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Sears Tower: America loses yet another icon

Jul 17, 2009 My thoughts on...

For the better part of a century, Sears, Roebuck and Company was an American retail powerhouse, and by the late 1960’s Sears had become the largest retail firm in the world with some 350,000 people on the payroll. In addition to its massive mail order catalog business, the company also had retail stores in virtually every major city as well as numerous smaller towns across the great expanse of the American heartland. In short, the term “retail” was virtually synonymous with “Sears”.

In order to consolidate all of its numerous Chicago area office buildings and workers into a single location, in 1969 Sears executives commissioned the design and construction of what would become the world’s tallest skyscraper. In 1973 Sears Tower was completed and opened for business. A true American icon was “born”.

For decades now, Sears Tower has dominated the Chicago skyline, representing the very best in American capitalistic ideals and ingenuity. But in recent years the company that was “Sears, Roebuck and Co.” fell on hard times as the demographics and economy of the U.S. changed the way we do business. Sears found it very hard to compete in a world of cheap imported products and hundred-plus store shopping malls. The company’s once massive catalog business dwindled down to little more than a memory until it was more or less phased out, and stores were closed left and right in an effort to save money and remain profitable. Of course the very reasons for Sears’ downfall (cheap imports and changing demographics) helped Wal-Mart become the new world retail powerhouse that it is today - but that’s a story for another time.

In an effort to remain in business, Sears allowed itself to be bought out by K-Mart in 2004. Today, many stores remain open under the name of Sears, but the once iconic company is now just a shadow of its former self.

As of yesterday – July 17, 2009 – Sears Tower is no longer the icon of American business that it had been for decades. It was renamed “Willis Tower” at the behest of Willis Group Holdings, Ltd., the London-based insurance broker that leased a large portion of the building back in March. Sadly, one of the greatest of American icons is now under British control. And to me, the saddest thing about the entire Sears saga is the fact that it is really a microcosm of what is happening to our great country itself.

It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to find and purchase products that were made on American soil, and countless “American jobs” now belong to people in China, Mexico, Bangladesh, Vietnam and other places around the globe where workers have virtually no rights and earn wages that are just a fraction of what we earn here in the good ole USA. What used to be the world’s leading production economy has morphed into the world’s leading service economy, and that will eventually result in lower standards of living for all but the very wealthiest among us. Unless things change for the better – and quick – we’re likely to see the America we grew up in become a much less desirable place to live and raise a family. We’ll not only lose our most precious icons, we’ll also lose our American identity.