No one is reveling in Sears Holdings' (SHLD) decline, but no one is especially surprised. Thanks to many years of complacency, missteps and waste, the venerable retail brand has remained in a decades-long descent that looks all but terminal. If you think about it, the fact that Sears has been circling the drain for so long – while still continuing its operations – is a testament to just how powerful a retail institution Sears once was. Sears was at one time the most powerful retailer in the country, the Amazon.com (AMZN) of the 20th century in many ways. Its famous, phone book-sized Sears Catalog could be found in just about every household, and its product lines were benchmarks for quality.
Times have changed, and now Amazon is the Amazon of retail, while Sears is an institution dying a very slow, public death. It’s a shame to see an American icon crumble, particularly when we realize that this decline was not inevitable. The company, after all, has a history of facing cultural and technological shifts and adapting rather than succumbing to them. Many, many decades ago, Sears existed at the absolute cutting edge of American retail: mail-order. With the rise of suburbanization, automotive transportation, and the American shopping mall, Sears adapted by entering the then-modern retail model as a major anchor. The company recognized the increased mobility of Americans and became a shopping mall staple, pairing an aggressive real estate strategy with exclusive product lines.
For a very long time, Sears has recognized real estate as a primary component of its business. This makes the company, and its tenuous future, very, very relevant to the world of commercial real estate. Sears Holdings chairman and CEO Eddie Lampert agrees with the premise that the company’s rise or fall will hinge on its real estate strategy, and he makes a
