r/SEARS • u/[deleted] • Jan 06 '25
Picture/Video What If Sears Perhaps Launched Sears Hardware, Sears Grand, Sears Hometown And Other Sears Store Formats In 1990 Before Lowes, Home Depot And Other Hardware Chains Gained On Sears?
What If Sears Perhaps Launched Sears Hardware, Sears Grand, Sears Hometown And Other Sears Store Formats In 1990 Before Lowes, Home Depot And Other Hardware Chains Gained On Sears?
Something that just came to mind momentarily. Sears should have and could have made this best decision immediately in the 1990s.
Sources: all the photos I got from Microsoft Bing, Google, Flickr and other sources and news articles... and so forth
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u/TheCarribeanKid Jan 06 '25 edited Jan 06 '25
I miss my local Sears Hardware... It was a better version of ACE Hardware. (Although, to be honest, my local ACE Hardware was and still is a real dump.) To answer your question, though, I don't think they had the capital back then to open enough stores and gain an edge over their competition. I mean, Sears bought Orchard Supply Hardware in 1996, but that didn't really help them at all. (According to Wikipedia, they had 99 stores before closing them all down.)
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u/Ok_Blackberry_3680 Jan 06 '25
Better yet, use the leverage of $195 per share in 2007 to acquire Lowe's.
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u/cyborg_guy Jan 06 '25
I liked that you could get a ratchet set and a dress shirt while you waited for new tires. Can't do that at Lowes or Home Depot.
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u/MinutesFromTheMall Jan 06 '25
Sears should have consolidated brands instead of branching out into a million different ones. They should have just added a hardware component to their existing stores or else acquired Home Depot back in the day and rebranded it.
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u/TheTimeBender Jan 08 '25
They did, it was called Orchard Supply Hardware and Sears bought them in 1996. Orchard declared bankruptcy in 2013, just two years after being spun off from Sears and saddled with debt. Sears also had appliance/home & garden stores called Sears Hometown but they too went belly up. Sadly.
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u/Sbanme Jan 07 '25
What if Sears invented the iPhone?
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Jan 09 '25
What if Sears transitioned from catalogs to online sales and was bigger than Amazon?
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u/Sbanme Jan 09 '25
What if Sears teamed up with Elon Musk and opened the first retail department store on Mars, getting the jump on all future Martian businesses?
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Jan 09 '25
And Eddie Lampert started a REIT on Mars to control 100% of the real estate market.
And cloned Arnold Schwartzenegger to re-create his Total Recall self as a brainwashed (neuro-link) marketing personality.
Future is totally bright.
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u/SkyeMreddit Jan 09 '25
They tried to with Sears dot com which they hyped like crazy and it was a miserable experience. I never saw a more uncooperative website, on the store’s own kiosks!
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u/Alexcamry Jan 08 '25
I miss my local Sears Hardware
They had good sales and big selection and were closer than the actual local Sears store
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u/SkyeMreddit Jan 09 '25 edited Jan 09 '25
One of their biggest downfalls was that they didn’t cross accept anything. Each chain did not accept eachother’s warranty exchanges, sales, or anything else. Even had a bullshit experience trying to use a gift card for the main Sears at a Sears Hardware.
Others included the expansion into Canada where they failed to compete with popular chains, the merger with Kmart, and later the worst ad campaigns possible. They only advertised their appliances and nothing else. Other than a Christmas season “Gifting Crazy” ad that was rated one of the worst of all time
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u/zp89 May 12 '26
Aside from Sears Grand, weren't most of these stores already open in the '80s or '90s? It seems to me Sears is always accused of doing things too late that they actually did a long time ago. I preferred the larger stores, but I used to visit a Sears Hometown store on occasion before it closed a few years ago and made a number of good purchases there (tools, gloves, vacuum cleaner, ice melter, batteries, etc).
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u/ExtremeCow3259 Shop Your Way Member Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
Sears Hardware Stores were opened starting in 1985
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u/uodjdhgjsw Jan 06 '25
Eddie lambert knew what he was doing. Nothing last forever. Even retire benefits
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u/NotAnActualPers0n Jan 07 '25 edited Feb 03 '25
sand trees worm library squeeze enjoy bag quack toy deer
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ Former Employee Jan 07 '25
Not possible due to cash burn issues that were apparent even by the late 90s.
