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    Dave Hamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 9:17am

    If we lose Sears, we lose the Sears’ catalog, and if we lose the Sear’s catalog where will young boys learn about sex without the lingerie section?

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      BrianGriffinDave
      4/25/16 9:19am

      Especially since Victoria is going to stop sending out her catalogs in the future.

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      ManchuCandidateDave
      4/25/16 9:20am

      Some place called the inter tubes (unless you’re in Utah) where there is plenty of something called free porn. At least that’s what I heard from Paul Harvey on the radio.

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    Rom RombertsHamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 9:32am

    I’d suggest going to these places just to experience how truly strange it feels to be inside of something that is very much in the terrifying, unstoppable process of dying, but also very much fighting, however uselessly, against that process.

    I once moved and had to wrangle new doctors to attend to various parts of my body - eyes, mouth area, the rest of it. After googling, I discovered that an eye doctor just a few miles away was both highly recommended in the way that things on the internet are highly recommended and willing to accept my insurance. His office, it turns out, was in the lower level of a terminally ill Sears store that was attached to a terminally ill mall complex. The eerie music, the complete lack of signage to direct me to my destination, the barely functioning everything, the ghost-white fluorescence, the empty aisles contrasted against the overwhelming onslaught of fresh marketing collateral (photos of mildly beautiful people smiling threatening smiles and announcing that all manner of saws and stoves were at closeout prices), and the lonely optometrist office set between what used to be an HR Block tax office and a former dentist’s office made for a perfectly existential Saturday morning.

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      EvenBaggierTrousers4Rom Romberts
      4/25/16 9:38am

      “The Craftsman tools? They’re over there in Hardware...”

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      Rom RombertsEvenBaggierTrousers4
      4/25/16 9:39am

      The signs say that the things in the store want to be purchased and taken home, but I swear when I reached to inspect a gas grill it recoiled from my touch and growled at me...almost like it simply wanted to be left alone.

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    norbiznessHamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 9:16am

    I’ve shopped at an actual Sears twice in the past few years (last minute Xmas gifts) and even during holiday season it was a mausoleum. There may have been 4 employees in the entire giant-ass place, and the other customers were mainly aged/migrant. I did ride the escalator although I didn’t need anything on the 2nd floor (for old time’s sake).

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      Eberle-Hills-Copnorbizness
      4/25/16 9:20am

      As a hack home-garage mechanic, Sears is the go-to for “shit I don’t have this tool and I need it right now”

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      norbiznessEberle-Hills-Cop
      4/25/16 9:23am

      Related: the main 90s mall in Austin (Highland) was turned into a giant community college branch. All hail the new economy.

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    HoldenCashHamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 11:17am

    This is bullshit. Sears should scale up and destroy not cower and fail.

    Seriously, the whole thing is based on wrong conclusions, by investors, business planners, analysts and consumers.

    Humans need things. It’s always going to be true.

    Sears has what Amazon could’t get with a Billion dollars: a centuries old distribution network to physical locations all over the country.

    Buying online is not a substitute for buying in person...it’s an extension of the store experience, not a replacement for it.

    Sears should scale up, pour money into promoting their online store and emphasize how their logistics make Amazon look like a snail.

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      notaquarterbackHoldenCash
      4/25/16 11:51am

      They need people who can help them think that nimble.

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      HippoposthumousHoldenCash
      4/25/16 12:19pm

      Hogwash.

      Amazon’s distribution network is lightyears beyond Sears’. You can have almost anything you want in under 24 hours; even when Sears was big, many purchases required waiting for fullfilment for a week or more.

      Buying online is ABSOLUTELY a replacement for buying in person, in many segments. Do you think it’s magic that every department store is declining while Internet sales take off? The near complete collapse of physical media?

      The only things that people need to buy in person, are things they need to try first (clothing is the big one) and perishables you don’t want to wait for (food). Some large purchases (cars, large appliances) though even then, the Internet is steadily eating away share.

      Sears can’t “scale up”, because they’re nearly bankrupt, BECAUSE YOU’RE WRONG.

      “Humans need things. It’s always going to be true.”

      Yep, and humans can have those things, for the best possible price, delivered for free almost immediately. What part of that is an “extension of the store experience”?

      Your premise is absolute nonsense, as evidenced by the collopse of retail. Obviously.

