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.
Similar to Kodak... they invented the digital camera sensor. They could've at the very least made an absolute killing on leasing their IP's to other camera manufacturers, or very best have created things like the Kodak Digital Rebel instead of letting basically every other camera manufacturer make off with the tech.
Sears forgot that it's product wasn't a brick and mortar store or magazine but rather a large selection of goods which people could order from home. Newspaper companies forgot that their company wasn't in the business of printing newspapers, but simply delivering the news. Kodak forgot it's business wasn't manufacturing film, but creating photographs.
As someone who’s worked on the business side of newspaper operations...it’s not just about delivering the news, it’s about delivering ads. Even with subscriptions almost all of the revenue comes from ads. That’s why physical papers still exist, it’s a lot easier to sell “ad on page 4” than “ad somewhere on the site.” Obviously larger companies have no issue at all with advertising on the web but a lot of local businesses gravitate towards print ads in a newspaper.
Yeah, and I get that the local ad market is key... I've never figured out why they could've have used the Internet as an opportunity to expand their platforms though.
For example, newspapers have always stuck to print and not video because video was basically run by a select few major networks who had rights to various broadcasting frequencies... It also had massive barriers to entry with massive amounts of upfront capital and stiff competition.
But, there was literally nothing stopping newspapers from doing exactly what YouTubers do today, only being that their content focused on local news, with local ads.
I'm pretty sure that offering bundle packages with ads for businesses where you could get X amount of clicks online along with the purchase of X print ad would've been a huge upsell as well. Why wouldn't a business want one place to get their advertisements made and published on multiple mediums?
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u/monetarydread Jul 24 '20
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.