Sears

"Thereafter Don accustomed himself to Nolan’s habits and the work atmosphere of Atari. The manufacturing area (in which the young Steve Jobs worked) reeked of marijuana smoke and board meetings were sometimes conducted in the hot tub at Nolan’s Los Gatos home. Little more than two years after the Sequoia investment, Atari received a large order from Sears for the home version of Pong but the company was strained for capital. In those days the growth equity market was nonexistent and the Atari board had the choice of an IPO or sale. The public market for videogame makers had been undermined by the collapse of the digital watch and pocket calculator markets, and thus when Gordon Crawford of the Capital Group, acting as an intermediary, found a receptive audience in Steve Ross, who had turned a New York parking lot company into Warner Communications, the die was cast."

"Prodigy was an early player looking to connect personal computers on a private subscriber network. Prodigy’s owners were IBM and Sears. IBM, the largest computer maker in the world at the time, and Sears, one of the biggest retailers, were offering news, sports, weather, entertainment, and home shopping through Sears and other retailers. Members could “message” one another only on the proprietary, closed Prodigy network. The biggest of these new networking services was AOL, followed closely by CompuServe, owned by H&R Block Inc. and General Electric Company. They were all clunky, closed-off networks or “walled gardens.” Simple connections took a few minutes and required special software and modems, and some services charged per minute for usage!"

"[Peter] Drucker was . . . an admirer of Marks & Spencer, the giant British retail concern which, while copying some of Sears’ methods, notably in recruiting, training, and developing new executives, was imbued with a variety of objectives, perhaps more diverse than Sears’ productivity and marketing, for example. It had also established “innovation objectives” as Drucker put it, by which “it rapidly built its quality control laboratories into research, design and development centers. It developed designs and fashions. Finally it went out and looked for the right manufacturer.” The result was one of the world’s best programs for private labels. —Isidore Barmash, Macy’s for Sale, 1989"