brown on green, A Regular column about finances

Sears: Timing Is Everything

Until the last 20 years, Sears was the dominant name in retailing. You literally could buy anything needed from Sears. For generations, the annual Christmas catalog was one piece of mail children could not wait to see. Sears named it The Wish Book, which is exactly what we all did. We dog-eared pages and circled items we wanted for Christmas. Sears Automotive was the best place for tires and car repairs. Craftsmen tools were the highest quality you could buy and guaranteed for life. The appliance brand Kenmore was of highest quality and very durable. Many parents shopped at Sears for “back to school” clothes and shoes.

Now, Sears is gone. What happened? What brought this retail giant to its knees?

Timing was everything when Sears and Roebuck got its start. The Industrial Revolution that dominated the last half of the 19th century led to automated manufacturing and the development of a vast nationwide rail system. Before the revolution, everyone made the things they needed themselves or had it made locally. After the revolution, large factories could produce goods faster and cheaper than they could be made one at a time.

Railroads made it possible to send these mass-produced goods quickly to any location in the country. In 1893, Richard W. Sears and Alvah C. Roebuck established Sears, Roebuck & Company and began to publish and distribute catalogs. The following year, the catalog had grown to 322 pages with a wide variety of items available. This entrepreneurial company was the Amazon of the day. You could get anything you needed from Sears reliably shipped by rail to your hometown.

Unfortunately, a century later, in 1993, company leaders made a fatal mistake. Again, timing was everything. During the 1920s, Sears began opening retail stores as people began to move into cities and suburbs. The retail side of the business began to outpace the catalog business, so in 1993, the company decided to discontinue catalogs.

The Internet was just appearing, and Sears failed to recognize the potential. For more than a century, consumers knew they could get almost anything at Sears. Had the company continued its pioneering mindset and shifted their catalog to the Internet, it is likely they would have continued to dominate retail. There might never have been an Amazon if Sears only had recognized what was about to happen.

Sadly, Sears recently filed for bankruptcy and, on the date of this writing, it is uncertain if the corporation will reorganize or liquidate. Many things in life have a timing element to them. The older you get, the more you realize some of the answers to your prayers were not necessarily a no, but a not yet. Only when you look back, do you see God’s timing for your life was always perfect. His timing is everything.

About the Columnist: David Brown, CPA, is director of Free Will Baptist Foundation. To learn more about the grants program, visit www.fwbgifts.org.