How Did Sears Once Become The Nation's Biggest Retailer

Sears, Roebuck and Co began in the 19th century and sold farm supplies and consumer items as a small mail order company. The first Sears retail store opened up in Chicago on the 2nd February 1925 in the building named the Merchandise. This store had included a soda fountain and an optical shop. The first detached and separate retail store opened up on the 5th October 1925 in a city called Evansville in Indiana. During the summer season in 1928 3 more Chicago department stores opened newly, one on the 63rd and Western a second on the south side at Kenwood and 77th, and the third at north side at Lawrence and Winchester Street. In 1929

Our recommendation is to take Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD) private through a private equity buyout. After doing so, we recommend implementing a centralized management structure and recruiting retail-savvy executives for the upper management team. We then recommend focusing on increasing value by capitalizing on SHLD’s real estate holdings through leasing agreements and increasing partnerships with complementary enterprises. Also, we recommend improving employee retention rates and retaining exclusive rights to private brands. Finally, we recommend focusing on a long-term strategy to continue to maximize SHLD’s ecommerce platforms. We believe these recommendations will lead to long-term stability through increases in customer base and

By 1895, Sears’s mail order business was gaining market acceptance and the Sears catalog expanded to 532 items consisting of ‘soup to nuts’ products for their customers (Sears Archive, 2012), supporting the theory that early innovators do not have a restriction on what they bring to market (Innovation Zen, 2006). Sears’s core competencies are innovation, selling, advertising, and merchandising (Sears Archive, 2012).

The industry we have chosen is the department store-retail industry. Within this industry, we have chosen the department stores of JCPenney and Macy’s. We find this industry, as well as these two companies, interesting from a strategic perspective. JCPenney has recently undergone a massive strategic restructuring in regards to its pricing, brand offerings, and store layout, pushing it away from the typical department store strategy of discounts and coupons. Its new strategy has become much closer to Wal-Mart’s strategy of every day low prices. Macy’s, on the other hand, has restructured with a push from the economic

Through analysis, it is evident that the company must be restructured entirely through the implementation of a differentiation strategy. This strategy will focus solely on transforming the company into a retail chain providing competitively priced appliances, electronics, furniture and home décor. While maintaining a strategically competitive price point, Sears will be able to maintain competitive prices to draw consumers

the second largest retailer of the national chains. In the environmental analysis you will discover that Sears’ marketing toward women differentiated them from their competitor’s and increased their sales as well as their market share. They have had many social/cultural problems that they have had to overcome,

Sears began its journey in 1886 when a Chicago jewelry company shipped some gold-filled watches to an unsuspecting jeweler in a Minnesota hamlet. Richard W. Sears was an agent of the Minneapolis and St. Louis railway station in North Redwood, Minnesota. Sears’s job as station agent left him plenty of spare time, so he sold lumber and coal to local residents on the side to make extra money. Later, when he received a shipment of watches, unwanted by a neighboring Redwood Falls jeweler, Sears purchased them himself. He sold the watches at a nice profit to other station agents up and down the line, and then ordered more for resale. In 1886 Sears began the R.W. Sears Watch Company in Minneapolis. The following year, Sears moved his business to Chicago and inserted a classified ad in the Chicago Daily News for a watchmaker. Enter Alvah C. Roebuck. Here began the association of two young men, both still in their twenties, to make their names famous. For it was in 1893 that the corporate name of the firm became Sears, Roebuck and Co was created. By the time Sears was created, rural farmers were infuriated with the outrageous costs of buying supplies from the general store. Thanks to volume buying, to the railroads and post office, and later to rural free delivery and parcel post, Sears, Roebuck and Co. became a welcome change to farmers. At the close of its 2000 fiscal year, Sears operated 863 mall-based retail stores, most with co-located Sears Auto Centers, and an additional

