Sears' Past Concepts Don't Bode Well for MyGofer

(MoneyWatch)  Another day, another Sears Holdings concept. This time around the company is launching MyGofer, a showroom-like concept where customers can order items online, or by phone, and then pick them up at a physical location.

There is currently one MyGofer, in Joliet, Ill., and the company already has a beta Web site up and running. The store basically sells EVERYTHING, from electronics to clothes, to appliances. The place even sells food. It's kind of like Amazon.com opening a brick and mortar outlet.

Whether or not MyGofer is a good concept is open for debate. One columnist recently trashed the idea, calling it "a bad cross between Amazon.com and Dairy Barn." Meanwhile, my BNET Retail colleague Mike Duff let Sears respond to the allegations, offering that its convenience-focused multichannel concept is something that consumers are looking for nowadays.

Since there's only one MyGofer open right now, it's really too early to say7 how the idea is going to shake out, though it is telling that a smart company like Amazon.com has yet to venture into the brick and mortar world -- most likely for good reason. More importantly, a string of new concepts Sears tried out over the last decade never gained much traction.

Let's go to the videotape:

• In the late 1990s, Sears launched The Great Indoors, a home-improvement chain that was billed as an upscale alternative to Home Depot. The retailer outlined big plans for the idea, but they never came to fruition. Late last year Sears announced four Great Indoors stores closings, leaving the chain with 12 units.
• In 2003 the company introduced Sears Grand, an answer to SuperTarget, combining its Sears offerings with groceries and other categories. Two years later, Sears debuted Sears Essentials, another, smaller, off-mall concept. These seemed to make sense because shoppers were increasingly looking for shopping experiences in non-mall locations. Skip up to 2009, and there are only a handful of Grand and Essentials units sprinkled throughout the country. That's not much of a roll out for a retail company that operates nearly 4,000 stores in North America.
• Add in its failed 2007 bid for ailing chain Restoration Hardware and its consistently dismal quarterly sales, and it's hard to have much hope for future concepts coming out of Sears Holdings. Shoppers might crave a fresh, convenient concept like MyGofer, but there's little evidence that Sears is the outfit that can execute it well.