CHAPTER 1 – LOWE’S HISTORY Lowe’s started as a small hardware store by Lucius S. Lowe in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in 1921. After Lucius died, his son James Lowe inherited the business and ran the store with his brother-in-law Carl Buchan until both of them were called away to serve in the United State Army during World War II. While they were serving in the Army, the business was ran by Lowe’s mother and sister. Carl Buchan was wounded and discharged from the Army in 1943 and then he returned to operate the business.
At a time when shopping malls seized to exist and people didn't have access to high quality clothing product the first 1893 Sears catalog revolutionized consumerism by exploring a new way of selling goods to everyone. It provided an easier and quicker way for people to buy merchandise through the phone from the comfort of their homes. Once people bought items from the catalog, mail-order made retail easy access for everyone. Richard Sears ended up making a huge profit by selling watches which led to the journey of the start of his catalog. Richard Sears and Alvah C. Roebuck united to exchange ideas about the Sears Catalog products in order to expand their productivity in the retail industry.
So in 1925, the company opened a brick-and-mortar store in Chicago. It was called the Sears, Roebuck and Co. Retail Store, and it was built inside the massive warehouse where Sears processed its catalog orders.” This shows that Sears was a brick-and- mortar store that only went out of business a few years ago; this is still happening today. Another example of this is in the article “The Rise of Amazon” on page 25 when Carro states “Today, many brick-and-mortar businesses are having trouble surviving in the world of online shopping. Over the past decade, many companies have struggled to stay afloat—or have gone out of business entirely.
Macy’s company is an icon when it comes to retail companies. Its history is a story of resilience, industriousness and innovation. Macy’s was formed by Rowland H. Macy even after several of his ventures into retail failed. It is a well-known story that on its first day of opening the now retail giant only pulled eleven dollars and six cents in sales. It started as a dry goods store in a low rent district, an area away from other dry good stores in New York City.
Macy's, founded by Rowland Hussey Macy, has a long and varied history dating back to humble beginnings as a small dry goods chain with four locations opened up between 1843 and 1855. R.H. Macy's original stores all failed, but the tides began to change in 1858 after Macy moved to New York and founded "R.H. Macy & Co.," a more up-scale version of his original concept. In the span of about two decades, Macy's business grew significantly and took over eleven buildings on his block. In the 1900s, R.H. Macy and Co. saw even more significant growth.
Neil Postman describes the path modern society has inadvertently taken, saying that “what we love will ruin us”, a horrifying pill to swallow and a thought we want to deny. Society’s search for maximum convenience will inevitably be our downfall, even if we believe it makes us happier. We can see just how successful focusing on customer convenience is by analyzing Amazon and McDonald's. Both of these financial giants hold more value than entire countries, with Amazon’s market cap alone being greater than 183 countries’ GDP. Looking into the past, we can see McDonald’s rise to power being led by the focus on convenience and reliability with the introduction of the drive-through and its successful franchising model.
Today many companies worldwide are selling modular homes. These homes are prefabricated and prebuilt off-site at the factory. Sears Modern Homes did not follow the same business model, although many people mistakenly believe the old Sears houses were prefabricated. The Sears houses were ready-to-build kit homes that were shipped to the home sites unassembled. For one price, the customer received the plans and most of the materials needed to build a house including the lumber (usually pre-cut to the designated lengths at the mill), windows, doors, shingles, stair railings, nails, and other components.
When the depression of 1893 hit it caused an all-out panic; causing Sears, Roebuck and Co. to sit on large volumes of merchandise, this scared Richard Sears so he decided to quit, selling his half of the company in 1895 for $75,000.00 to Aaron Nusbaum who brought in his brother-in-law Julius Rosenwald. The company continued to grow quickly, but Sears and Rosenwald did not get along with Nusbaum, so in 1905 they bought him out for $1.3 Million Under Rosenwald’s leadership as Vice President and Treasurer annual sales continued to climb over $50milion by 1906. So in 1906 they decided to make the company public, with $40milion in stock. Sears opened its catalog plant in their Sears Merchandise Building Tower in Chicago, and in 1925 Sears opened its first retail store on Chicago’s west side.
