There was much hand-wringing over Sears bankruptcy, but no surprise. Sears became a giant in the first half of the previous century by shipping goods directly to consumers and was subsequently put out of business by a company that became a giant by shipping goods directly to consumers.
(Note: there are a lot of references to the "end of Sears." Bankruptcy is not the end -- the name "Sears" may live on in some way but how much continuity there will be is questionable.)
My nostalgia for Sears extends to the big, thick catalogs they would send out and that I would peruse intently for items to put on my Christmas wish list when I was a wee lad. In reaction to the bankruptcy, the web filled up with images from those old catalogs. In the early days of the 1900s you could order a house or even a school from the catalog; build it yourself. Anything from underwear to motorcycles -- it truly was the Amazon of its time.
As much as anything else, the history of retail reflects the history of wealth and our reaction to it. For the longest time, all goods were difficult to get. At best, you could avail yourself of whatever the local settlement could produce and beyond that you had to be self-sufficient. In a few metropolises you had access to some stuff, but in a mostly rural world, you lived with what ever was nearby or available at a farmers market. That meant cutting your own lumber, sewing your own clothes, and slaughtering your own hogs.
With the industrial revolution things got easier. Stuff got cheaper and people got more wealthy and, thanks to Sears, instead of cutting down trees to build a log cabin, you could just order a disassembled house. Or instead of stitching together a Sunday-go-to-meeting dress, you could just pick one out of the catalog. You had to trust that little black and white drawing in the catalog and then had to wait for next month's train to deliver it, but it was still more convenient that doing everything yourself.
As wealth continued to grow, the stores came to you and buying stuff became even easier. Retail outlets spread, first mom-and-pop stores, then Woolworths and such. Even in small towns within reach of the rural communities it was possible go to the store, see what you wanted, and buy it on the spot.
This got ramped up in the last half of 20th century when we became a land of malls. These huge markets with a variety of goods once only available to the richest folks in the richest cities appeared far and wide. Shopping became so easy that it went from being a necessity to a beloved pastime. Folks hitting the mall not only got what they needed, they also found out that there was so much more that they needed than they realized.
Still, the business of driving to the mall, fighting crowds, finding parking, was just too exhausting. Relief arrived in the form of Amazon, which freed you from the trouble of leaving your home to get stuff. Is there something you want? Just press a button and it will appear on your doorstep in a couple of days. Even now they are working on doing away with the button press. They'll use your profile to ship you what they think you want. If you really don't want it you can send it back.
Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, this will get more and more accurate over time to the point where it will be rare that you don't already have anything you want. Not only will you no longer have to butcher your own hogs, you won't even have to realize you need bacon, your fridge will have already had it delivered.
Convenience is approaching its optimum. The entire history of retail has been to make it easier to buy stuff -- to reduce friction in the parlance of the industry. This leaves you more free time to play with your dog (yay!) and post rants on Twitter (boo!). If there is a law of success in the information age it's that Convenience Trumps All.
I engaged in a bit of hyperbole there, but you see where I'm going. Somewhere along the line Sears lost the thread. Like all the major department stores, they decided it was all about marketing -- brand positioning, product mix, promotion, and fractions of a cent in quarterly earnings, while Amazon was busy reinventing the catalog. Someone moved the cheese and Jeff Bezos found it.
Now, there is no avoiding Amazon. If you'd rather not deal with them you have to go back to the pre-Sears days -- go off the grid. I'm sure youtube has instructional videos on hog butchering.
