whenever a thread like this comes up, I browse [what's left of] the Sears/KMart websites and get reminded of how little they have to offer any more.

**313WX** · July-05-21, 09:46 AM

Originally Posted by jcole

Do you blame Amazon for Wards demise too?

I blame Canada!

**Richard** · July-05-21, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by shovelhead

Sears was it's own worst enemy. The corporate decision to rid it's stores of well paid sales professionals in their stores, replacing them with low paid help was one of many failures. And no, I was not one of them nor ever did work for Sears. I started buying tools at Sears when I was about twelve, the store just amazed me at that time.

The "new" face of Sears at that time was ill trained and in many cases didn't gave a damn about the products they sold, all they were concerned with was getting their hours in. My final "WTH" moment came about when I attempted to have a Craftsman power tool replaced as their recall notice stated. Their "register operator" refused to replace it, took a phone call to the store manager to get that handled.

Sears and Mongomery Ward were our "go to" place via catalog stores, catalog orders or an infrequent trip to a large city while living in the rural Southwest in the 70's/80/s. By the late 90's that had turned 180 degrees, it became a fight to get a problem resolved whether a warranty or a maintenance agreement issue performed.

Their ill-advised cheapening of the products they were known for like Craftsman tools, their ending the long relationship with Whirlpool for appliances also led to their downfall. Probably the bad publicity surrounding the Sears Auto Centers in the early 2000's didn't help either.

My opinion the K-Mart merger was the death rattle for the chain, that and the Board of Directors figuring that their real estate holdings were more valuable than stores that actually sold merchandise.

Sears is kinda like the malls,they owned so much real estate that they could not or did not flow with the movement of their base outside of the mail order aspect.

They were able to hang in there because of the real estate unlike many others.

They offered me the position of overseeing the automotive centers in the SE in the late 90s when all of that was starting to go down,I told them to let me hang out for a few weeks and then make a decision,after I figured out where all of that was actually originating I walked.

I was also offered the keys from a sub set of one of the big 3,I walked from that also and they were also bankrupt by 2009.

Those days were not about quality products or customer service,it was all about taking a commodity and squeezing it for maximum return with creative financing and moving money around.

It is not just Sears or Circuit City or whoever else,it was us as a country when we decided to become a consumer society and the death knoll was the switch to technology based over dirty manufacturing.

Circuit City’s main revenue was derived from Europeans coming over here and filling suitcases with electronics to bring back over there because they were expensive because of tariffs.

They were coming over here with 15 - 20k in cash to buy,this country was selling electronics cheaper then anybody could buy them for in their country of manufacturer.

Sears and everybody else was cause and effect,they were just able to hang in there longer because of the value of their real estate,when that part was removed from the equation,they were done.

Amazon started out as a book store,Sears started out as a man on a train selling watches shoes to say what replaces Amazon 40 years from now.

As a nation it is our fault,it’s just easier to point to that physical location because we can see that.

When we become a nation of consumers instead of builders,something has to give.

Notice the quality of goods we consume now? We traded quality for cheap,but how much are we really saving if we cannot feed our family on a single wage earner,we traded a big screen TV at the expense of our neighbors ability to feed their family.

When the internet first came out,I had a auto salvage yard and used to list hard to find parts,people were not going online to find the parts,they were going online to find things cheaper.

I get the same thing now with customers and parts needed to repair their commercial equipment,I tell them how much the part is and the first thing they say is,that sounds expensive,let me go online and find it cheaper.

They actually buy their own part thinking they are saving $20 but yet it cost them an additional $165 for that hour for me to come back and install it,so they spent a $145 in order to save $20.

We want good customer service,quality merchandise but we want it now and we want it for $20,these companies are just giving us what we demand.

As a company you cannot hire somebody at a livable wage and provide good customer support when your customers demand you sell your products cheaper then everybody else in the world.

**DetBill** · July-05-21, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by Danny

The last Sears Dept. Store in Michigan located at Westland Mall in Westland, MI. will be closing its doors for good. What a dreadful blow for traditional brick and mortar stores.

Let's blame Amazon!

Here is source.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/bu...er/7817617002/

In all fairness. we also have to blame ourselves if we use Amazon. The sequence goes on, these large stores killed many small stores decades ago.