Very few people care about shopyourway.com. Originally designed as a social network for shopping, the UI is confusing "busy" which overwhelms visitors and drives them off. The community section is spammy because of trolling personal shoppers begging for clients. This was another dumb idea from Eddie (remember myGofer, Shopbolt, Alfie, Sears Health/FitStudio -- all failed concepts either shut down or limping along effectively dead).
Eddie may be a visionary at coming up with ideas, but other retailers actually make them work. He is terrible at execution. Alfie, Sears' idea of a voice-activated personal shopping assistant, was a great example. You pushed a button to ask for prices on something you were shopping for. An offshore person or personal shopper listened to a RECORDING and then responded with questions to narrow the customer down. But those questions came after responses to other questions. In most cases, a customer could Google a better price in minutes while Alfie reps often took a day or two to actually get an order started. Our innovative concepts are promoted when they launch and then quickly fade into oblivion when they don't (and never will) stick. Our average customer is 40+. Millennials who love these kinds of impersonal shopping techniques would not be caught dead in our stores.
Most of the users on Eddie's loved SYWR are pushed there by deal-hunting websites that teach visitors how to exploit FREECASH and other promotions or "personal shoppers" that are mostly social media wannabe "stars" that represent our brand but don't work for us (instead earning minuscule commissions whenever someone who registers with them makes a purchase.) The most popular deal bloggers instruct customers how to get items for free from us.
Ordinary shoppers think of SYWR as the promotional arm of Sears and Kmart. Those that use SYWR with their registered credit/debit cards to buy goods and services (often from our direct competitors) earn additional points they can use at Sears and Kmart. But technical problems frequently require members to chase the points they were entitled to. Most just give up. The program is way too complicated and the only ones that profit from it are the dealhunters who think it is a personal failure on their part to walk into one of our stores and actually spend their own money, instead of using our FREECASH and other promotional stunts to walk out of the store with a shopping cart of items we actually paid for.
SYWR is not at all like Amazon Prime. SYWR Max is supposed to be, but hasn't been for about a year since Sears and Kmart implemented $25-30 as the minimum out of pocket spend required to get free shipping. Before that, SYWR Max members got free shipping on virtually every purchase. Also, virtually nobody actually pays for Max membership because free trials are extended indefinitely.
Our own financial reports tell the story - only about 11% of our revenue comes from online/digital platform sales. That number has remained virtually unchanged over the last five years, despite all the promotions and promises.
The reasons why SYW fails is very simple: it ties customers primarily to Sears and Kmart, which increasingly offers customers less and less selection of the products they want, makes customers go crazy trying to find items in stock and available to ship, and are usually available elsewhere for less money, are packaged properly and ship fast.
Can Sears survive selling mattresses and appliances in small format stores? Probably not. Mattress retailers are everywhere, don't carry the increasingly bad reputation Sears is getting, and customers are now used to shopping at Lowes and Home Depot for appliances, and again don't have to worry about the longevity those retailers or the horror stories people read almost every day about Sears' warranty services and poor repair reviews.
If you walk into a Kmart or Sears, the one word you would never associate with either chain is: NEW. You cannot have a comeback story from stores that are using cash registers older than most of their associates and fixtures that were installed when many of our 50-year old customers were in high school.