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Sears sometimes gets taken itself in the process of taking back goods. Shoes that have obviously been worn to shreds have been accepted with a smile. Tools that have been misused have been replaced. Last year a customer in rural New York suddenly became dissatisfied with foam furniture he had bought at Sears-six months earlier. He complained and got a credit. If buyers occasionally abuse the policy, Sears does not mind too much; it counts on those very customers to buy other products that they will not return.
With all those whirring blades, moving belts and spinning drills on so many of the things it sells, Sears is vulnerable to being sued by customers in product-liability cases. But it also moves to head off suits —and injuries—by telling customers about defects. Says Chief Counsel Philip Knox: "We had recalls long before there was a Product Safety Act." In the 1960s, for example, the company recalled a children's swing set, informing all buyers by certified mail of a weak weld.
Sears is constantly searching to learn who its customers are, what they like, what they are avoiding, how they are changing. It is a vast constituency that Sears kneads, reads, tries to listen to, examines, interprets. Through one of the largest systems of IBM computers outside the U.S. Government, the company keeps track of what is.being bought and where. Each morning just after 7, Merchandise's Brennan enters his office and calls up a display on his computer terminal that can tell him the dollar volume of all Sears stores the previous day. He can also look at sales figures by region, specific store or product line.
Those figures would show him what people like Lisa and Terry Ford of Jonesboro, 17 miles south of Atlanta, are buying. When they were high school students, the couple hung out at the local Sears mall because it was the best place in town to have fun and meet people. As teenagers, they bought Halloween costumes at Sears. By the age of 16 they were going through the store and pointing to things that they would some day have in their home. Married five years ago at 18rthey outfitted their new two-bedroom house at Sears. Lisa got a Kenmore washer and dryer as birthday and Christmas presents. The couple also bought a blender, a mixer, a coffeemaker, a toaster, an iron, a shower curtain and living-room curtains from Sears. When they needed to fence in their yard, they got a Sears fence. Now the Fords are planning a family, and they are starting to visit the Winnie-the-Pooh collection of children's clothes.
Of such are great retail empires built.
At a time when many companies cannot resist the temptation to take the money and run, Sears continues to show how to succeed in business by really trying. It is tough to beat the offer that Richard W.