A Sears closed down in Jersey City. There are only 12 Sears left in the country. People ask, “What happened?”
I think I know –
27 Comments on Last Sears in Tri-State Area Closes
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it didn’t go woke?
It went woke, when woke wasn’t a thing yet. They Budlighted themselves with that ultra-fem rebranding. Craftsman tools was suddenly the equivalent of having roller blades.
I’ll be back.
I remember thinking when they merged with K-Mart, “Gee, lashing yourself to another sinking ship, that should do wonders for your bottom line.”
Sears used to be the place my parents always shopped. I am sure we bought the album Meet The Beatles at a Sears on Staten Island 60 years ago (oh Lordy).
Sears used to have unique credit card imprinters. I never saw anyone else use anything like them. They looked like giant staplers. Sears credit cards were smaller than anyone else’s.
Craftsman Tools still live on, under a different owner. Sears died from various reasons, but I really doubt is anything to do woke. Bad business decisions, woke, thats lameo.
They were a very innovating company ONCE. They made their catalogs JUST SLIGHTLY SMALLER than the Montgomery Ward catalogs so that everyone would NATURALLY put theirs on top on the living room coffee table, etc.
Asked my dad, an over the road trucker, why he liked Craftsman tools. He replied, son, I break a tool out on the road, I might not be able to find the Snap on guy. But I can damn sure find a Sears.
many years ago customer service and product line went downhill. my last experience (maybe 20 years ago) was an appliance return and got long winded. i finally left store disgusted after an hour vowing never to return. funny, we had a great sears in the old downtown for many years, it closed and a smaller outlet opened in new location with terrible service. completely different store. i remember being taken back and a bit sad about the self destruction of sears. the time of company pensions and home delivery of delicious ice cold milk in glass half gallons. quality of life in america has definitely gone south.
Last time I went to Sears I asked the guy with the name tag where the widgets (I don’t actually recall why I was there) were. The guy said “Shit. I don’t know.” I said “Oh. OK. Sorry I wasted your time.” And left – never to return.
mortem tyrannis
izlamo delenda est …
The KMart merger was the end
We used to LOVE getting the catalog a couple of months before Christmas.
ahhhh.. the sears catalog with the multiple pages of women in their skivvies.
Poor service is what killed a lot of old line Department stores.
Not that they are department stores, but when was the last time you had a shoe salesman help you in a shoe store? Then again, when was the last thing me you could find widths other than “wide, “ “normal,” and “small?” If you find a foot measuring device, you’re lucky if it’s not broken.
I worked for Sears from 1989 to 2001, and K-Mart when it was a separate and competing company from 1983 to 1988, all of it working on cars in their Auto Centers. The Auto Center I worked in for a dozen years can be seen here.
https://youtu.be/oMcyIn-vXfo?si=E7GA1-N4UfCvlc-0
K-Mart was killed by merging with Sears, and Sears had some fantastically bad management ideas that I had a unique perspective on, plus it was a big fat target for politicians. The Auto Center provided a service and the main store provided goods, and Sears never understood the difference. We had a manager from Toys one time and from Lingere another time fo4 example, because Sears said they were there to manage people and not stuff so people are the same, apparently, failing to differentiate between skilled and unskilled labor. We had a guy who had previously ruined Volkswagon run the place who made everyone wear their watch upside-down to “challenge them to think differently”. An AG in NJ made a campaign once on setting up cars to look like specific failures and having testers complain as such (pouring brake fluid under master cylinders and having the testers complain about a fading brake pedal was one; unplugging alternators and letting them fail charging test another) and then suing Sears blue when a battery buster trusted his machine too much was really expensive in that they had a ruling that anyone who CLAIMED to have had brake or electric service over a three year period got a refund,NO RECEIPT REQUIRED. We had busses stopping for people to get free stuff. The Company got a ruling that they COULD get receipts required and a manager announced it at one point, and only 3 people were left in line out of 100.
Or the time they just started outlawing Freon, and we got reclaiming systems and everyone trained to get official Federal Government bunny hugger cards saying we would commit no Freon sins; then the EPA sent a guy to an Auto Center claiming to be in a big hurry and harassing a guy to just hurry up and check his AC. Dude put a gage set on without the required 1′ isolator section on and the EPA instantly shut the unit down for 6 months and fined the company hundreds of thousands of dollars over it.
Next day we were told to take hammers to our reclamation equipment and Sears exited the AC business forever more.
Sears killed itself too after Lampert took over, selling all those brands like Die Hard, Craftsman, and Kenmore, but they wrecked Die Hard even before I left. They used to make actual good batteries but the last couple of years they had Gould just take their usual crap batteries and stick a Die Hard label on them, ruining the brand. I bought a Craftsman drill after I left and no human being would facilitate the purchase, just a guy who directed me to a kiosk for information. Sears didn’t stand behind a shit lawnmower they sold me, but since while I was there they had a facility they fixed them in and -oddly enough- the company I work for NOW that has zero connection to Sears now uses that SAME building for other purposes kind of suggests that Sears at some point gave up on fixing their crap or taking care of their customers.
