4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2018
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Before Sears filed for bankruptcy, it was run by a reclusive billionaire who'd call into meetings from his mansion on a Florida island. It was one of the unusual ways Eddie Lampert ran the department store chain. He also stopped investing in the stores. The CEO had outwitted kidnappers, and many thought he was defying skeptics on Wall Street, too. This is the story of how Sears stayed alive so long, and how it all fell apart.
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0:00.0 | The |
0:02.8 | Scrythe for me what's it like walking into a Sears in 2018? |
0:11.5 | I would quote one of the shoppers that I spoke to for a story recently who told me that |
0:17.8 | it was like a ghost town. |
0:20.7 | Hailey Peterson is a senior correspondent at Business Insider. |
0:24.5 | She covers retail and has written a lot about the slow downfall of the Sears department |
0:29.2 | stores. |
0:30.3 | She also lives in Richmond, Virginia and fairly often she walks into the local Sears. |
0:35.6 | Many of the shelves are bare. |
0:37.3 | There are some areas of the store, entire corners that could really be their own stand-alone |
0:42.6 | store. |
0:43.6 | They're pretty large areas that just have nothing there. |
0:46.9 | No racks, no products, nothing. |
0:50.2 | There's maybe torn up carpet or a sign that's long been torn down from the wall that's |
0:56.4 | leaning up against the wall now or ladders, abandoned carts. |
1:02.3 | Hailey told me she'd walk past displays for its famous brands like Craftsman and Kenmore. |
1:08.0 | And then she'd see whole areas of the store where sheets were hanging. |
1:11.7 | Whether it's bed sheets or shower curtains to hide some empty areas of the store because |
1:17.9 | they don't want shoppers to see how empty the stores really are. |
1:24.1 | She'd see handwritten sales signs. |
1:26.4 | The handwriting was illegible and the sales that they were advertising made no sense. |
1:32.5 | It would say 17% off and then the math would be wrong on what the actual price would end |
... |
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