The Big Store- Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears

Published in 1988, this book tracked the beginning to ‘middle end’ of the Sears story. It is a nice little time capsule. The Author, Donald Katz (Audible Founder/CEO) recently rereleased the book with an updated foreword that touches lightly on the post ‘88 years and changes. At the time of this writing, the Audible version was free to all, even those (such as me) who are not Audible subscribers.

At the beginning, Sears had a winning playbook. Stacking its personnel via the loyalty of military servicemen returning home, Sears built a permanent workforce and a brought in nearly 1% of the US national GDP. Through breakdowns in management, distributing regional propriety over all decisions, and ignorant disregard for competition; the market ownership toppled.

The Big Store details the cowboy behavior of the Sears management and uses no less than three references to ‘Son-of-a-Bitches’ in the 600 pages. Management success is outlined and measured by the number of open-heart surgeries and frequency of steak dinners.

The text in this book is fairly well balanced regarding finger pointing and success. It tries hard to come across Chummy, as if it’s knowledge was direct from the boardroom and translated straight from lips to page. Interestingly, this same chumminess was what allowed narrator Brian Sutherland to excel. He playfully spoke through the text and applied minor character inflection when differences in conversation occured.

Worth listening to, if nothing else to understand the background and history that lead up to the current round of Sear bankruptcy processes.