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America's 'Retail Apocalypse' Is Really Just Beginning (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The so-called retail apocalypse has become so ingrained in the U.S. that it now has the distinction of its own Wikipedia entry. The industry's response to that kind of doomsday description has included blaming the media for hyping the troubles of a few well-known chains as proof of a systemic meltdown. There is some truth to that. In the U.S., retailers announced more than 3,000 store openings in the first three quarters of this year. But chains also said 6,800 would close. And this comes when there's sky-high consumer confidence, unemployment is historically low and the U.S. economy keeps growing. Those are normally all ingredients for a retail boom, yet more chains are filing for bankruptcy and rated distressed than during the financial crisis. That's caused an increase in the number of delinquent loan payments by malls and shopping centers. The reason isn't as simple as Amazon.com Inc. taking market share or twenty-somethings spending more on experiences than things. The root cause is that many of these long-standing chains are overloaded with debt -- often from leveraged buyouts led by private equity firms. There are billions in borrowings on the balance sheets of troubled retailers, and sustaining that load is only going to become harder -- even for healthy chains. The debt coming due, along with America's over-stored suburbs and the continued gains of online shopping, has all the makings of a disaster. The spillover will likely flow far and wide across the U.S. economy. There will be displaced low-income workers, shrinking local tax bases and investor losses on stocks, bonds and real estate. If today is considered a retail apocalypse, then what's coming next could truly be scary.
"...There are billions in borrowings on the balance sheets of troubled retailers...The debt coming due, along with America's over-stored suburbs and the continued gains of online shopping, has all the makings of a disaster."
Thousands of balloon/ARM mortgages approved for unqualified borrowers also had all the makings of a disaster back in 2008 too.
There's a common trait in the human race that spans thousands of years; a propensity to never fucking learn.
And over-stored is right. It's ridiculous just how many damn choices there are within a mile-long stretch of suburbia. No wonder so many are closing.
Here's the thing - I'm old. Not ancient, but middle-aged. So I'm probably not expected by younger people to be comfortable with the latest technologies and customs, right?
Except when I'm buying things I check Chinese websites first, because the stuff I could buy from a local retailer is generally 1/3 the cost if I get it direct from China, and it's generally the same damn item, only with a lot of unnecessary middle-men removed from the equation. Cutting out a couple of warehouses, an extra trip on a truck, and a whole chain of office and retail workers saves quite a bit of overhead.
For me that's usually just low end electronics stuff that'll fit in an international mail envelope, but there's all sorts of other stuff, too. Hell, you can get tailored clothing for the price of local off-the-rack stuff.
Retail is having the same issue the cable television industry is having - the economics have changed and they haven't found a way to adapt. I don't need to drive to a big box store or a mall to pay 300% more for something when with a bit of patience it comes to my house for a lot less.
So 6000 people lose jobs, across the nation thatâ(TM)s not that bad especially given that most of those can easily find spots in other retail stores.
The problem is lack of service, how many times can you try to go to Sears only to find a long line at the single cashier and nobody to help you with anything. Then whenever you have a $5 discount, the entire companyâ(TM)s management needs to be involved in approving it. Then returning it is an entire level of Danteâ(TM)s Inferno unto its own.
Newegg/Amazon will ship you at the discounted price and if youâ(TM)re not happy with it take it back no questions asked.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I think the biggest change is that we are no longer really looking for stores, but showrooms. We need a place where we can go and look at the products, touch them, see if they do what they are meant to do. Then we can buy them online. These showrooms may have some small stock but their revenue will be from renting space to the company to showcase their products.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I know I run a small soda fountain pharmacy and I find that my customers (which cross nearly all age and racial categories) seem to prefer our knowledgeable and caring staff that somehow provides more service while charging less. Maybe consumers are learning that big box stores don't actually care about them. Just my perspective.
there is a tremendous amount of real estate consumed by retail outlets, which frankly are of far diminished use than in previous decades. if someone can order something on Amazon and get it delivered to their door in a day or two, there's little reason to get in the car and drive to a store. this works well for a huge chunk of your average person's shopping.
