Chickens Come Home to Roost at Sears

It’s almost the end of an era with the announcement (May 14) that Sears is selling off its Coldwell Banker residential real estate business.

The 1980s business school MBA graduates mesmerized industry leaders with smoke and mirrors about the potential synergism of a financial empire wherein home buyers would buy Sears refrigerators, Allstate insurance, Dean Witter stocks, ad infinitum. This class of MBAs had literally no experience in the real world of business, yet it convinced corporate executives with words they wanted to hear.

In the meantime, Sears and many others forgot what business they were really in and lost the momentum of new technology and merchandising techniques affecting their basic business and survival. The chickens have come home to roost.

BOB KERBER

Oceanside