As CEO, Morrison possessed 30 plus years of experience in the packaged food industry and a reputation for delivering results (Wang, 2013). Thus, Morrison possessed personal, expert and prestige power, as she had an in-depth working knowledge of the industry and a positive reputation (DuBrin, 2016). This power translated to inherent respect, as Morrison truly understood Campbell’s to its core. In knowing the basics, and recognizing that Campbell’s had remained stagnant as the external environment shifted, Morrison was determined to “invigorate a successful iconic company [Campbell’s] so it could meet the realities of today (Schiffman, 2013).”
When it comes to influencing the consumers, small elements such as color scheme play a big role. What consumers see around them and in media plays a big role in what they want to purchase. 1960’s were a decade of change for women, and the period when Second wave of feminism took place. The 1969 Sears Fall Catalog symbolizes Women power. During that decade, the gender quality gap shortened as a majority percentage of women decided to break the long practiced traditions of the society by perusing careers and practicing rights, which were considered uncommon during that time.
As of November 10, 2008, one of the biggest electronic retailers, Circuit City, filed for bankruptcy due to various poor decisions. In my opinion, one of the greatest contributors to this would be the lack of strategic management. While the company was quite successful in the 80’s and 90’s, the primary issue was that it had failed to adapt to the industry, which is what its competitor Best Buy did to get ahead of the industry. Specifically, as Best Buy surpassed the competition, Circuit City was only making enough to stay afloat rather than to be unique and gain a consumer following. Additionally, since employees are a crucial element in how a company operates, Circuit City did not meet the demands of its sales force by pulling the commission
Besides being Sears’s customer for more than five years, I have real experience in business and academic knowledge as a counselor and academic member at the level that I can make a fair judgment. My evaluation will somehow be aggressive to show some weakness aspects because I will be talking from a company manager’s perspective. However, as my judgment is based on an outside view and without any support from statistics or financial analysis, some of my points might not completely be accurate. In general, the business model of the company is built on a traditional concept where the business has to compete depending on its own capability in the world of networks where the power is mainly located in relation and connection with others. This trap
In its hey day, Sears had topped mail-order sales and accounted for more than 50% of the total $180 million; the year was 1931 . Founded by Richard Warren in 1886, within 50 years Sears had transformed into a retailing-giant to become a symbol of growth and hope for people in the country. Major national brands like Craftsman, Kenmore, Silvertone etc., were established by it, and Sears Catalogs became the source of all essential goods, services, and home improvement projects even for Americans living in areas as remote as Cape Charles, a tiny hamlet on the far flung Eastern shore of Virginia. But then, something went wrong.
About Sears Avail stuff through Sears store which was an 1886 store named R.W. Sears Watch Company in Minneapolis and it has been formed to get use of retailers where people shop from. This store started off with a beginning of a new time having people visit using discounted options as an agreement with people of the US and they shared and became employees of this company to attain improvements of best nature in the consumer industry. To attain purchases of items such as electronics, home and furniture items there was a general nature in the kind of items which were being bought through Sears and made use of facilities most people want on online stores with ease. The agreed percentage and discovery of web based means is an application with
Porter´s Five Forces is the analytical framework chosen to analyse GE´s Playbook. GE is one of the world´s most diverse companies spanning a wide range of businesses (Grant, 2005), including appliances and lighting, aviation, capital (commercial lending and leasing, consumer, real estate, energy financial services, aviation financial services), energy management, healthcare, oil & gas, power & water, and transportation (General Electric, 2015). Some of their customers are: - Aviation, Commercial Engines: Boeing - Capital Inventory Financing: P.C. Richard and Son - Distributed Energy: Songas - Healthcare: Wheaton Franciscan