in terms of the employment impact: those affected skew young or low income. and the jobs aren't merely shifted to a different country or location -- most of them are no longer necessary at all. for now, at least, most warehouses and shipping hubs rely on human labor, but that work represents a small fraction of the manpower a proportional retail store would have employed.
it's a problem, but in my opinion, likely a short-term one. i foresee a dramatic upswing in remote, online employment across the board, as online communication and interaction tools mature, and a willing and capable labor pool emerges -- a pool of young people to whom this technology is as effortless and natural as walking.
an optimist might even suggest that this would allow people to more easily aspire to niche occupations and careers that they would have otherwise been unlikely to achieve due to geography. In the past, if you wanted to work in the pinball industry, you had to live in Chicago. If your passion was recording music, you'd almost have to move to Los Angeles or NYC to make a living at it.
Today, there are artists who draw playfields for Stern Pinball without setting foot in Chicago. and my brother does mixing and mastering remotely over the internet for people all over the world.
just like those brick and mortar sales, the job market isn't going away. it's just going online.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Apple stores are doing just fine. But Apple stores are about the experience, much like a movie. Going to Sears or Target or Walmart is like taking a dump. You have to do it so just get it over with and get back to your life.
One reason restaurants are still hot is because they can be an experience. If more small retailers began to understand that it's not about inventory it's about the experience maybe we can get things turned around. Adding things like customer education (advice on accessories for clothing, for example), and of course competent employees (who are actually permitted to help the customer) are always welcome too.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
If the going is good why not expand. Bacteria do it, humans do it, companies do it, shares dealers do it. Once the border of the petry dish is reached a collapse or correction occurs. There is a desire to get out of the boost/bust cycle but similar to forest fires - keeping small ones away makes the next one an all destroying monster fire. In a sense boost moment is just a point where a heap of crap collected for quite some time exceeds its physical capacity to hold together and collapses. The question is: at what point you intervene and how (that are 2 questions actually). Completely preventing them you can - by enforcing a regime like in NK I suppose that works too only for limited length of time.
A little bit more might help.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
On the weekends, Costco usually has 10 lanes of cash registers with 10 people in line each, with baskets loaded to the top, followed by long long lines to pass by receipt checkers to exit the building...The downfall of "retail" isn't all about Amazon.com and online clicks, it also includes the rise of these warehouse stores that sell superior quality produce and products (except for their accidentally unauthorized jewelry and slightly obsolete electronics) as well as buying basic household goods in bulk to reduce cost in a country that has had depressed wages for twenty years. Because of the lower overhead, warehouse stores can be a much cheaper way to buy things than ordering online from Amazon and still offer some of the seasonal and local customizations that Department stores once did.
I need to hurry up and film a zombie film in our local Sears before they close they place down completely.
Going in there is creepy as hell.
"You compared prices in foreign countries not on par with labor in your own."
the labor was foreign either way. only the middlemen and executives were American.
"You subverted Tariffs that would have protected domestic value to an appreciable degree."
He made no mention of avoiding tariffs, taxes, or import duties. Only that he bought directly from the source, which is perfectly legal to do.
"You bought something of casual or leisurely nature, ignoring the state of the arts locally around."
he's not buying a Chinese knockoff of something. He's buying the actual product. Just skipping the middlemen.
i could live a little longer in this prison
You didn't mention the estate tax repeal. Think of all the factories and jobs to be created when the new wave of Paris Hiltons arrive.
>>... unemployment is historically low...
Total bollocks. It's only listed that way because the feds lie about how they count unemployment.
If you include the total, real world number of those who have been out of work for longer than a year, forced to work part time, and those on public assistance, the number is in the double digits.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
They are dead in Canada, finished, no more Sears.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
To be fair here, Sears's problems are in part due to the mismanagement of their randroid CEO, not just the issues facing retail as a whole. They could be doing better, if they weren't being run into the ground. Compare Sears/Kmart to Target for example.
Sears Canada announced they are closing all retail stores two weeks ago, and has started liquidation, with all stores expected to be shuttered early next year.
Sadly - but not surprising - they increased most of their prices before the liquidation began, so their "20% off everything" is a faux bargain. So, it might take a bit longer, as most consumers aren't falling for it.
