Some people even figured it out in the 80's. Sears founded and ran Prodigy, a large BBS and eventually ISP. They were trying to set themselves up to become Amazon. Not only that, Prodigy's thing (for a while) was using advertising revenue to lower subscription prices.
Your "Netflix over dialup" analogy is more accessible to this readership, but Sears+Prodigy is my favorite example of trying to make the future happen too early. There are countless others.
Amazing how far that company has fallen; they were sort of a force to be reckoned with in the 70's and 80's with Craftsman and Allstate and Discover and Kenmore and a bunch of other things, and now they're basically dead as far as I can tell.
On the topic of how Sears used to be high-tech: back in 1981, when IBM introduced the IBM PC, it was the first time that they needed to sell computers through retail. So they partnered with Sears, along with the Computerland chain of computer stores, since Sears was considered a reasonable place for a businessperson to buy a computer. To plan this, meetings were held at the Sears Tower, which was the world's tallest building at the time.
My favorite anecdote about Sears is from Starbucks current HQs - the HQs used to be a warehouse for Sears. Before renovation the first floor walls next to the elevators used to have Sears' "commitment to customers" (or something like that).
To me it read like it was written by Amazon decades earlier. Something about how Sears promises that customers will be 100% satisfied with the purchase, and if for whatever reason that is not the case customers can return the purchase back to Sears and Sears will pay for the return transportation charges.
Craftsman tools have almost felt like a life-hack sometimes; their no-questions-asked warranties were just incredible.
My dad broke a Craftsman shovel once that he had owned for four years, took it to Sears, and it was replaced immediately, no questions asked. I broke a socket wrench that I had owned for a year and had the same story.
I haven't tested these warranties since Craftsman was sold to Black and Decker, but when it was still owned by Sears I almost exclusively bought Craftsman tools as a result of their wonderful warranties.
FWIW, I bought a Craftsman 1/4" drive ratchet/socket set at a Lowes Home Improvement store last year, and when I got it home and started messing with it, the ratchet jammed up immediately (before even being used on any actual fastener). I drove back over there the next day and the lady at the service desk took a quick look, said "go get another one off the shelf and come back here." I did, and by the time I got back she'd finished whatever paperwork needed to be done, handed me some $whatever and said "have a nice day."
Maybe not quite as hassle free as in years past, but I found the experience acceptable enough.
I think that's as much about Lowes as it is Craftsman... I don't think Craftsman tools have been particularly well build, just that they had and are able to have enough margins to have a no questions asked policy... it probably helps that a lot of the materials are completely and easily recyclable.
> My dad broke a Craftsman shovel once that he had owned for four years, took it to Sears, and it was replaced immediately, no questions asked. I broke a socket wrench that I had owned for a year and had the same story.
This is covered by consumer protection laws in some places. 4 years on a spade would be pushing it, but I’d try with a good one.
Here in New Zealand it’s called ‘The Consumer Guarantees Act’. We pay more at purchase time, but we do get something for it.
Lots of tools have lifetime warranties. Harbor Freight's swap process is probably fastest, these days, for folks with one nearby. Tekton's process is also painless, but slower: Send them a photo of the broken tool, and they deliver a new tool to your door.
But I'm not old enough to remember a time when lifetime warranties were unusual. In my lifetimes, a warranty on handtools has always seemed more common than not outside of the bottom-most cheese-grade stuff.
I mean: The Lowes house-brand diagonal cutters I bought for my first real job had a lifetime warranty.
And before my time of being aware of the world, JC Penney sold tools with lifetime warranties.
(I remember being at the mall with my dad when he took a JC Penney-branded screwdriver back to JC Penney -- probably 35 years ago.
He got some pushback from people who insisted that they had never sold tools, and then from people who insisted that they never had warranties, and then he finally found the fellow old person who had worked there long enough to know what to do. Without any hesitation at all, she told us to walk over to Sears, buy a similar Craftsman screwdriver, and come back with a receipt.
Prodigy predates ISPs (internet service providers). Before the web had matured a little in 1993 the internet was too technically challenging to interest most consumers except maybe for email, and Prodigy was formed in 1984 -- and although it offered email, it was walled-garden email: a Prodigy user could not exchange email with the internet till the mid-1990s at which time Prodigy might have become an ISP for a few years before going out of business.
At a previous job I worked under a guy who started his own ISP in the early 90’s. I would have loved to have been part of that scene but I was only like four when that happened.
They weren't wrong. Its core business in what is still a viable-enough sector collapsed. Or if it were truly well-managed, running an ISP and a retailer should have been enough insight to be Amazon.
