Date:         Fri, 9 Dec 2016 21:09:28 +0000
Reply-To:     Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Report on Sears (Friday)
Comments: To: Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To:  <00f501d25257$1bd8c870$538a5950$@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Sears has long been criticized as an example of what happens when a retail
company is led by a group of investors and not a group of retailers. They
notably have not modernized in 25 years or so, the investors didn't want to
"waste" money on that. They have great brands, but nobody in the management
team had any experience leveraging those brands to benefit the store as a
whole, the investors didn't want to "waste" money on that either. So here
we are.

Not that the two companies' failures have anything to do with each other,
but Seart gives another reason to reflect on VW's failures. People's car?
Not any more. The company who "owned" the van and affordable campers? Not
any more. The company people looked to for fun fuel stingy diesels? Not any
more.

You just can't trust a company to do the right thing for itself when it's
run by people. It will be interesting to see if so-called artificial
intelligence changes that at all.

Jim

On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 2:02 PM Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@gmail.com>
wrote:

Now that it's Friday more on Sears. NBR had a good piece on them last night.
Go to 12:40 in the show:
http://nbr.com/2016/12/08/nightly-business-report-december-8-2016/



Stuart