They have stable revenue for women and men but the children department’s sale has increased after 2007. Sear’s clothing quality and prices are a little less than the Bay and this lets the lower income families to take advantage. For the cosmetics category that includes makeup, soaps and personal hygiene products they estimated to account for 16% of total revenue of industry. Furniture and household appliances has decreased sell but the store increased sell for toys and hobbies. Their video games and children department per household always increase because they have a special price for this product (Chris Clark, n.d). Sears does not get more revenue for jewelleries. The jewellery department at sears is a lot less attractive with having older style units of shelves and decors and much smaller jewellery selection than the Hudson’s Bay. It also often carries less expensive and lower class products that the Hudson’s Bay. Sears has a general merchandise catalogue with over 1,400 catalogues merchandise pickup locations. Customers can order products online or by using the computerized systems at catalogue pick up locations. Sadly, due to Sears’s wrong marketing strategies, poor image and careless customer service, the company’s sells dropped significantly. This left the company no choice but to reduce the number of stores. As a result, Sears had to close down many of its large stores in Canada in

The following pages focus on providing a strategic analysis of Sears Holding Corporation. The introduction reveals the issues that the paper addresses. The Company Presentation section reveals important facts in Sears' evolution. The Strategy Debates Section discusses theoretical issues applied to the situation of Sears. This is followed by the Strategic Decisions section that provides a series of recommendations that can help Sears improve its situation. The Implementation Challenges section provides important issues that can be considered challenges of strategic implementation.

JC Penney had to undergo and withstand several competitive issues to include changing of brand image, selling strategy and marketing strategy. JC Penney also had to account for Environmental Factors to include: a population that continued to age and also unemployment rates. JC Penney tried to influence customers by portraying an everlasting sale. No matter how hard JC Penney tried to market their products, if people didn’t

There were also proprietary brands that were held by both Kmart and Sears, and with the merger it would be easier to get those brands out to the target demographics. Making each

The retailer will continue to see aggressive competition from Target, Wal-Mart, JCPenney, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Home Depot and Lowes. These companies are some of the national retailers that Sears will have to contend with in order to survive. According to Sears Holding 2011, annual 10K Report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Home Depot and Lowes are the company’s most fierce rivals of the major appliance category in which Sears accounts for nearly “16% of its entire revenue” (p.5). This fierce market positioning battle between its competitors will be a major obstacle for Sears to overcome. Sears continues to try to move forward as the company’s efficiencies in fixed assets continued

Best Buy, a familiar retailer in the technology world, is struggling to stay on top. Online and mass stores have cornered the market in terms of convenience, customer service and price matching. The recent closing of over two hundred stores alongside falling sales has experts predicting that the giant won’t be in business long. Using a results-only work environment (ROWE), Best Buy has removed the customer from the equation and forced many employees out. A marketing disaster, Best Buy must change its marketing strategy from sales-based to a customer-based to stay afloat.

Due to slow sales and less traffic at both Sears and Kmart, the two have decided to merge creating one entity named Sears Holdings. Kmart has agreed to buy Sears for $11 Billion. This puts Sears Holdings at the third largest retailer behind Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Although Wal-Mart is a direct competitor with Kmart, Sears Holdings goal is not to compete with Wal-Mart directly, but find areas that have been overlooked by other retailers, and take advantage of the expanded line of products the new company has to offer. Sears has had higher sales than Kmart, so hundreds of Kmart’s will be transformed into Sears stores. As of now, most of Sears 870 stores are only found in malls. The new strategy would be to open Sears stores in current

As we can see Sears owns different companies/products within its business. Another strength is that this company has many employees because it has so many different locations around the U.S. By having lots of locations you are going to have many employees, which is great. In one article I read I was able to see some of the weaknesses. As stated, “Sears Holdings spent $5.8 billion buying back shares from 2005 to 2010, draining the company 's capital. Now, it has a major cash flow problem” (Rittenhouse, 2017). This shows that this company has to buy back it shares because if it does not they will lose more money than they are even producing. Another weakness that I read was, “From allegedly rude employees to poor customer service, even loyal customers have lost trust in the company” (Rittenhouse, 2017).