zlacker

I remember my last time walking into a Sears. I figured I'd give it a shot to see if they had anything different than HD/Lowes in the category I was looking at (shop vac attachments). A clerk pointed me to a computer saying "If we don't have it in the store you can order it from our catalog". The computer catalog was literally just searching Amazon listings. That basically confirmed to me that Sears was in a death spiral.

>>mindsl+(OP)
Yep. They were already dead by that point (again, due to standard corporate raider tactics) -- a zombie just awaiting its coup de grâce.

There was a time before that when they had a better web presence for selling regular hardgoods than Amazon (which was still mostly known as just an online book store), and the Sears Parts website was the very first place to look online for manuals, diagrams, parts, and standard accessories for any random household thing (including shop vac attachments).

They also co-founded the Prodigy network back in the 80s when home computers were still very novel and people weren't broadly sure if the concept would ever catch on.