[cwyers]

Ironically they had the foresight, they were just too early/didn't execute. They ran an online service (co-owner with IBM and CBS) called Prodigy that competed with AOL and CompuServ, and they tried to do online shopping there.

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

Everyone is talking like creating Amazon was some kind of low hanging citrus to be picked from the tree.

[100721]

For a company that had Sears’ positioning at the time? It wasn’t far off from that description.

[lumost]

People are talking about putting a mail order catalog store online. Presumably, sears already had the catalog, shipping infrastructure - so it really should have been about digital payments, and an online storefront.

How significant their shipping catalog was in the 1990s I do not know, scaling the online storefront would have required Amazon scale investments which a dividend maximizing company was unlikely to do.

[tracker1]

After that, when the internet buzz was really picking up (around Win95 release cycle)... The prevailing opinion from their leadership was "the internet is a fad." and they just didn't try moving into that space at all until it was way too late.