American comedian Ron White frequently tells a story about how his van was damaged in a comedic way by the technicians at a Sears Automotive Center in Savannah, GA. This week, that Sears Automotive Center is being torn down. While the shopping mall that former Sears location is a part of is otherwise doing well, the Sears has been closed for years. The department store end-cap building and the car service center in its out-parcel property are being demolished to make way for the development of a new apartment complex.

A link to Ron preforming the story for a live audience.

  • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    581·
    6 months ago

    They probably would have been fine regardless of Amazon if they hadn’t been run into the ground by a libertarian econ major.

    In 2008, Sears CEO Eddie Lampert decided to restructure the company according to Rand’s principles.

    Lampert broke the company into more than 30 individual units, each with its own management and each measured separately for profit and loss. The idea was to promote competition among the units, which Lampert assumed would lead to higher profits. Instead, this is what happened, as described by Mina Kimes, a reporter for Bloomberg Business:

    An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.

    Instead, the divisions turned against each other — and Sears and Kmart, the overarching brands, suffered. Interviews with more than 40 former executives, many of whom sat at the highest levels of the company, paint a picture of a business that’s ravaged by infighting as its divisions battle over fewer resources.

    A close-up of the debacle was described by Lynn Stuart Parramore in a Salon article from 2013:

    It got crazy. Executives started undermining other units because they knew their bonuses were tied to individual unit performance. They began to focus solely on the economic performance of their unit at the expense of the overall Sears brand. One unit, Kenmore, started selling the products of other companies and placed them more prominently than Sears’ own products. Units competed for ad space in Sears’ circulars…Units were no longer incentivized to make sacrifices, like offering discounts, to get shoppers into the store.

    • andrewta@lemmy.world
      34·
      6 months ago

      That ceo destroyed that company. I worked there for ten years and watched the damage that idiot did.

        • andrewta@lemmy.world
          7·
          6 months ago

          Yeah we knew he would destroy the company, and he would use the fact that he was president/ceo/biggest investor to take apart the company and make a ton of money doing so. He claims to have lost money but I truly believe that is just on paper.

    • thefartographer@lemm.ee
      5·
      6 months ago

      Huh, it’s like if you tell people that they have to fight for their next meal, that they’ll fight. So weird…

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      4·
      6 months ago

      Kenmore, started selling the products of other companies

      This was a huge deal for consumers. Suddenly you had a powerhouse of home appliance sales and service, covering just about everything. When I was a kid, every time any appliance broke, I knew we’d head to Sears parts counter, look at the service manuals on microfiche (before the internet) and be able to get exactly what was needed and how to replace it.

      It was so much more convenient than today where no one carries parts anymore, so even repairmen walk in, order the part, and have to be scheduled to come back.