There are already a few businesses called S-Mart. Hell, I pass one (a convenience store) on my way to work every day.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Retail itself, traditional retail anyway, is one of its own four horsemen. It can't get out of its own way because the people who run it aren't capable of thinking in a way that will save them from what is happening.
I found something I needed and what seemed like the only reasonable way to get it was via Walmart's order-online-pick-up-in-store system. So I ordered and 5 days later I get an email saying it was ready to pick up. Slow, but not a deal breaker. The email directed me to 'follow the orange signs to the pick up area'.
So I drive to the store and see orange signs and follow them. I come to a parking lot where signs directed me to call a number and someone would be out. It turns out that that area was for online ordered groceries only, and the person on the phone had no idea where to pick up non-grocery items.
I decided a graphic in the email was a map to some location inside the store, so I park and go in and awesome there is an area with an orange sign, a few ragged chairs, and a kiosk. Something about scanning a QR code but the scanner didn't work, and instead I typed my order number into the kiosk. My name appeared in a queue on the screen and the screen assured me someone would be along.
After 5 minutes or so a typically disinterested retail employee came out with a single box that weight about 1 LB and asked me to sign.
Me: This can't be it, my order is probably in several boxes and weighs about 300 LB
Her: No
Me: Yes look at the confirmation on my phone
Her: I will go look in the back
15 minutes later she appears with a cart with several boxes. I glance through them, one is missing. She says she can call corporate Walmart tomorrow and see if they can find it but she is sure without a second pass through the back she didn't miss it. I realize she just wants me to leave so she can go on break, and I really need this stuff now, so I sign anyway.
On the way home while sitting at a stoplight I order the missing part using my Amazon app and someone drops it on my porch the next day.
I wrote all that to say that the level of thinking that designed the Walmart process cannot compete with Amazon. It can't, it has 0 chance. It might keep obliteration at bay for a few years, but it will lose eventually. The only way traditional retail could compete would be to hire all new people, burn down all their stores, and start over. It can't win on convenience, it can't win on speed, it can't win on experience. It is a monoculture of price reduction and now that an alternative has appeared that can beat it in that area, it can't change quickly enough to survive.
>Sadly - but not surprising - they increased most of their prices before the liquidation began, so their "20% off everything" is a faux bargain.
One of the reasons I've rarely shopped at Sears is that this has always been their business method for as long as I can recall. The deepest discount you tend to find at Sears still leaves you paying more than you would if you looked elsewhere.
They presented themselves as a mid-range department store, but operated like one of those shady junk stores with "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!" signs in their windows for years.
I have some sympathy for the low-level workers, but if there's anybody higher up the chain being hurt by this bankruptcy, it only warms my heart.
The amazing thing about Sears (and Penny's, too) was that they started 100.00% as mail-order only.
It wasn't until later that they felt a need to go brick-and-mortar - but they still kept their catalog business.
Amazon shouldn't exist - Sears should have had an easy transition from mail/phone orders to https:// sales.
Crazy!
CAP === 'calcuim'
Need I say more?
It's a little ironic that Sears is on the way out these days. A big part of their business used to be the Sears Catalog for mail order. They were basically doing what Amazon is doing before the Internet existed!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Sears kicked ass for years because they owned their own real estate and they were able to offer competitive prices. They'd already have gone under if they hadn't kept their trucking fleet, although they had to change the name on the side of the trucks because nobody wanted to see a Sears truck.
They were already failing before they started selling real estate, though, which they started doing specifically because they couldn't cover their operating expenses otherwise. And they were failing not because they couldn't compete with the internets, but because they didn't try. They compromised customer service, which was what got people through the door. They also compromised quality, for instance Craftsman tools have been going downhill for years. So why would you bother to go in there?
I also wonder how much money Sears has spent on their agonizingly awful e-commerce site. It does tend to carry pretty much everything, but it has pretty much everything at the highest prices anywhere. When you add to this the fact that it's one of the worst sites on the interwebs, it's easy to see why nobody uses it.
