My grandmother (99 at her death last October) talked about going down to the train station with her father to get the crate from Sears Roebuck of canned food for the winter each year when she was growing up. My dad and his generation loved Sears, if you broke a hand tool, just return it and get a replacement. He still has a beautiful chrome jigsaw that was HIS grandfather’s. Nevermind Craftsman houses, Sears represented a level of retail service for America’s rural individualist/DIY’r that hasn’t been sufficiently matched today, at least in my mind.
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I used to work with someone whose husband was one of the managers of their online presence. They went in pretty early, and while it was wildly successful compared to their stores at the time, it was never talked about. It’s one of many companies you can look back at and see they had a solution literally in hand and did nothing with it. Online is a natural evolution of their game-changing catalog system.
The retail stores that are surviving, and some thriving, are ones that avoid the Amazon trap. Amazon is quickly getting into the junk category. They sell just too much, and so much of it is from resellers who are just using them as another platform. The stores selling quality things, or things you really need to touch and feel to decide, are doing pretty well.
There’s nothing that Sears is selling that you cannot get at Macy’s, Kohl’s, or similar department stores, and the tool lines were sold off long ago. By being so generic, they made themselves replaceable.
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I have a Craftsman socket set I got from my parents as a young lady. It’s served me faithfully over the years. I’ve somehow managed to not lose a piece from it, and if I ever do I know I’ll be very sad. Hard to get that sort of quality for a decent price these days.
I have the same memory of Sears. Last time I was there a few years ago, just before they closed permanently, it was nothing like it used to be. Same sort of feel as Zellers before they closed, and the same sort of feel I get when I go to the Bay nowadays. Wonder how long the last big Canadian department store will last?
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I think Canadian Tire will be the last one standing, though not really a department store (unless you consider hip waders “clothing”) We get most of our housewares there now…just got a pretty good wok for 20$, you won’t get that on Amazon…just like Sears, though; only buy tools on sale 
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First of all, the appliances were rock-solid performers. Big stuff (washers, dryers, stoves, etc.), medium stuff like sewing machines, and even smaller things like toasters and blenders.
Secondly, it was well into its decline by 20 years ago. You’d have to go back a lot further to understand what a service it provided: people all over the country could order things and they would be delivered by the USPS. We’re talking 100 years before Amazon. You could even get a HOUSE delivered to whatever address you gave. It still needed to be put together, but all the parts would be there.
Sure, now it’s a has-been, but once upon a time it was a marvel.
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Ahhh…the whole Sears story is so fucking depressing. I have a Kenmore freezer in the basement I bought used from a friend for $25. It was at least 10 years old when I got it and I’ve had for 30 years. Still running strong. My father recently passed, so I ended up with a bunch of Craftsman mechanics tools still in very good working condition that are older than me. And Craftsman lawn tractors? You could look at them two ways. They were reasonably priced so you could just work the shit out of them and them throw them away after they wore out in 8 or 9 years. Or, thanks to an awesome and very deep parts inventory, you could continuously rebuild as long as the engine was good. My brother has one that was manufactured in the mid seventies and still cuts the grass like a champ. And as a pioneer in the mail order business, how could they totally miss being an early adopter of the “newfangled” internet? Too little, too late, and then Eddie “The Self-Serving Dick” Lampert finished them off. Pity.
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And another fun trivia note: Montgomery Ward put his reputation on the line, as well as oodles of money, to convince the City of Chicago to accept Daniel Burnham’s city plan which included keeping the lakefront for public use, not private.
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Yes - my socket set is mostly whole - but the box it came in - i cracked the plastic lid so it doesnt shut well 
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Holy crap, a serial killer could have the grandest time back in 1902!
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Yeah, CT is a totally different ballgame in my mind, not sure why exactly. Maybe because they don’t really do apparel.
Oh no! I’m sure mine will bite it eventually, but it’s still holding up, 20 odd years later!
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Local stores “down south” would have Sears catalog burning parties, because of the resentment toward the company for service Blacks.
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Not even quite that long ago, they sold musical instruments (my first guitar & amp came from there). And it always smelled of popcorn 
Of course, back then, even many supermarkets had a record & tape section.
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“My” Sears, the one my family shopped at when I was a kid in the 60s/70s, was at the time second busiest in the world, after Honolulu’s.
Ah, fond memories of the “Husky” boy’s section. AKA, fat kids section.
The place was huge for 1960s retail. Lots and lots of departments, a restaurant, the candy counter, and a seperate snack counter that sold wonderful frappes. (Generating sales for the fat kids section.)
At the beginning of Christmas season, the basement opened up to make room for the toy land and Santa’s throne room. I remember a big mural in the stair well.
Well, I’m now kind of afraid to see if the Hicksville, NY Sear’s is still open.
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And it was just books, for that matter. Then CDs. My kids are adolescents now, but IIRC it wasn’t until around or after they were born that I might check Amazon for anything else.
(My other recollection is that, in the meantime, Amazon ran the online ordering for Target, Borders and, I think, Toys R Us.)
ETA:
In my office at work there’s a Montgomery Ward personal fridge, still working (but hasn’t been defrosted since before Covid).
Was it a Sears around there that had an indoor mural with the counties of Long Island? Didn’t go there often, but I do remember that.
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Sadly we didn’t realize that the lifetime limiting the guarantee was that of Sears, rather than the customer.
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I shed a tear when we lost Eaton’s. To me that was the ultimate Canadian department store. I loved going in them. I also miss Woodward’s. They still had a lunch counter, like department stores in the '30s did! My mom taking me to the lunch counter at Woodward’s in the 1980s was a special treat. I don’t miss Woolco. That place was basically trash. I also miss HomeTown though. Like a small town hardware store, but you could buy one 2x4 if you wanted. Like Home Depot, except you could actually find stuff and the staff knew what they were doing.
I kinda feel like big box stores have ruined every market segment, honestly.
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I think in many cases the difficulty is that the businesses who had all the other stuff in place already - ordering, logistics, etc. - couldn’t or didn’t want to see the need to incorporate the internet.
It’s easy to say now that the web was clearly going to be the place everyone does everything including shopping but if you’ve already got massive investment in the systems that are doing well for you now, deciding to invest massively in untried and as far as you’re concerned unnecessary and probably dead end systems like “the internet” is really hard to justify.
I’d say Amazon’s major ‘innovation’ was being able to find people willing to fund a loss making business for far longer than any rational person would usually be prepared to pour money down the drain.
It’s hard to remember now that Amazon is this giant money-making, tax avoiding behemoth but they were the Ur-Über in terms of running massive losses for years in the hope of building monopoly or near monopoly market share.
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We were married Thanksgiving weekend in 1984 in Detroit and within 4 hours drive time from Toronto. We would spend most anniversaries in Toronto because it wasn’t a holiday for them and everything was open and bustling.
Eaton Centre was awesome, still is, around the holidays. Plus, no matter what the weather, you could wander around underground for hours and hours. That multi story Eaton store was reminiscent of Hudson’s in Downtown Detroit.
We look forward to going back there, we’re hoping for our 40th anniversary in 3 years things will be back to normal.
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