Sears

[Jeff]

K-Mart was fucked long before Sears

Wasn't their president stealing funds or something like that?

[Shazam/TPP]

The internet killed the sears catalog in more ways than most people consider.......

My mom's family lived in Austria and her sister (my aunt) would send her the Spiegel catalog (60's early 70's)
wow were those great, see through bras,and panties.. Europeans are much less modest..

[TylerBeer]

As a kid I remember going to Sears as an event.
And like many other businesses you could start to see the money getting sucked out of it.

[YoDoug]

I think another big aspect to sears going under was the rise of the big box home improvement stores. Prior to Depot/Lowes/Menards you either went to sears or your local small hardware store for power equipment, tools, etc. 

[beej]

I think another big aspect to sears going under was the rise of the big box home improvement stores. Prior to Depot/Lowes/Menards you either went to sears or your local small hardware store for power equipment, tools, etc. 

The Dollar General business model might work to bring Sears back. I'm willing to pay more to keep from going in to a Walmart Superstore. And putting those smaller stores in areas all over, outside of city limits, is genius, IMO. I'd do the same thing to keep from going into Lowes, HD or Menards.

[Incogneeto]

My Grandpa would take me to Sears on Sundays we would hit the hot Cashews 1/4 lb. the candy and nuts were the first thing you saw as you walked in. and then cruise the store just lookin'
can't remember if we ever bought anything...didn't care was just fun to look and be with Him.

We grew up poor broke and using Blue chip stamps and Green Stamps for Christmas presents .loved the Catalogs.

[Brian]

Sears was the anchor store in the shopping center in the town I grew up in back in Illinois. And I'm pretty sure that my mom and dad got the bee hives (as kits) out of the Sears catalog. Even the bees if I remember correctly (seriously-they shipped in a box!). I will have to confirm this fact with them, but I'm nearly certain that this is true-honest!

I remember that they had a vacuum tube tester in this particular store, but am not sure if they all had this or not. And they had a lunch counter, too-we used to get grilled cheese sandwiches there. I can almost remember the smell of the place!

[Incogneeto]

Sears was the anchor store in the shopping center in the town I grew up in back in Illinois. And I'm pretty sure that my mom and dad got the bee hives (as kits) out of the Sears catalog. Even the bees if I remember correctly (seriously-they shipped in a box!). I will have to confirm this fact with them, but I'm nearly certain that this is true-honest!

I remember that they had a vacuum tube tester in this particular store, but am not sure if they all had this or not. And they had a lunch counter, too-we used to get grilled cheese sandwiches there. I can almost remember the smell of the place!

Bwahaha and they sold cigarettes 45 cents a pack. We didn't have the tester but you could walk in and get a custom suit.
 I mean measured and all for $25 custom fit. A real funeral suit.

They had I think 4 departments, my pops always hung in the tool section .But they had clothing, furnishings, outdoors and she section we never went there.

[Brian]

Speaking of Sears, and other large retailers of the day....

We moved up to the city (Chicago) when I was in HS, and my mom worked at Marshall Fields in downtown for a couple of years as a display designer. This was back when they used to design and make all of their own store displays! They had a rather extensive department dedicated just to this, with a wood shop, paint shop, electrical shop, you name it. I used to take the subway downtown, and you could get off (pretty sure this was at State St store) and go up the stairs, straight into the basement of Fields. Take the elevator up to the 9th floor (I *think*), and then transfer to the employee elevator and go up to the 13th floor where all of the display folks worked...it was really cool. They had a huge amount of display materiel left over from previous years (I remember they had what appeared to be a rather substantial forest of some sort, made entirely from papier mache!).

Marshall Fields was something of a Chicago institution, and I remember that folks were a little dismayed when they got bought out by Macy's. By then our family had moved out to CA so it was kinda a distant memory anyway.

I guess the point to my ramble (if there was a point-LOL) was to remark on how different the retail landscape was back then, and even how business was done by some of these large retailers...they were pretty vertically integrated. (I don't know if this was the same with Sears, but I suspect it was-they were certainly large enough). It's a far cry from what we see today, and it's remarkable to see how shopping has largely been transformed from a real "bricks-and-mortar" experience to a virtual/web-based one. I guess that catalog sales were the cutting-edge equivalent back then of what the web has become today! Interesting to read of folks here who lived in catalog houses-wow!

Some interesting history here (most of which I didn't know): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Field%27s

[Brian]

Wow-just found this!: http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/2010/05/marshall-field-company-chicago.html

"The imposing building of Marshall Field & Company
was not only the second-largest department store in
the world, it was a Chicago landmark
and tourist attraction par excellence."

[beej]

When we were kids there were four main stores that we went to: Sears, Montgomery Ward, Western Auto, and on some rare occasions like Christmas we would go to what we considered the store of all stores, "Venture". which was probably about a 1\3 the size of most Walmarts today. They had it all there, LOL. walkie talkies that you could wear on your wrist, mood rings, black light posters...the possibilities were endless in that store. LOL

[Tim Johnson]

I remember going to the Sears store in Cincinnati as an eight year old and the elevator was like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The elevator guy would go to a floor, call out the floor number and state what was being sold. Every floor was the same process and for some reason I got a monster kick out of his show!

[Matthew Hajicek]

I remember going to Sears and begging my dad for an Atari 2600.

[jwillard@Kauffman]

One of my earliest childhood memories was going to Sears in Greenville SC back in the early 1960's.  We were poor, living in a rural area near a small town about 35 miles east of Greenville, and made the trip to Sears about once a year.  As a little boy, I was fascinated by the escalators, and spent my time riding them up and down the 3 floors while my parents did their shopping.

[Incogneeto]

One of my earliest childhood memories was going to Sears in Greenville SC back in the early 1960's.  We were poor, living in a rural area near a small town about 35 miles east of Greenville, and made the trip to Sears about once a year.  As a little boy, I was fascinated by the escalators, and spent my time riding them up and down the 3 floors while my parents did their shopping.

Dayuumm !! you're Old.