The World According to Oatney

Goodbye Sears and Roebuck

I think just about everyone has heard the news by now that K-Mart Holdings Corporation has engineered a merger with the old and venerable Sears, Roebuck, and Company. It is an arrangement likely to benefit both parties in the long run, but it is a blow to tradition. Sears, that paragon of American catalog and department store retail, will now go the way the discount store.

I have long believed that being conservative means, among other things, having a loyalty to tradition and little desire to change old customs. In that vein, I must make the suggestion that the new company should have kept the old Sears name (Sears, Roebuck, and Company), as opposed to the new name, Sears Holdings. Rather than sounding venerable and respectable, the new operation sounds like a bad discount chain, and not much different from Wal-Mart. Then again, it appears Wal-Mart controls everything these days, even whether old Sears and Roebuck will survive.

That's all for this week...My next entry will probably be on Monday.

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 4:35 PM