I wonder if in a strange way companies like Sears were a victim of the first dotcom bubble crash. If they had pivoted at that point, they’d have been in a better place. But I could just imagine the executives being in such an “I told you this web thing was a fad” mode that they missed their window to modernize.

Especially since the kind of non amazon places that seem to succeed now carry heavy products and sears had no shortage of that.