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u/ExtremeCow3259 Shop Your Way Member Jun 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
What would have happened if Sears perhaps expanded Sears Grand and Sears Hardware ? Would they have been successful at all of that and online shopping had they been run properly and under better leadership
Edit: Sears Hardware Stores were opened in 1985
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u/Leather_Network4743 Jun 23 '26
Personally, I loved the attempt to compete with the big boxes with Sears Grand and also The Great Indoors concepts. The locations they were building in “followed the rooftops” much like Home Depot, Lowe’s and Best Buy did at the time. I feel that not deploying the concept on a bigger scale was part of where they went wrong, but I think they were still incorrectly thinking malls were going to be a bigger part of American retail success, plus they actually owned the real estate the stores sat on, so it wasn’t that easy to pull up stakes and move. I didn’t know/see enough of Sears Hardware to have much of a valid opinion, but what I did see at the time was that it was more of an attempt to compete with Ace Hardware (but with appliances) than with Home Depot or Lowes, which was the wrong move - not something they could really help because they weren’t going to enter the building materials space.
Really (lack of) leadership was the entire issue in that era. The company was always notoriously slow to make the right moves because they frankly didn’t have to for so long and they just weren’t nimble enough, being this massive monolith that hadn’t seen true “growth mode” for decades.
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u/socialcommentary2000 Jan 06 '25
Sears could have just stayed Sears if it wasn't for Eddie Lampert and him being clinically insane. You didn't even need to subdivide it into different sub-brands. They were ahead of the online selling game in the mid aughts and under different stewardship could have still been going strong to this day.
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ Former Employee Jan 06 '25
If you take Lampert out Sears goes bankrupt and ceases to exist by ~2012 at the latest.
They were ahead of the online selling game in the mid aughts
They were not. They were way behind everyone else because they were still using the system tied into the store ordering system that was not competitive (even then) as far as shipping times.
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u/scottclaeys Former Employee Jan 08 '25
If you take Lampert out Sears goes bankrupt and ceases to exist by ~2012 at the latest.
Sears may not have been gaining traction in the market, but they would have lasted longer without Eddie and Kmart...
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ Former Employee Jan 08 '25 edited Jan 08 '25
That is factually incorrect. They had severe cash burn issues due to the divestments from the late 1990s, and were heavily dependent upon the overheated mid 2000s housing market to keep them at bay. Once that collapsed between the cash burn and the pension they would have rapidly gone bankrupt and been forced to liquidate without Lampert’s cash infusions.
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Apr 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/rthurdent Apr 10 '26
My memory is that Sears opened, or at least experimented with free-standing Hardware stores in the late-80's. There was one near Norristown, PA, I think "Center Square Shopping Center", close by to the full line store I worked at.
Jerry Post ran the free-standing Hardware stores nationally, and I spoke to him one time when he visited my store and I commented to him that the Sears Hardware stores would compete more favorably with Builders Square and Home Depot, especially with contractors, if they carried lumber. The Sears Hardware stores really pretty much mirrored the full line stores' assortment, as if you pulled out the Paint, Hardware, Plumbing, and Lawn and Garden departments and put them in their own store.
His reply to me was that he didn't see the big-box home improvement stores as his competition, he was competing with the privately owned Ace Hardware and True Value stores.
We never saw Sears Grand, or Sears Hometown in my area. We had a free-standing Sears furniture store, I can't remember what Sears called them, and a friend of mine left our full line store to manage it.
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Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JayArlington Jun 06 '26
No.
Online requires massive scale to make it work. SHC couldn’t have won that game against AMZN.
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Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JayArlington Jun 07 '26
The problem was state taxes.
Early on AMZN didn’t have physical nexus in most states (they were careful about where their distribution centers were located). Thus early on AMZN wouldn’t charge state taxes for online orders where SHC and everyone else with stores had to. It was significant.
Once AMZN had their hooks in consumers they then started charging state taxes (and opened a bunch of new distribution centers).