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    lobstrHamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 10:22am

    Our town has a big ol’ relic from the 1970s called Ridgmar Mall (Fort Worth, holla) .. and yes, though pronounced “Ridge-mar,” it’s actually spelled that way. [In their 1976-funk-induced haze, one of the developers were probably like “Fuck English language spelling conventions, amirite?!” and removed a requisite “e”] ..

    When I was a kid in the early 1980s, I dropped a playing card (ten of spades!) between two opposing escalators in JC Penney and for years whenever in that mall, I’d have to swing by JCP and “see if it was still there” which, of course it was, because who is going to bother cleaning between an inaccessible crack between escalators? And so about two weeks ago I’m there with my kids and took them to the shrine of the ten of spades. And there it was, over thirty years later, still wedged between them, right where I left it. They were excited and begged “can we drop something else and come back to check on it in the future??” ... And that’s when I had to sit ‘em down and tell ‘em the truth about the future. I felt like Doc Brown from Back to the Future... “You see, in 2046, this shit will be looong gone...” (I made no mention of Libyans)

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      PoimanentlyPuckeredlobstr
      4/25/16 10:30am

      Our town has a big ol’ relic from the 1970s called Ridgmar Mall (Fort Worth, holla) .. and yes, though pronounced “Ridge-mar,” it’s actually spelled that way. [In their 1976-funk-induced haze, one of the developers were probably like “Fuck English language spelling conventions, amirite?!” and removed a requisite “e”] ..

      Eh, I’m withholding judgment.

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      lobstrPoimanentlyPuckered
      4/25/16 10:54am

      Touché for that ..acknowledgment... ;p

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    Ed SpockHamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 9:36am

    I don’t care what happens, I’m always calling it the Sears Tower. Fuck this Willis Tower bullshit.

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      kamla deviEd Spock
      4/25/16 9:46am

      It’s 9:46am (EST) and you have already made the best internet comment of the day, possibly the week.

      Fuck Willis, it is and always will be the goddamn Sears Tower.

      However, IDGAF if Sears the department store disappears. Whatevs.

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      eats books and leaveskamla devi
      4/25/16 10:05am

      *EDT

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    DaJawnHamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 9:16am

    What about all the department store workers? Where will they go? How will they survive?

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      MolierthanthouDaJawn
      4/25/16 10:15am

      Walmart, duh.

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      JapaneseJustinBeiberblowupsexdollMolierthanthou
      4/25/16 10:16am

      Walmart is dying too bro.

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    IAMBlastedBiggsLostBurnerHamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 9:29am

    Sad, really. Brings back a lot of memories...playing video games at the displays, seeing a PC for the first time and already seeing how that little arrow would make it a lot easier to use, looking longingly at the lingerie displays, silently being terrorized by the mannequins and barely surviving the constant dread of a visualization of me trapped in the store overnight with them...

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      Y0UT00-ahh-Fuck-ItIAMBlastedBiggsLostBurner
      4/25/16 9:42am

      “...silently being terrorized by the mannequins and barely surviving the constant dread of a visualization of me trapped in the store overnight with them...”

      Muah-HA-hahahah:

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      IAMBlastedBiggsLostBurnerY0UT00-ahh-Fuck-It
      4/25/16 10:18am

      Man, in retrospect, maybe we should’ve NOT let the developers of 70s children’s shows do all those hallucinogens, because that shit right there is fucked up.

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    MiniatureamericanflagsforothersHamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 9:18am

    A reminder that Sears, the business catastrophe du jour, is run according to Rand’s Objectivist principles.

    http://www.inc.com/erik-sherman/s…

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      Wile_EMiniatureamericanflagsforothers
      4/25/16 9:43am

      I hate when websites don’t date their articles, because I can’t tell at a glance if this is from before or after Sears was bought by K-Mart.

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      MiniatureamericanflagsforothersWile_E
      4/25/16 9:46am

      At the bottom: “PUBLISHED ON: AUG 17, 2015"

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    Sid and FinancyHamilton Nolan
    4/25/16 9:28am

    I would worry about the effect of this criticism on the self-esteem of Sears employees, but they have Toughskins.

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      lobstrSid and Financy
      4/25/16 9:44am

      The Kenmore you know...

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      ElephanTitus Andronicuslobstr
      4/25/16 9:57am

      You two are a couple of real Craftsmen.

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