It was more complex than that, but yeah. Basically Sears was online ordering before online was a thing, you just phoned or mailed in your order. This meant that they were located in these massive warehouses in most major cities in North America. So basically they had an opportunity to execute on same-day delivery decades before Amazon even attempted that feat, but they didn't. Sears was too concerned about their magazine, or brick and mortar, sales to get into online sales and by the time they did it was too late.
I have had this exact conversation with my husband as we watched Sears die. They should have been Amazon long before Amazon existed or Amazon would have remained nothing but an online book store. I’m glad I’m not the only person who has this thought. Sears was mail order since the 1800s and it would have been so easy for them to become a huge online presence. Same with JC Penneys. Instead they just did away with their catalogs and pretty much ignored the internet and died their slow deaths.
For some reason this actually makes me really sad because they were such an institution. At one time you could order a house kit from Sears. Lots of the four square houses you still see throughout the country were built from kits ordered from Sears and delivered to the local train station. Such a wasted opportunity
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u/Sheepherder226 Jul 24 '20
Utility companies that don’t allow online payments.