Advertising then becomes key.
Existing brick and mortar companies had a challenge on their hands. Market share was being whittled away by online sales. Brick and mortar companies need to either change, or be eliminated. Sears recognized this. In 1997, Sears launched its Craftsman Tools web site (News & History - Historical Chronology 1). Sears entered the online sales fray.
Every child remembers Christmas when they were little. We wrote letters to Santa listing in great detail all the toys we wished he would bring because we had most assuredly been the best little boys and girls in the world all year. Many of us made that list by going through the Sears Wishbook. It had everything a child could possibly want from the Blue Denim Drum Set to that new Zebco fishing pole. In 1998, to the delight of computer savvy kids everywhere, the Wishbook was put online (News & History - Historical Chronology 2).
Sears followed this action in 1999 by creating Sears.com (News & History - Historical Chronology 2). Sears.com was not so much a web site as a web portal. It provided a single access point for its web ventures. Since 2000, Sears has created 10 separate web sites that can be accessed through the Sears.com portal. Each web site was a virtual representation of each of its departments including major appliances, lawn and garden, home electronics, baby furniture, spare parts for tools and appliances, and many more (Levin 1).
While this was extraordinary in and of itself, what was truly innovative was the fact that Sears integrated it's web portal/web sites with its existing IT infrastructures creating access to all of Sears resources including 80,000 point-of-sale terminals, 40,000 Windows desktops, 18,000 call-center stations, the transaction processing system, the data warehouse and the customer database. The end result of this is when you check for stock, it is real time. All information is shared (Levin 1).