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  magine
the expressions of the Russian people...
...coming face-to-face for the first
time with washing machines that don't involve a pot of boiling water;
clothes dryers that aren't a line strung over the sink; or refrigerators
that make ice, rather than require it.
Back in 1988, we proposed selling Sears Kenmore
products inside the USSR.
We developed the plan, found the resources to
execute it, and pitched it to the top of the then-Merchandise Group
at Sears.
The campaign was called, simply, "Sears on
Tour" -- no theme line. All sorts of Sears products would be
displayed in auditoriums, convention centers, Young Soviet Halls,
Lenin Laundromats, Concrete of the Future museums and the like.
Attendees would pay a nominal entry fee to wander through and gawk.
But the products weren't just for display.
They were for sale.
Russian authorities were enthusiastic, even anxious.
The Iron Curtain had been parted. Soviet citizens
saw just how crappy their lives were, unleashing decades
of unfulfilled consumer desires. Soviet industry hadn't a prayer
of a chance in hell of manufacturing what people now wanted. Even
if GOSPLAN could somehow manufacture a working TV, no one in Russia
seemed to have a clue how to get it from a factory to a warehouse
to a store to a living room.
Sears can handle that! If
there's one thing Americans are better at than anyone else in the
world, it's DISTRIBUTION!)
Maybe you remember the constant stream of news
about Sears on Tour, as reporters sopped up everything 'glasnost.'
Investors surely remember the big bump in price
for Sears stock, which transformed from an awkward wallflower at
the bull market ball into a glamour plate virtually overnight.
Quite a few folks may even have felt a bit more
proud to be an American, as we all reflected that what's commonplace
to us -- dependable, trustworthy, Sears products -- are miracles
in most of the rest of the world.
People
are still talking about it today. It's the subject of newspaper
articles, MBA theses, Jane Pauley retrospectives on MSNBC...Well,
it sure coulda been!
At the last minute,
Sears got cold feet. It never happened.*
AXIOM: A lack of vision results in
a lack of visibility. Or, if you prefer, No Guts, No Glory!
Persons who think the failure to undertake
Sears on Tour has nothing to do with Sears' lack of visibility today
had better think again. Sears has dropped
so far off the radar scope that it's no longer part of the Dow Jones
Industrial Average. Wal-Mart -- far and away the #1 retailer --
is on the Dow. And now, Home Depot is there, too.
______
* Strangely, one of the decision-makers at
Sears who got cold feet quit a year or so later to take a similar
post at Montgomery Ward. We pitched the idea there, and he enthusiastically
supported it. All the way to the top it went, where once again,
it died. In hindsight, given that this was obviously a superb, staggeringly
enormous idea, it's only fair to ask: were Sears & Montgomery
Ward both gutless, or were we just
plain lousy salespeople?
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