• System
    • 1 year 6 months ago
    • Posts: 74809
    		 Anyone miss the days when Sears was actually place fun to go to when at the mall? I use to sometimes buy video games and movies there if they for sale cheap. Nowadays, Sears is a dump.
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    • eddstarr88
      • 1 year 6 months ago
      • Posts: 6887
      		 Sears is trying to make a comeback but I wonder if it will ever be as great as it was back in the 90's. Every mall had to have a Sears as an anchor store to generate foot traffic back in those days.

      Heck, even the catalogs were fun to browse through back then, lol.
      The Eldorado is dead. Long live the Eldorado.
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      • bassman21
        • 1 year 6 months ago
        • Posts: 4553
        		 There are some good shots of old school Sears in the 1983 movie "Adam". The Sears where the movie was filmed was located here in Houston in the now defunct Westwood Mall. I don't think I ever went to it, but the Sears we always went to in north Houston (built in 1976)looked a lot like it inside.
        http://vimeo.com/55762014

        I went to the mall I referenced above a lot as a child and a teen. It was originally anchored by Sears and Foley's (owned by May Department Stores) when it opened in 1976. Within the next few years after the mall opened they added Joske's, JCPenney, Montgomery Ward and Lord & Taylor. The mall was very upscale, but the area rapidly declined in the late 80s and most of the stores including Sears have since closed. Sears was no doubt a big part of the mall when it opened.

        I think what made Sears so great is they knew how to cater to everyone and became the go to place like walmart is today. Craftsmen tools for the men, toys and video games for kids and clothing and home furnishings for the misses. If the wife needed to shop for the kids the husband could go to the tool or auto section. You could even get your oil changed while you shopped.

        Their failure was competition from stores like Walmart. They competed with them rather than setting themselves apart like stores like Target did.

        I think they still have a chance, but they need to focus of quality rather than value.
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        • pikachulover
          • 1 year 6 months ago
          • Posts: 2932
          		 Now they are just an overpriced version of K-Mart.
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          • stake n sheak
            • 1 year 6 months ago
            • Posts: 1772
            		 omg just the other night, I was talking with someone IRL who said how Sears used to be awesome and even their catalogs used to be fun to read.

            bassman21 wrote:
            Within the next few years after the mall opened they added Joske's, JCPenney, Montgomery Ward and Lord & Taylor.

            I'm not there and obviously don't know all the nuances and history, but I would hazard that this was another factor in the decline. Too many department stores, too many places trying to be all things to all people. It's hard to be a specialty shop, but in a mall/district situation, a variety of specialty shops will collectively draw more people and increase each others' potential customer base more than multiple department stores.

            bassman21 wrote:
            I think they still have a chance, but they need to focus of quality rather than value.

            I agree. This is a big concern of mine. More places need to focus on quality. Customers who are drawn by low prices are not going to be loyal, and have less of a problem with turning to the internet instead of local shops.
            tangspot2 wrote:
            Mrs. stake you say some nasty on my threads. Dirty bitch
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            • Casey_Jones
              • 1 year 6 months ago
              • Posts: 373
              		 There was a mall with a Sears right behind my house as a kid. The Mall recently got torn down and replaced. But The Sears is still standing where it always has. Having the Sears right behind my house it was almost an extension to our playground. The memories of being kicked out of there and being known by the whole staff are memories that I'll have for the rest of my life.
              The class is Pain 101. Your instructor is Casey Jones.
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              • FadedMemories
                • 1 year 6 months ago
                • Posts: 3
                		 Sears was great but Macy's was amazing in the early 90's.
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                • Casey_Jones
                  • 1 year 5 months ago
                  • Posts: 373
                  FadedMemories wrote:
                  Sears was great but Macy's was amazing in the early 90's.


                  If it wasn't for the Parade and Ninja Turtles I wouldn't know what Macy's is
                  The class is Pain 101. Your instructor is Casey Jones.
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                  • RomanBlade86
                    • 1 year 5 months ago
                    • Posts: 289
                    		 I have a ton of fond memories of Sears back in the 90s at the two malls that I frequented. As soon as I entered the store I would make a dash to the video game section since back then the games were set up for you to play. I remember Super NES and Genesis setups. I hated that with the Genesis setups I had to put my head back to see the screen since I was so small. They had several carts set up for you to choose what you wanted to play. Later they had a Playstation 1 setup that I loved playing through the demos. Another benefit was that there were hardly any people in the video game section at Sears and often there weren't any workers in the area so sometimes it felt like my own private video game store. :D
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