10/26/2017

A Century Later: Lessons from Sears’ Breakup With Whirlpool

Good vendor relationships are hard to find and often harder to keep

A good vendor relationship is hard to find. Harder still is a relationship that passes the century mark.

But for a while, that’s what Sears had with the appliance manufacturer Whirlpool, which effectively came to life under the tutelage of Sears, Roebuck and Company, a catalog company that eventually became a major department store retailer.

This week, however, the two parties broke off that agreement, and the reasons for that, really, come from both sides of the deal. While a pricing dispute was the main reason cited, the reasons in some ways go much deeper.

Please click here to read the complete article on Associations Now.