“Cameron Holloway, a sales associate at Sears in the Cumberland Mall here, is hard at work helping a customer—a virtual shopper 300 miles away in Semmes, Ala. The Sears website just sent a message to Mr. Holloway’s iPhone telling him the customer wants a $145 18-inch Craftsman chain saw, so he retrieves one from the store floor, labels it and loads it onto a pallet next to cameras, tools and other holiday gifts. At 5 p.m. a United Parcel Service Inc. truck will arrive to ship it west, and Mr. Holloway will have successfully kept Sears from losing another holiday shopper to Amazon.com, Inc.”If you want to go head-to-head with Amazon, you go out and build a bunch of distribution centers,” said Jeff Starecheski, vice president of logistics services with Sears Holding Corp., referring to the dramatic steps some competitors consider to stave off the e-commerce rival. But Sears and its sister retail chain Kmart blanket the country with about 2,000 stores. “We’re already close to the customers,” he says. Sears just needed a delivery strategy.” [Source: The Wall Street Journal]
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