'Twas the other way around, though. As this article suggests, Sears was already circling in the Bemis for that to happen:
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There are more than a few Sears homes in a neighborhood a few miles from me.
My dad’s told me about these but I never saw one:
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We had one of those nearby (or maybe it was just an appliance showroom) until just a few years ago.
When I was a kid, there was a catalog store in town, which seems weird because there was a full-blown store in a shopping mall 3 or 4 miles away.
It’s absolutely vital to retain the talent that led you into this time of painful transition to provide their continued leadership during this painful transition, no?
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Walmart didn’t kill ToysRUs. ToysRUs was purchased by a venture capital firm in a leveraged buyout. The end result of every leveraged buyout we’ve seen so far is complete destruction of the target company. Boiled down to its essence, ToysRUs killed ToysRUs.
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Walmart did something similar out here in Spokane, building a massive new megamart just a block away from the long-standing Kmart and Grocery Outlet stores situated together outside of downtown (there’s also a Costco another block away, but that’s a bit of a different clientele). It’s the same story with the parking lots: Walmart is always full, Kmart is always almost completely empty. The Grocery Outlet closed down last month.
Thanks to all who’ve posted about Lampert. Last night I saw someone on Twitter talking about his “Ayn Rand’s Thunderdome” approach to store management, which just blew me away. It’s exactly the sort of thing an idiot with no understanding of human behavior would come up with. Internal competition rarely breeds success; more often than not it just turns into a back-stabbing cess pool of assholes trying to undermine each other to get ahead because it’s easier.
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I believe this may be one of the most concise explanations of Ayn Rand I’ve ever read. Well done!
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Harbor Freight is YMMV, but some of the tools are excellent. I’ve had their air nailers for ages, and recently bought some new ones, which are even better, and a small fraction of what a “name brand” cost. I also just repowered my snowblower with their Predator engine, again like 1/4 of the Honda it’s a copy of, and VERY highly thought of in the bike/go-cart/snowblower communities. (Yes, there’s a snowblower community!)
Regarding Craftsman, their power tools have never been warranted “Lifetime”, only the hand tools. And at least recently, like Kenmore, its just rebadged versions of other major vendors.
I thought it was Bain Capital. Does Anyone remember the early 90’s play/movie Other People’s Money? Exact same thing, nothing changes. As Rhett Butler said " there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up." American “Capitalists” are in the crack up stage.
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I figured this had always been the case, but wasn’t thinking of a possible difference between “rebadged” and “made to Sears’ specifications.” But I doubt that Sears ever made anything.
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We had one of those, off in the boonies west of Portland’s plusher suburbs. I bought a water filter there as I recall. It’s out of business, now.
Franchises like that could be the future of Sears. A modest outlet for appliances, tools, and spare parts and accessories.
My first credit card was from Sears. I got it thirty years ago so I could buy a SNES on an A1C’s salary. I have them to thank for a hard won lesson in how long it can take to recover from fiscal irresponsibility, and what a 20% interest rate can do to a person when they lose their job and the means of repaying debt.
Much like that freaking credit card, I won’t miss them.
This?
Sears rebranded the VCS as the “Video Arcade” for its Tele-Games line.
Atari continued their OEM relationship with Sears under the latter’s Tele-Games brand, which started in 1975 with the original Pong. (The company Telegames, which later produced cartridges for the 2600, is unrelated.)[50] Sears released several models of the VCS as the Sears Video Arcade series starting in 1977. (link)
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Fair enough. I’ve never bought anything at Harbor Freight, only seen things of others, and the catalog. There’s always some nuggets in the slurry, I reckon.
Sure I’ve been disappointed on occasion, but on the whole it’s well worth it. It allows me to buy tools for cheap I’d use once in a blue moon and otherwise couldn’t justify. I would not buy my “everyday” tools there.
Thanks for trying to find the system, but this isn’t the one. Mine pre-dates this, was silver, with two controllers set at an angle into the corners of the console. They could be removed. It looked more like something from the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
Sounds a bit like a (rebranded) Magnavox Odyssey. I know some old ones (pre-Odyssey 2) were built into the TV.
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i own a fully functional odyssey 2 with 14 games.
i also have a functional atari 2600 with 37 games, a colecovision with 26 games, a gameboy with 17 games, an n64 with 9 games, a gamecube with 15 games, and a wii with 31 games. i could open my own console museum.
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Retro game party at @navarro’s place…
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Found it … Google-Image “Unisonic Tournament 2000,” and you’ll behold the wonder of cutting edge home entertainment, circa 1980. That’s what we had!
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