I, for one, fell out of love with Sears years ago, when I was just getting acquainted with powered yard equipment and found that they wanted about 400% of reasonable parts prices. More recently, I had a problem with them not wanting to honor a warranty. Sears changes model numbers on products which haven't actually changed every year so that they don't have any stock to make warranty replacements with, so that they can dick you around. Is that really cheaper than just doing business properly? Who knows. But fuck 'em.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I come to a parking lot where signs directed me to call a number and someone would be out
My wife is obsessed with using this. I hate it. Half the time I call the number and it rings for ten minutes and nobody picks up. I end up walking over to the door (which is 100 yards from the parking space) and knocking on it to get some pimple-faced teenager's attention.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Many people used to buy Craftsman tools due to high quality (compared to almost any other consumer brand) plus the lifetime warranty - the math made sense. But for years now the majority of Craftsman tools for sale are made in China ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), the quality has plummeted to Harbor Freight levels, and every time you get a warranty replacement the quality drops. Normal MBA thinking - how can I goose profits this quarter, and my golden parachute will carry me out the door when things go bad. This thinking across American business is whats killing American retail. Why buy crap from Sears or Wall-Mart when I can get slightly better crap faster on Amazon? Or if you don't mind waiting, roll the dice and order your crap directly from China. Related, no connection or affiliate code - I don't go to hobby stores any more, I go to https://hobbyking.com/ . Sure, sometimes the parts that arrive are bad, but most of the time its exactly what the local store offers, at 1/3 the price. If people (in general) don't want (to pay for) quality, and business managers don't care about killing the business, then everything is short term now. Silly people don't realize that trickles down to their own jobs. Or already has.
Sounds a lot like trickle-down theory. Did I just get transported back to the 1980s?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A follower of the philosophies of Ayn Rand, which, when you apply some very basic critical thinking skills, fall apart rather fast, and which should be grown out of by teenage to young adult years.
They appeal well to the narcissist, because they stroke his or her ego by saying that they're more important to the driving of the economy than the workers who support them, and that the poors would be successful if only they weren't so damn lazy. But reality tends to be the opposite, with those worse off usually working their tails off to their own detriment, since it then blocks them from seeing, or at least believing that there's an easier way to handle something, since they are denied the time, network, or effort to improve themselves.
For more specific details, just Google the problems with objectivism or libertarianism, since it doesn't pay to rehash everything wrong with it as a system, when it's been done so much before.
I don't know if it's a thing in your area, but around here a significant percentage of newer apartment buildings (condo or otherwise) have the first floor hosting retail units.
Totally destroying retail presence means more sprawl with more people needing cars more frequently.
Sounds like you're giving up after the first attempt.
Can you really blame them when the experience was that much of a hassle compared to having it shipped directly to their home?
The executives all got large bonuses, the workers got screwed along with anyone who bought something with a warranty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Because he ruined the entire company via libertarian business policies. Internal departments were told to compete against each other, leading coworkers to undermine each other.
It can't win on convenience, it can't win on speed, it can't win on experience. It is a monoculture of price reduction
It's been a monoculture of selling lower quality with worse service at a lower price than the competition for a long, long time. Sears drove away mom and pop stores several decades ago, K-mart essentially drove Sears out of business a few decades ago, Walmart drove K-Mart out a couple of decades ago. Now it's Walmart's turn.
There won't be an apocalypse, just another iteration of the same cycle.
Trying to serve the poorest people - who only shop at the places with the lowest prices - is part of the retail problem. If the store is focused on low prices, they can't afford to focus on anything else. This is how Wal Mart came to be reviled by anyone who can afford to not shop there.
Why not just look at the price and stop worrying about everyone else and whether they got a better deal? Why do you care if an item is 20% off of $12.50 or it's $10? Is the product worth $10 to you? Buy it. Fuck the posted discount rate. Ignoring sales, coupons, discounts, et al, is part of being a responsible shopper.
No, I kinda ignore it 'cuz there's still a whale of a lot of people that traipse in and out of any US car manufacturer's factory in spite of the fact that they are some of the most automated factories in the country. So, it seems that they still need people for SOMETHING, implying that there's lotsa stuff that can't be automated. Yet. Sure, robots will do more and more, but I'm waiting for someone to show me one that can walk thru the factory, hear the bearings going bad in a 50 hp motor on a press about 25 feet up in the air, go get a lift and a spare motor, get up there and change it out, remove the old motor back to the shop and rebuild it with new bearings and maybe brushes, and put it back in stock as a spare for the next time. Find me a robot that can do that. There aren't any. There aren't going to be any truck driver robots that can jump out and change a flat on the inside dual, either, for a long time. People will always be necessary up until its so automated that we can all use personal slaves who are robots, and never again have to do a damned thing that we don't want to do. It may never be seen by anyone alive today, 'cuz that's still a lot of tech to be invented.
