Amazon Today Looks Shockingly Similar to Sears in 1920

It might seem ludicrous to compare a conquering giant like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) to a dying company like Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD), but the Sears of the early 20th century ruled mass merchandise retailing with its its famous Sears Catalog and direct-to-consumer model.

After reading New and Improved by the Harvard business historian Richard Tedlow, I couldn't help but draw comparisons from where Amazon is now, and where Sears once was.

Of course, there is a world of difference between 1920's America and the digitized, internet-driven world of today, but more things are similar than you may think. Sears, like Amazon, was a delivery retailer. Imagine that! The first retailing giant in America was not a brick-and-mortar store but a delivery mass merchandiser. We tend to think of brick-and-mortar as the original and traditional method of retailing and Amazon as the disruptor that is upending tradition. But Amazon represents not a departure, but a return to centralized delivery, which was the original method of mass merchandise retailing.

Source: Fool.com