Sears is dying: What the ubiquitous store’s death says about America - Salon.com:
In 1972, the year Sears began building the world’s tallest building
in downtown Chicago, three out of every four Americans visited one of
its locations every year — a larger proportion than have seen “The
Wizard of Oz.” Half of all households held a Sears credit card — more
than go to church on Christmas. Sears’s sales accounted for 1 percent of
the Gross National Product.
In an internal merchandising plan
written later that decade, a Sears executive identified the company’s
audience, and its identity: “Sears is a family store for middle-class,
home-owning America. We are not a fashion store. We are not a store for
the whimsical, nor the affluent. We are not a discounter, nor an
avant-garde department store…We reflect the world of Middle America, and
all of its desires and concerns and problems and faults.”
Unfortunately,
it’s been all downhill for middle-class, home-owning America since
then, and it’s been all downhill for Sears, too. That’s why William
Taylor was standing on State Street in downtown Chicago last week,
wearing a sandwich board that read “SEARS/UP TO 75% OFF/MUST ACT
NOW/STORE CLOSING.”