Good article here about the downfall of Sears https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0.... Some of it is certainly due to the sorry state of retail these days, but a large portion of it seems to be due to mismanagement and greed by the new owner of the company.
If you think about it, Sears was the original Amazon with their mail order catalog - you would think that based on that history, they should have been in a good position to compete with Amazon in direct internet sales. But instead of investing in this area, the company was raided as someones personal piggy bank, leading us to the current situation.
Sears killed itself by over-pricing it's competitors so that shouldn't be a surprise. When you can buy a snowblower from canadian tire for $300 and you can walk out the door with it and sears is selling the same model for $700 that will come in 4 days. It's pretty easy to see what's going to happen. Same with major appliances, clothing, and so on. Round that out with the absolute worst customer service around? It was one compounding stupid error on top of another.
Kinda like Target when they opened up here. Far too many stores, no inventory chain, hugely overpriced compared to their competitors. Many cases the store shelves were empty and they had no product to sell at all. Then there was the belief by the CEO that Canadians would "pay whatever we tell them to pay for goods." Sorry guys. The middle class in Canada is already stretched to the breaking point, that's not how it works.
Om, nomnomnom...
A guy who served under Reagan and Bush I is a "leftist shill"?
What about the side of the curve that is never shown. Tax revenues falling on the right side of the curve so far that potholes get proper nouns for names.
his thinking across American business is whats killing American retail. Why buy crap from Sears or Wall-Mart when I can get slightly better crap faster on Amazon? Or if you don't mind waiting, roll the dice and order your crap directly from China.
In related news, China's dictator recently announced a crackdown on fraudulent Chinese sellers to overseas markets. If ordering direct from China stops being a risk, look out US retail! Even Amazon will be threatened.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Sounds like you're giving up after the first attempt.
Aren't you making their point for them? Is there some sort of long term value to forcing retail experiences to have built in retry at the consumer level? It seems quite the opposite. Does it make a retailer more competitive if we don't have to have a second attempt when purchasing the stock?
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
Belonged to Sam's Club for some years. Bad lighting, dirty stores, poor or no customer service, understaffing, six or seven variations on every product, all from the PRC with poor quality. Just a bad experience.
Got out of bulk stores for years. Found a Costco. Couldn't have been more different.
Clean. Organized. Good quality. Helpful,motivated staff.
Comparable prices.
Main difference. Advertising budget. Costco spends money on basics, not touting itself. Word of mouth works. And they don't seem to feel the need to kill all the local competition.
Locally the Sams Club just closed after losing to a Costco up the street for years. 30-40 cars in Sams parking lot, Costco's is full.
And no, I don't work for either.
The philosophy of actual socialism is that helping everyone results in a better society.
Instead of only getting the benefit of genius's who come from wealthy family, you get the benefit of all genius's- even those born in poverty because you provided them food for their brains to grow, education for their brains to reach full potential, and reasonably equal opportunity for them to express their genius when they are adults.
As opposed to the alternative which is that the genius's from poor families are replaced by average (or even sub-average) people from wealthy families.
The U.S. is not a meritocracy and hasn't been for about 5 generations. Many of the good and important jobs are virtually inherited by the children of people who were brilliant. The son of a senator is a senator. The son of an actor pushes out other better actors who are not the son of an actor.. The sons of judges are lawyers or judges and so on.
it helps the kids, but it hurts the country.
Socialism mitigates that tendency but can't erase it. But the relation between child and parent wealth is lower in socialist countries. In the U.S. it's highly correlated these days.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
No I don't. One anecdote is just as good as another- you ever hear of confirmation bias? You like to hear bad anecdotes about Walmart and don't like to hear good ones.
love is just extroverted narcissism
None of your assertions are backed up by evidence. Capitalist countries win more Nobel Prizes, publish more science, and have more technical innovation. So socialism is not better at harnessing genius. If anything, socialism makes nepotism worse. Cuba is ruled by the brother of the previous leader. NK is ruled by the son of the last leader, and the grandson of the one before that.
