Company profile
- Industry
- Department store retail
- Headquarters
- Hoffman Estates, United States
- Ownership
- Owned by Transformco
Profiles are auto-generated and infrequently updated.
The analyses
The Over-Extension · Growth & Portfolio
Sears Built a Brilliant Financial Empire. It Just Forgot It Was Running a Store.
In 1981 Sears bet on financial services and was right - the acquisitions added ~$400M in shareholder wealth and birthed Discover. While management ran the new empire, category-killers gutted the store that paid for it all.
8 min
The Adjacency Expansion · Growth & Portfolio
Sears' 1981 Leap Into Finance Was a Retreat With a Press Release
In 1981 Sears built the largest financial-services firm in America — Dean Witter, Coldwell Banker, soon Discover. The board called the stores a 'cash cow' to milk. The expansion read like ambition. It was a retreat with a press release.
8 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
Sears Killed a $3.3B Catalog and Tore Out the Data Its 1984 Head Start Needed
Sears co-founded an online shopping service in 1984 and sold tools on the web in 1997 - years ahead of Amazon's reach. Then in 1993 it killed a catalog still pulling $3.3B a year, and tore out the customer data and logistics that head-start needed to compound.
8 min
The Founder Doctrine · People & Control
Eddie Lampert's $1.9B in Fees Left Him Up $1.4 Billion as Sears Died
Everyone says Lampert lost billions running Sears into the ground. The numbers say otherwise: factor in ~$1.9B in performance fees and his net position was a gain of roughly $1.4 billion — even as shareholders were wiped out and the stores closed.
8 min