Driving Results

Introduction

SEARS IS AN extraordinary study in corporate change. It grew its fortunes as a mail‐order retailer. Its first mail order catalog was in 1883, selling watches and jewelry. By 1896, the iconic Sears catalog included bicycles, clothes, groceries, pianos, medical supplies, cars, and even kits to build houses. The mail‐order retailer filled a great need as our country spread out to small, rural towns and family farms with few nearby retail outlets.

Then, as Americans increasingly moved to cities and suburbs and had greater access to shopping centers and malls in the latter half of the twentieth century, Sears adapted. It reduced its reliance on mail order and was instead an anchor store for malls all over the country. It became the largest retailer in the world, and it had the extraordinary deftness to alter its business model from mail order to brick and mortar. In 1993, it ceased producing its famed catalog altogether.

But then the company became stale. Its name and brands lost their luster. Business drastically declined as Walmart superstores and other big box stores grew, along with other specialty retailers such as Best Buy and Home Depot. Its management team had lost the agility or foresight that had been demonstrated in the not‐too‐distant past.

Then, ironically, came Amazon, in effect today's dominant mail order retailer. Sears attempted to recreate its former extraordinary mail‐order (that is, online) business, but the effort failed. The Amazon juggernaut further ...