Sears has been struggling for many years but the speculation of the past few days that it may bypass Chapter 11 reorganization entirely and proceed to Chapter 7 Liquidation indicates just how hopeless many of its lenders believe the company’s situation has become.
This article from Business Insider tells in a milestone format the sad tale of the iconic retailer’s demise after a long and mostly successful history. Once known as “America’s Retailer,” It enjoyed over a century of success until Wal-Mart and then Amazon and arose to challenge it. “There was a time when Sears was the Amazon of its day” one writer recently reminded us. You could even buy a house or a barn from Sears in kit form which the average carpenter could knock together in about a week. After you read the Business Insider article, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to learn more about its remarkable founding and how “the Amazing Mr. Sears” built a legendary business that may soon be no more.
As Jim Collins reminds us in his book How the Mighty Fall: “Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.”
