I went to Sears today to buy a shop vac.
Not many years ago, that wouldn’t have been a strange statement. Now, it’s a little different. First, I had to find one. Sears used to be in every mall around. They were a fixture. One generally could point in the direction of their local Sears store.
Some of you might even be asking the question “Sears is still around?” I know I asked that question when I found out a certain Craftsman shop vac was the most powerful vacuum in its class, and one of the places it was listed for purchase was Sears.
I also was pretty sure that Craftsman tools were now sold by Ace Hardware. (They are, among other outlets. The Craftsman brand is now owned by Stanley Black & Decker.) But this particular shop vac wasn’t listed on the review site for sale at Ace, so I found a Sears store nearby, and off I went.
This particular Sears is in a dying mall. We pulled into the parking lot and easily found a space near the entrance. If I can find a spot near an entrance on a Saturday afternoon, your mall is on the way out. But I digress.
We entered the store and found the tool department. On the way there, I noticed that the place was nearly empty – not just of customers, but of anyone. When we got to tools, it was even emptier. We were the only people in the place. I quickly found the shop vac, snagged it off the shelf, and began to look for a register to checkout. There were none to be found. I didn’t see a sign for one anywhere.
I’m sure I looked like a lost sheep wandering the aisles with my shop vac in my arms, looking puzzled, but nobody approached me. I finally found a man sitting at a computer. He appeared to be taking a test. He didn’t acknowledge my presence. Another guy came up to speak to him. This guy had a Sears badge on. He ignored me. As a third person approached with a Sears badge on, I planted myself and my shop vac in her path and asked the location of the checkout. She looked at me as if I was blind, and said “It’s right over here.”
“Where?” I responded, looking around.
“Come on, I’ll get you checked out.”
I followed her around the corner to two registers on a small countertop in the appliance area. These were the least conspicuous registers I’d ever seen. Also, no sign labeled “checkout.” No other way to tell you were supposed to check out there.
Long story short: Sears is dying a slow death, with good reason. It’s a disaster.
Retail store bankruptcies are becoming as common as the cold, and the names seem to be getting bigger, and bigger. Toys R Us is the most recent big player to die, but it hasn’t been so long since Circuit City, Borders, Linens & Things, Radio Shack, Sports Authority, and many other big names were around. Many of my peers in marketing will tell you that retail is dead. I find it hard to look at an industry where 80% of purchases are still made in-store, and call that dead. Is it changing? Absolutely – every industry has to evolve over time as technologies and consumer needs change. Is it struggling with that change? I think some have, and we’re seeing the fallout of that struggle. Sears is part of that fallout. If you refuse to change and evolve, you’re sunk.
If you can't manage the basics, like taking a consumer's money efficiently, you're sunk. Click To TweetWorse, if you can’t even manage the basics anymore, like taking a consumer’s money efficiently, you’re really sunk.