Nobody Cares: PRS

[danielravennest]

Sears sold off the Craftsman brand, although they still sell it in-store - but you can find it at Kmart stores now too, and occasionally elsewhere. Or direct from the Craftsman website. They're maybe not made quite as well as they used to be from what I've heard (isn't everything?), but they're still loads better than something you'd get from, say, Harbor Freight, or the auto parts store, and they still have lifetime warranties.

As someone who uses tools a lot, and also just likes accumulating old tools, they have many grades of quality. Some Harbor Freight stuff is OK, some is absolute crap. But you have to know something about tools to tell the difference. There are better grades than the old Craftsman stuff used to be. One guide is what do professionals choose. There are also lots of tool review sites. I go to flea markets, yard sales, and thrift stores looking for bargains, and sometimes find quality tools cheap.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Back in the day Sears and Roebuck sent out catalogs to every household in the country (as far as I knew) it was very exciting. This was after the time when you could order pre-fab houses but the catalogs of my childhood had everything else anyone could possibly imagine (as far as I knew).

LOL! The oldtimers liked to talk about how you used to be able to by beekeeping supplies from the Sears catalog. Crazy.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

The Sears catalog was pretty much the Amazon of those days.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Ahhh, the Sears Christmas Wish Book.

And the bra section.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Essence Lumin]

LOL! The oldtimers liked to talk about how you used to be able to by beekeeping supplies from the Sears catalog. Crazy.

 

[Essence Lumin]

The Sears catalog was pretty much the Amazon of those days.

It was the pornhub too sort of. Just fashion pictures.

 

[Free]

It was the pornhub too sort of. Just fashion pictures.

Still Amazon. One thing the intimate apparel section of Amazon has over Sear's catalog: customer images.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Still Amazon. One thing the intimate apparel section of Amazon has over Sear's catalog: customer images.

True, but back then there weren't so many other choices.

 

[danielravennest]

You can relive old catalogs at WishbookWeb

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Rose Karuna]

Sears sold off the Craftsman brand, although they still sell it in-store - but you can find it at Kmart stores now too, and occasionally elsewhere. Or direct from the Craftsman website. They're maybe not made quite as well as they used to be from what I've heard (isn't everything?), but they're still loads better than something you'd get from, say, Harbor Freight, or the auto parts store, and they still have lifetime warranties.

Irony is that Sears at one time was the "Amazon" of the gilded age. Sears started out as a mail order watch company. Sears himself sold the watch company but then met up with Roebuck and started yet another mail order company. When I was growing up in the late 40's and 50's, more people had Sears catalogs in their house than had phone books. (Neither of which are probably found in anyone's home anymore.)

Sears - Wikipedia

In 1933 Sears issued the first of its Christmas catalogs known as the "Sears Wishbook", a catalog featuring toys and gifts, separate from the annual Christmas Catalog. From 1908 to 1940, the catalog even included ready-to-assemble kit houses.

The Sears catalog became known in the industry as "the Consumers' Bible". Novelists and story writers often portrayed the importance of the catalog in the emotional lives of rural folk. The catalog also entered the language, particularly of rural dwellers, as a euphemism for toilet paper, as its pages could be torn out and used as such. In addition, for many rural African-Americans, especially in areas dominated by Jim Crow racial segregation, the Sears Catalog was a vital retail alternative to local white-population-dominated stores, bypassing the stores' frequent intention to deny them fair access to their merchandise.

I can't help but think that if they'd kept their very reliable brands like Kenmore (and yes, I once had a Kenmore washing machine and a Kenmore Sewing Machine) as well as Craftsman and DieHard, diversified themselves away from retail and moved back to their Catalog roots, but did it online instead, that they could have saved themselves.

Also, buying K-Mart was a huge mistake.

Edited to say that I just noticed Free said the same thing. Sorry about that Free.

 

[Essence Lumin]

I can't help but think that if they'd kept their very reliable brands like Kenmore (and yes, I once had a Kenmore washing machine and a Kenmore Sewing Machine) as well as Craftsman and DieHard, diversified themselves away from retail and moved back to their Catalog roots, but did it online instead, that they could have saved themselves.

We've always had Kenmore appliances here. The dish washer is on the fritz. This time the replacement won't be a Kenmore. I need a service agreement where the company won't be out of business.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Also, buying K-Mart was a huge mistake.

I thought it was the other way around - that Kmart bought Sears.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Essence Lumin]

I thought it was the other way around - that Kmart bought Sears.

This article seems to think you are right. I've heard technically when a publically traded company swallows another that neither company bought the other. It is a merger. But that is just a detail.

KMART ACQUIRES SEARS FOR $11 BILLION

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Tangentially:

 

[Ava Glasgow]

Wow.

If he was the good man he wanted people to think he was, he would have acknowledged that he's been a vile and vindictive asshole, accepted the consequences (even if that meant his career ending, as he's done to others), and done his best to atone.

The fact that he chose the opposite path, becoming all-out vicious and demeaning, shows that he really is a horrible person and that he should be relegated to obscurity.

I say that as someone who used to be a fan. I feel stupid now for overlooking the parts of his shtick that bothered me, thinking they were part of some broader social commentary and that they came from a position of humor and general good will. But no, he is a hateful monster, hurting people not just to benefit himself, but because he actually enjoys it.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

The fact that he chose the opposite path, becoming all-out vicious and demeaning, shows that he really is a horrible person and that he should be relegated to obscurity.

He won't be, though. The "old white man complaining that old white men aren't allowed to say certain things anymore" routine is lucrative in the age of Trump.