Carpet label

[Don Monfils]

Ripped up a carpet today with this label on the back, thought thought it was pretty interesting.
Monthomery Ward , the woman thought is was form the 50’s .
There was a carpet installed on top of it and horse hair pad underneath it.

 

[C.J.]

Monkey Wards. Man that takes me back. Sears used to be the place to go once upon a time. I had a girlfriend that worked at J.C. Penny’s back in the day. Is that a place even still around?

 

[Mark Brown]

I still cant get over the fact that sears is not a thing anymore. Those assholes should be in jail for what they did to that place.
Either way, that is some pretty nifty find. It is a shame that carpet cannot still be made simply from wool and jute. Not its petrochemicals and will last longer than any of us, just not in the way it was intended.

 

[C.J.]

Sears was strategically dismembered and sold bit by bit for profit. It’s like parting a car out. Hasn’t been able to run or drive for years but you can still make a buck or two here n there by its continued demise. I’m still blown away that you coulda ordered a friggin house from them then wiped your ass with the catalog that you ordered it from. Best part is those houses are still standing today and they are better than the crap being built right now.

 

[Mark Brown]

Sears didn't run because no one put gas in it and in fact they syphoned it out and then said it wouldn't run and then made a tidy profit in parting out a perfectly good car... but I suppose that is neither here nor there.

Those houses were amazing, more the fact that you could I suppose. I am with you, it was something to see.

 

[C.J.]

Elon Musk called it the MBAisation of America. Everybody has an MBA and they know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. I can’t bag on them because when I want to make some money I go and lay some floating floors. C’est la vie.

 

[Mark Brown]

That quite literally sums up everything I think but cannot explain. Thanks Elon and thank You.

 

[Commercial Floor Rep]

Sears was the Walmart, Home Depot, & Lowes of their day and while no one likes change, they put a lot of good companies out of business over their lifetime. So, it's a bit of poetic justice in my opinion. It's a shame they had to take Kmart out with them though. I miss their subs.

It works like this and it's the same way with the box stores today - the volume of sales they can generate for a a vendor or manufacturer on their shelves can not be found in one single other retailer. Manufacturer's start jumping in line to do business with them, once they get "in" and the numbers are massive, for smaller manufacturers they become so much of that manufacturer's business that the manufacturer can no longer afford to walk away. Now the box can tell the manufacturer what they are going to pay, how and when they are going to pay for it and all of the other terms of doing business with them and if the manufacturer doesn't comply they threaten to remove them from the shelf. So they are virtually stuck and can't walk away without significant financial loss to the company or worse, closing down.

Sears had a unique twist on this business model, once they had you with their volume, they wouldn't demand better pricing, they would just come in and force you to sell them your company for pennies on the dollar or else they would pull you off the shelf and put you out of business, that's why they had all of their own brands of things.

I absolutely hated doing business with them back when they sold floors. At that point they had the older demographic in their pocket. When they started doing their "home care" service where they would come out and do things like repair work or install a garage door opener it got pretty ridiculous. They would totally take advantage of these people's loyalty and just hammer them with outrageous billings. I saw billings where a guy would go out and hang 4 or 5 pieces of wall base in a utility room and they charged the customer $400.00.

Lesson of the day...never let one customer become so much of your business that you can't walk away. I've seen numerous retailers go under playing this same game with builders forever.

 

[C.J.]

Exactly right CFR. Walmart did the exact same thing to Rubbermaid.

 

[Commercial Floor Rep]

The current boxes do the same kind of stuff. These guys have so much power over the vendors they buy from they can do absolutely crazy things. An example is their "Price Match" policies. Take major appliances like washers and dryers as an example. Ever wonder why you can go to HD and Lowe's and never quite find the same exact models? It's because they will literally force the appliance manufacturer to move a control knob to a different spot on the appliance which creates a slightly different model and a slightly different model # while the specs on the machine are identical. This means they don't have to price match against each other. If the appliance manufacturer won't play ball they won't carry them.

