After six straight years of plunging sales and financial losses, the Sears is shuttering stores and selling off crown jewels, such as its Craftsman tools line, according to a commentary in Friday’s Washington Post. Decades of missed opportunities have brought Sears to this, according to the commentary. It lost its focus with ventures into Discover credit cards and Coldwell Banker real estate in an attempt to diversify. Then big boxes such as Home Depot and Best Buy chipped away at lucrative product niches. But maybe the biggest whiff: Executives knew as far back as the early 1990s that they had to wean Sears off its dependency on shopping malls — but its many forays into other store formats never quite worked. As e-commerce moves toward its golden age, Sears is an also-ran, according to the commentary.