Income taxes in any form are stealing
Just like downloading music is stealing, right?
Words have meaning. You're lying in precisely the same way the RIAA/MPAA does to try to support their campaign of bankrupting grandmothers. An income tax is an income tax. Stop playing word games to suggest that your desire to take less money from the wealthy and more money from the poor is somehow morally defensible.
Passing the Fair Tax could do it in spades, the economy would sprout rocket engines under the Fair Tax as manufacturing would be done in an income--tax-free environment in the only developed country on the planet where that could be done. Foreign business people would injure themselves in the stampede to build factories here in the USA. We would probably actually experience a fairly severe labor shortage, which would spiral wages further. We could probably actually allow more immigrants because we could put them to work and the country would prosper.
This is a really amazing fantasy - sounds like the Fair Tax could cure cancer too, right? Here's my question: what evidence do you have that cutting taxes has ever had anything near that impact on any economy? During the 1950's, we had a top marginal tax rate of about 90%, and that's one of the most prosperous times in American history. We actually paid down the massive war debt thanks to those high tax rates, and also witnessed a widely distributed increase in wealth across our society.
On the flip side, the Reagan tax cuts are about the closest thing we can compare to in the U.S. for the kind of cuts you advocate, and they didn't turn the nation into your libertarian utopia - they DID, however, manage to send our national debt skyrocketing again after several decades of decline.
Either provide evidence to back up your economic fantasies, or stop making such ludicrous claims.
That worked like a charm when they closed the sears hardware by me. Everything was long gone by the time the real discounts appeared.
[sigh] I remember when Sears Canada sold hardware. Good quality Craftman hand tools and power tools. Then sometime in the late 1990s, all the Sears stores in Canada seemed to drop their great hardware and tools, and from there it was a competitive race to the bottom selling appliances (against Best Buy, Leons, Bad Boy, The Brick, Home Depot, Lowe's) and women's fashions (against the rest of the tenants in the shopping mall).
Sears, at one point, couldn't be beat. It used to be that if Sears sold it under the Kenmore name, it was good stuff with top-notch after-sale support. It used to be that if Sears sold it under the Craftsman name, it was good stuff... again, with top-notch after-sale support. By staff who gave a shit. And a great house brand is unbeatable in retail: you never have to price match the Kenmore against the Whirlpool which rolled off the same assembly line, and Kenmore had more brand recognition and brand admiration than the company that actually made it.
Hell, isn't Craftsman-style architecture literally named after Sears mail-order house kits?
Part of the problem might be the way the Sears Electronics 12" black-and-white TV I had was made in Korea in 1978 by a little company no one had ever heard of. It was great quality, great price, served me well for many years. Being an electronics geek kid I took the lid off and found a now-familiar name on the label on the picture tube and the chassis: Samsung. Likewise, an Eaton Viking (Canadian house-brand, now defunct Eatons Department Stores) TV had Gold Star labels everywhere - You know that manufacturer now as Lucky Gold Star - LG. Apple should take note of its relationship with Foxconn.
I've also got to give Sears a shoutout for one particular piece of AMAZING customer service. In the 1980s, as a kid on my paper route, I found a classic 1950s Sears Craftsman lawnmower. The deck was cast aluminum, the engine was two-stroke, and I managed to get it running almost immediately, it was built like a tank and almost could have mowed down the annoying fire hydrant on your lawn. I copied down the model number, went to my local Sears store just to ask about it. Two weeks later, a large manila envelope showed up at my place, return address was Chicago. Inside, copied from microfiche, was the entire Owner's Manual and Service Manual for that 1951 Craftsman lawnmower. That lawnmower (with that envelope tucked under the deck) now hangs restored in an automotive museum.
Sears Canada is finally officially dying. But I've missed them for years. I wish nothing but the best for the rest of Sears, they always provided a great product with great support at at fair price for both parties.
Thank you, Sears Canada. I loved you.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.