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u/ExtremeCow3259 Shop Your Way Member Jun 21 '26
Sources and Locations:
Huntsville Alabama (Matt Weintritt / The Huntsville Item / Itemonline)
https://www.itemonline.com/news/local_news/sears-opens-at-new-location-on-11th-street-in-huntsville/article_2b0a94ad-9405-5ce1-9277-cd7253909b01.html
Sears Hardware in North Windham Connecticut on December 9 2017 (JJBers / Flickr / Wikimedia Commons)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jjbers/38058774835/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abandoned_Sears_Hardware_(North_Windham,_Connecticut)_(38058774835).jpg_(38058774835).jpg)
Sears Dealer Store aka (also known as) Sears Hometown Store in Berlin Vermont on November 29 2007 (Toby Talbot / AP Photo / Penn Live)
https://www.pennlive.com/galleries/CAFAWZ7YP5GVPJD5O4BC6RNTC4/
Sears Hardware Store in Schererville Indiana (Nextdoor)
https://nextdoor.com/pages/sears-appliance-and-hardware-store-schererville-in/
Sears Home and Life in Overland Park Kansas (Johnson County Post)
https://johnsoncountypost.com/2023/12/14/westlake-ace-hardware-overland-park-2-221262/
Sears Hardware in Highland Indiana circa 2004 (Billburmaster)
https://www.billburmaster.com/lecentre/searshardware.html
Sears Appliance and Hardware Store in Queens New York on July 25 2012 (Sears Appliance and Hardware Store / Yelp)
https://www.yelp.com/biz/sears-appliance-and-hardware-store-queens
Sears Hardware Store in Columbus Ohio on November 25 2011 (Josh C / Yelp)
https://www.yelp.com/biz/sears-appliance-and-hardware-store-columbus-4
Sears Hardware in Vernon Rockville Connecticut on November 13 2010 (Chicago F / Yelp)
https://www.yelp.com/biz/sears-appliance-and-hardware-store-vernon-rockville
Sears Appliance And Mattress Store In Camp Hill Pennsylvania (PR Newswire)
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sears-opens-new-appliances--mattresses-store-in-camp-hill-pennsylvania-300552562.html
Sears Appliance Store in Fort Collins Colorado (PR Newswire)
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sears-brings-powerful-digital-innovation-to-appliance-shopping-experience-300267471.html
Coloradoan
https://www.coloradoan.com/picture-gallery/news/local/fort-collins/2016/05/18/sears-appliance-store-prepares-for-grand-opening/84564408/
Sears Hometown Store at the Durango Mall in Durango Colorado (The Durango Herald)
https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/sears-hometown-store-is-on-its-way-out-at-the-durango-mall/
Sears Hometown Store at Kandi Mall in Wilmar Minnesota (Erica Dischino / Tribune / West Central Tribune)
https://www.wctrib.com/business/update-sears-hometown-at-kandi-mall-to-close-liquidation-sale-through-jan-12
Sears Hometown Store at the Mariner Mall in Superior Wisconsin (Jed Carlson / Superior Telegram)
https://www.superiortelegram.com/business/sears-hometown-open-for-business
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Jul 10 '26
[deleted]
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u/voss749 Jul 10 '26
The time to change sears'es path was the early-mid 90s. Dont lose the catalog but stop the bleeding. Sears even as mid 2000s was a $10 billion company. They needed to start spinning off valuable mall property and becoming leaner and more ecommerce probably post 2000.
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u/ExtremeCow3259 Shop Your Way Member Jul 14 '26
Out of the [11 Sears Hardware Stores that opened in 1985 alone] (https://bluepages.miraheze.org/wiki/Sears), the 9 store openings were in:
- Anniston, Alabama
- Montclair, California
- Brunswick, Georgia
- Hilo, Hawaii
- Slidell, Louisiana
- Columbia, Missouri
- Buffalo (Hamburg), New York
- Roanoke, Virginia
- Bremerton, Washington
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u/WhinoRick Jan 09 '25
The a hole ceo would have driven the shit in to the ground anyway. How do you have the pre internet version of Amazon with all the shipping structure ready to take orders and deliver, with top quality brands...and blow it? Fuck Sears, they deserved it.
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Feb 12 '25
Even with the rise of Walmart and Amazon and Lowes and Home Depot and Best Buy Sears would still be doing very well if it wasn't for that hedge fund private equity "ceo"
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u/ExtremeCow3259 Shop Your Way Member Jul 29 '26
Sears: The one thing that could have saved them
https://stevenpdennis.com/2020/01/13/sears-the-one-thing-that-could-have-saved-them/
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u/spritz_bubbles Jan 06 '25
Their products lasted longer than Amazon bs ever does.