yeah, me too. It was my roommate’s computer, and it may have still been '98 when he started using it. I actually ordered my first online purchase using bluelight.com dial-up. a book from amazon. because amazon was a bookstore.
also, that fast-forward past the store-fronts at the beginning is Royal Oak, MI. The NOIR Leather sign gives it away.
Staffed by Sims characters who have powerful AE*
*Artificial Ennui.
Sears really missed the boat on the whole catalog business – they got out of catalog sales in 1993 as their brilliant corporate minds thought that catalog shopping was obsolete. If they had more vision, they could have been Amazon before Amazon by taking their catalog to the web. (Yes, I know they have a web store now, but too little too late).
I wonder if the now defunct retail store Service Merchandise, which was a slightly higher-end version of Kmart, could have used something like this for better inventory control. I briefly worked with a former Service Merchandise employee who was quite gleeful about how easy it was to steal from the store. Customers would pull a tag from a floor model of, say, a big-screen TV. Somebody in the warehouse in the back would pull it and the customer could drive around to the dock in the back to have it loaded into their car. It was, he told me, just as easy to pull two and have a friend back there to receive it.
And somehow no one ever noticed.
No love for that really sweet two-point hand swoop she does going for that icon? Call it a fetish, but for some reason I could watch that all day.
I just did this. I found a good deal on a new gas stove and went around to the local appliance stores to see if anyone could match the price, since it was online through the Whirlpool Outlet. I figured they might have an open box item or scratch and dent, or just a big sale. It turns out that they barely carry stoves in any of the stores these days and have just a few on the floor. All the stores will help you order one from their website.
Nonetheless, it was very helpful to talk with actual staff about some of the options I was considering and the Home Depot guy in particular was a whiz at working their whole inventory system alongside their web page. I actually felt bad that I couldn’t order from him as it turned out the appliance was quite a good deal. I appreciate how much time the different people I went to spent helping me to determine that I should not buy from them.
It was “where service is state of the art”.
Towards the end, they had a similar method to order on computers, but it might have only been to improve the front-end experience but not the back-end of the house.
Here’s our local Kmart, as of 2015:
Edit: I really can’t imagine what they’re going to put there. There’s already a Target about a mile down the road, a Wal-Mart 4 miles north and another 4 miles south. Maybe one of them neighborhood Wal-Marts? But in all likelihood I expect a church will move in.
Yo dawg, I herd you like Kmart, so we put some Kmart in your Kmart so you can shop at Kmart while you shop at Kmart.
I had that for a while, too. Over time it became slower and increasingly frustrating to connect and stay connected. Finally bit the bullet and started paying for dialup.
Jesus, I shop at Kmart. What crawled up your ass and died?
Oh, wait, was it GoT?
I used that, too! And NetZero, I think – a disc I was handed on a visit to Boston.
What is this “K-Mart?”
And you know, I’ve been wondering if we’ll be seeing a return to Sears’ idea of catalog showrooms. Originally, Sears was a mail order company. While they operated a bunch of department stores, they also had showrooms where you could go look at a product before you ordered it. These showrooms didn’t really carry products other than accessories. You’d browse, place an order, and then either pick it up there or have it delivered.
I’ve been hearing how many people are browsing Best Buy and other stores, then going home and ordering the chosen item off Amazon. If they fold because of it, I wonder if Amazon will start opening catalog showrooms of their own- Go in, browse products hands-on, and just swipe your credit card to see the item delivered to your address on file the next day…
In a sense, Amazon is just today’s version of Sears in 1898.
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