Not sure if anybody has ever been a vendor for any of the boxes but if you ever see one of their "Terms of Business" documents that you must sign to do business with them they are about 10 pages long and there are about a million ways they are putting a gun to your head if you fail to meet any of their terms. It's literally insane.


Mark and the TFP guys will vouch for me, I never get political in my posts but this one I'll step out of my normal self imposed restrictions and offer an opinion...

This is why we need to examine and update the antitrust laws in this country. Once these guys are big enough to start funding the PAC's they become "too big to fail" and the politicians all start kissing their hind ends meanwhile driving small business out of business and increasing our reliance on imports. The politicians get money through the PAC's from big business, both foreign and domestic. They are playing both sides and getting rich. I've said it literally hundreds of times...no matter which party you support, term limits and PAC's should be the two biggest priorities for any voter. Until we get change on those two issues nothing in Washington will ever change. If the President of the United States cannot serve more than two terms why on earth should anyone else ever be allowed to stay in office longer than the President? We can't trust the politicians to vote on these two issues either. It needs to be put to a referendum vote so everyone votes on it, not the elected officials who have a vested interest in whether or not it's changed. If we as a country really want to change, then change these two things and everything else is a cake walk. It's just simply amazed me since I was a teenager that we've simply created a legal system for bribery and political access and then pretend like it doesn't influence the running of our country.

That's it, end of my political spiel.

Sorry, I didn't mean to hijack the thread. The carpet label was definitely a cool find and thanks for posting it. It brought back a lot of memories from my childhood. My grandparents never shopped anywhere else but Montgomery Wards and Sears and I have a lot fond memories of going with them to get something they purchased. I also spent most of my childhood waiting for the catalogs to come so I could look at all the toys and make my Christmas list for them. It was a big deal for us kids and me and my cousins would have a ball trying to pick something out. My grandpa's fishing boat came from Montgonery Wards and I have so many memories of fishing with him in that boat it's probably half my childhood. My job was to catch the bait the night before fishing. So, I'd be out crawling through the grass with a flashlight catching night crawlers and crickets half the night. Fun stuff for a kid!!!

 

[Don Monfils]

Jesus Chuck, I just thought the label was neat.
. Just kidding, that was pretty informative!

I used to pick night crawlers ( worms) when I was a kid. We filled coffee cans and brought them to the bait shop. I think we got $.01 each for them.
I tried to pick some worms a couple of years ago.
They either got a lot quicker or I got a lot slower.

 

[Floorist]

Sears bought our local Western Auto stores. Killed them in a couple years.

 

[Floorist]

A friend was involved in corporate Walmart for over 20 years. He said they operate differently. They will contact a company, say we want to buy X number of train car loads. This is what we will pay and when it must be here. If you can't agree to their offer, they will go to your competitor. He said, no one turns them down.

 

[highup]

CPF, I don't think you need to worry about your view of politics as it applies to campaign donations by companies corporations or unions.
I don't think any of them should be allowed to pay a dime to a candidate.
We seriously need campaign reform but it seems a politicians are the only ones allowed to vote on that type of thing. I want the people to vote on that type of thing. Limit private donations to let's say.... X-amount then have the taxpayers chip in a few hundred million dollars for each final candidate so they both have somewhat equal amounts to spend.
there has to be someway to stop parties from spending a billion dollars each to become president.

 

[highup]

Jesus Chuck, I just thought the label was neat.
. Just kidding, that was pretty informative!

I used to pick night crawlers ( worms) when I was a kid. We filled coffee cans and brought them to the bait shop. I think we got $.01 each for them.
I tried to pick some worms a couple of years ago.
They either got a lot quicker or I got a lot slower.

The neighbors discovered that rapping wire from extension cord around a couple of nails and driving into the ground made the nightcrawlers come to the top.
I don't recall how close we stood to the nails when he plugged it in.
It did work.