Customers Who Remember Sears Peak - When Did It Start Declining

Sears: The Rise and Fall of America's Last Five Stores For people who remember Sears: when did it actually start going downhill? I've been researching what happened to Sears, and I honestly expected the answer to be pretty straightforward. "Amazon killed it." But the deeper I got into the history, the less that explanation seemed to fit. Sears was already struggling through major changes long before Amazon became dominant. The catalog disappeared, the stores changed, the company merged with Kmart, and some pretty consequential decisions were made about the business and its real estate. I ended up going pretty deep into the story and put together a documentary looking specifically at how Sears went from one of America's most powerful retailers to where it is today, rather than just blaming everything on online shopping. YouTube: Sears: The Rise and Fall of America's Last Five Stores But I'm much more interested in hearing from people who actually remember Sears. When did you personally notice that Sears wasn't the same anymore? Was there a particular store, department, product, or experience that made you realize something had changed? And looking back, do you think Sears could realistically have been saved? I'd especially like to hear from people who remember Sears at its peak. The business history is interesting, but I'm curious what the decline actually felt like from a customer's perspective.