Description: A caption on top of the picture says "Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed themselves to be endless."
Underneath is a picture of an abandoned store, on five slabs of concrete the name "Sears" is still visible.

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[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

An offshoot of the Sears empire migrated to - and still thrives in - Mexico. The stores are owned by Mexican telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim, whom I suspect bought the local rights to Sears back in the 90s NOT because of Sears, but because of their ISP business, called Prodigy, which dominates Mexico's internet landscape to this day.

Like Phoenicians migrating their center of power and culture away from the conflictive Levant, in favor of the remote and calm lands of Carthage, I suppose.

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ruminating on the subject a little further in light of this information, Kmart is also owned in the USA by the same (allegedly crazy) Illinois-based person who sank his own business empires.

But Kmart is still going strong in Australia, isn't it?

Looking up Sears in Wikipedia, Carlos Slim owns 80% of the Mexico side of Sears, while the remaining 20% goes to Sears Holdings in Illinois. With such an overwhelming majority stake, I imagine that Slim can run Sears Mexico with no interference, but then also all Illinois has to do is kick back and reap the benefits that 20% stake, and the same should also apply for Kmart Australia.

Then again, after their collapse through incompetence, and liquidating their USA chains, I would suppose the Illinois office is probably still up to its' neck in rolling debt.

[–] Asidonhopo@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I believe the Australian KMart is a distinct and unrelated company.