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The Death of the Department Store

Company

The bets, forks and reversals that shaped The Death of the Department Store — each one explained, and checked against the record.

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The decisions that made it

The Fall · Decision Forks
Amazon Didn't Kill the Department Store. The Loan Did.
Every great department-store collapse — Sears, JCPenney, Saks — is blamed on Amazon. But the court papers tell a different story: each one was detonated by debt that predated the internet. Sears filed owing $11.3 billion against $6.9 billion in assets. The killer was the balance sheet.
8 min
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