{"id":6819,"date":"2019-09-30T04:15:43","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/churchedge.com\/illustrations\/index.php\/2019\/09\/30\/what-happens-when-you-dont-open-new-stores\/"},"modified":"2019-09-30T04:15:43","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T04:15:43","slug":"what-happens-when-you-dont-open-new-stores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/what-happens-when-you-dont-open-new-stores\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When You Don&#8217;t Open New Stores"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sewell Avery was once the chairman of Montgomery Ward &#038; Co.  Avery was responsible for Ward\u2019s failure to open a single new store from 1941 to 1957.  Instead, the big retailer piled up cash and then sat on it.  Ward\u2019s amassed $607 million, earning them a dubious Wall Street nickname: \u201cthe bank with the department store front.\u201d  Why didn\u2019t Avery join in the nation\u2019s postwar expansion by following Americans to the suburbs?  He held firmly to the belief and vision that a depression had followed every major war since the time of Napoleon.  \u201cWho am I to argue with history?\u201d Avery demanded.  \u201cWhy build $14-a-foot buildings when we soon can do it for $3-a-foot?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the other side of Chicago, Ward\u2019s rival, Sears, Roebuck &#038; Co., had a different idea.  In 1946, Sears gambled its future and began a costly expansion into suburbia.  Had another depression occurred, Sears would have been financially devastated.  Instead, Sears doubled its revenues while Ward\u2019s stood still.  Sears never looked back, and Ward\u2019s never caught up.  In fact, Ward\u2019s eventually went bankrupt.  How could corporate planning go so wrong?  Montgomery Ward\u2019s fell into disaster because the company stood where it was instead of taking the risk to seize the opportunities of the future.<\/p>\n<p>________<\/p>\n<p>Holwick:  Sears ended up doing the same thing\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sewell Avery was once the chairman of Montgomery Ward &#038; Co. Avery was responsible for Ward\u2019s failure to open a single new store from 1941 to 1957. Instead, the big retailer piled up cash and then sat on it. Ward\u2019s amassed $607 million, earning them a dubious Wall Street nickname: \u201cthe bank with the department [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[697,2434,2431,1523,2435,1119,2433,2432],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}