It wasn't possible for them to be well managed at the time it mattered. Sears was loaded with debt by private equity ghouls; same story for almost all defunct brick and mortar businesses; Amazon was a factor, but private equity is what actually destroyed them.
Thank you for bringing this up. Sears really didn't have a choice, they were a victim of the most pernicious LBO, Gordon Gecko-style strip mining nonsense on the PE spectrum. All private equity is not the same but after seeing two PE deals from the inside (one a leveraged buy out) and another VC one with the "grow at insane place" playbook I think I prefer the naked and aligned greed of the VC model; PE destroyed both of the other companies while the VC one was already doomed.
And, knowing Jeff Bezos' private equity origins, one could be forgiven for entertaining the thought that none of this was an accident. Just don't be an idiot and, you know, give voice to that thought or anything.
Are you suggesting that Jeff Bezos somehow convinced all his PE buddies to tank Sears (and their own loans to it) in order for him to build Amazon with less competition? Because, well, no offense, but that seems like a remarkably naive understanding of capital markets and individual motivations. Especially when it's well documented how Eddie Lampert's libertarian beliefs caused him to run it into the ground.
I worked at Sears at the time when Amazon first started becoming a household name. I for the life of me couldn’t understand why they didn’t make a copycat site called the Sears Catalog Online. But then I think about it and management wanted salesmanship because selling maintenance agreements was their cash cow. Low margin sales won in the long term hence we have Walmart and Amazon as the biggest retailers.
Likely standard management failure. Sears got burned badly when it put its catalog online on Prodigy in the 80's, so obviously online sales were doomed to failure.
This is a great example that I hadn't heard of and reminds me of when Nintendo tried to become an ISP when they built the Family Computer Network System in 1988
A16Z once talked about the scars of being too early causes investors/companies to get fixed that an idea will never work. Then some new younger people who never got burned will try the same idea and things will work.
Prodigy and the Faminet probably fall into that bucket along with a lot of early internet companies where they tried things early, got burned and then possibly were too late to capitalise when it was finally the right time for the idea to flourish
Reminds me of Elon not taking a no for an answer. He did it twice, with a massive success.
A true shame to see how he's completely lost track with Tesla, the competition particularly from China is eating them alive. And in space, it's a matter of years until the rest of the world catches up.
And now, he's ran out of tricks - and more importantly, on public support. He can't pivot any more, his entire brand is too toxic to touch.
Lucky for him, the US government is keeping him from being eaten alive in the USA at least.
I remember that one time we tried to drastically limit Japanese imports to protect the American car industry, which basically created the Lexus LS400, one of the best cars ever made.
I dont know, you could argue that maybe GM with the EV1 was the 'too early' EV and Tesla was just at the right moment. Same goes for SpaceX, The idea of a reusable launcher was not a new idea and studied by NASA. I think they did some test vehicles.
SpaceX is an excellent example of this phenomenon. Reusable rockets were "known" to be financially infeasible because the Space Shuttle was so expensive. NASA & oldspace didn't seriously pursue reusable vehicles because the mostly reusable Space Shuttle cost so much more than conventional disposable vehicles.
Similar to how Sears didn't put their catalog online in the 90's because putting it online on Prodigy failed so badly in the 80's.
On the flip side, they didn't actually learn that lesson... that it was a matter of immature tech with relatively limited reach... by the time the mid-90's came through, "the internet is just a fad" was pretty much the sentiment from Sears' leadership...
They literally killed their catalog sales right when they should have been ramping up and putting it online. They could easily have beat out Amazon for everything other than books.
My cousin used to tell me that things works because they were the right thing at the right time. I think he gave the idea of amazon only.
But I guess in startup culture, one has to die trying the idea of right time, as sure one can do surveys to feel like it, but the only way we can ever find if its the right time is the users feedback when its lauched / over time.
the problem is ISP became a Utility, not some fountain of unlimited growth.
What you're arguing is that AI is fundamentally going to be a utility, and while that's worth a floor of cash, it's not what investors or the market clamor for.
I agree though, it's fundamentally a utility, which means theres more value in proper government authority than private interests.
The product itself determines wether ita a utility, not the business interest. Assuming democracy works correctly. Only a dysfunctional government ignores natural monopolies.
They sure did. This reminds me of when I was in the local Mac Dealer right after the iPod came out. The employees were laughing together saying “nobody is going to buy this thing”.
Your "Netflix over dialup" analogy is more accessible to this readership, but Sears+Prodigy is my favorite example of trying to make the future happen too early. There are countless others.