There’s much more I could go on to, like when Sears abandoned the Sears Tower (I still have a 5 year pin that shows it) for a self-built cult compound in Hoffmam Estates IL, but I was there a long time and this is already TL:DNR, so I’ll stop here just to say that it didn’t need Coof or Amazon to kill it, it was doing very nicely at that under Lampert itself, but it’s current state is in no way unexpected or inexplicable, just the way of things today…
Toilet paper got better and the Sears catalog got worse.
Ah! A fellow Sears ex-employee!
My first job was as a parts receiver in the Sears Repair Center from 1993 to 1994.
TN Tuxedo
SUNDAY, 14 JANUARY 2024, 13:56 AT 1:56 PM
Where? In Tenessee? I always thought it would be very secure working for such a national company, little did I know…
…also, another silly thing they did was they got upset once when some customer somewhere commented that they saw Snap-On, Marco, and Mac toolboxes in our service bays instead of Craftsman. The company tried to make everyone remove or cover any non-Craftsman logos. Mostly they got laughed at, the only time I actually saw it happen was during some expected Corporate visit and the manager ran around throwing shop towels hastily over them. Still, they did give mechs 30% off Craftsman tools over our 10% employee discount and THAT was nice, back when there were still some worth owning, but it didn’t scare the Snap-On tool truck guy at all, HE knew where young wrenches were gonna go for prestige tools…
And this “softer side of America” is gonna do us all in.
They didn’t see what was coming, even when Monkey Wards bit the dust.
Failure to foresee consumer trends is a major failure of businesses.
Last time I went to one, I went down to the lower level where the craftsman tools were.
It was as quiet as a tomb and nobody around, no customers, no employees…nothing. Lots of things to buy, but no buyers.
And then there was Montgomery Wards, which finally died in the late 1990’s, or maybe survived for awhile in the 2000’s.
I have an image of an old coot, red checked lumberman’s shirt and jeans held up by suspenders. He hikes up his jeans, and says to his wife: Well, I think I’ll go on over to Monkey Wards and by me that new wrench I’ve been thinkin’ about.
RadioMattM – I think they were called Charge-A-Plate cards back then (stamped aluminum cards like dog tags) issued by the store itself. Sears called it their revolving credit plan.
I still have a couple of Charge-A-Plates that my mom used.
@ RadioMattM Sunday, 14 January 2024, 13:51 at 1:51 pm,
Redwing!!
FJB
2 tings:
1. FDR died. FDR was an ally of Sears. UNIPARTY has a long history of putting opposition in jail FDR has Sewell Avery – like j6- jailed for insurection. Avery was in the midst of making Monkey Ward a Sears killer. With him in jail Sears had no truble crushing MW.
2. Sears went very crooked. My wife worked a cash register for Sears 55 years ago. She was instructed to ring up the old high prices on “sales” items. if customer paid attention – and most are too poor to take out their wallet and PAY ATTENTIoN -she could ring up the lower price. At the same time their repair men would replace old tubes, spark plugs, oil, tires …. with other old ones and charge for new ones. Some did pay attention and reported to law enforcement. many different “sting” operation were running the mid 70’s Sears was caught dozens of times replacing old with old and charging for new. Covered well by the press.. Even their UNIPARTY friends could not get informed shoppers to go dot a Sears store in 1980! Uniformed yes.
We rarely shopped Sears because we did not qualify for a credit card.
If we were Black we could qualify even if we did not have a job. They got into a crisis about them not paying the credit card when due. So after that they sent us notice saying we now qualified. By that time, there were a number of other stores we shopped at. JC Penney, Wards, Kmart, and a lot of mom and pop stores had everything we needed. We had an outstanding Kmart until they hooked up with Sears.
By the way Wards is still in business at wards.com
Sears got taken over by G-suite suits who envied Hecht and Macys. Out went anything that didn’t make X profit. Guns, paint, bunk beds, toys, etc. Appliances, cosmetics, and Levi’s became the order of the day as Sears management target a demographic that rarely set foot in their store. Ecky middle-America was made to feel, and indeed told that they were no longer welcome.
Sears, like Monkey Wards, Circuit City, Sports Authority and so many other once-great retailers decided that the clientele that had made them were no longer good enough Redneck stuff like fishing boats and tackle, kids furniture, and Ted Williams brand firearms weren’t their future. Instead they wanted Eve Arden, Lands End, and Sony as their base.
Dance with the one that brung you to the party.
We used to have a Sears swamp cooler on our house.
Not gonna go into details, but it was designed and built backwards from standard swamp coolers. And expensive to maintain, repair, keep operating. What a PoS.
I was so happy when I replaced that thing.
Loved their Christmas catalogs as a kid in the 1950’s.
Sears credit card was the first one I ever got as a young married military guy.
Many good memories.
RIP