Went from 1500 competitors to 5000 competitors within 15 miles during Eddie's tenure. Nordstrom's, and Saks adapted with Rack and Off 5th. TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Kohl's came along. Customers (as even Eddie calls them) lost their reason to trek the distances to malls, which increasingly needed reasons to be destinations. Meanwhile, Sears remain museum pieces, declining retail spaces falling apart that once seemed like preservation projects from the 90s until Eddie ruined all the vendor relationships and every store looks likes whatever they could get from Overstock and whatever two bit supplier from China that would still deal with his awful reputation. Eddie doesn't understand retail. Eddie doesn't understand real estate. Eddie doesn't understand capital. He certainly doesn't understand technology. Everything is magic to him, and he still has the hubris to think he's the smartest person in the room as the whole world has passed him by.
He never understood that the goodwill of Sears' past relied on a massive infrastructure and a vast network of specialists, where assets would turn into liabilities as you kept on shrinking, that the costs of maintenance would grow exponentially if you didn't keep things well maintained, that asset values are constantly devaluing if you don't keep up with the competition. Sears was an aircraft carrier, never investing the capital for repair and maintenance, never upgrading it, as he replaced his highly trained staff with chimpanzees who couldn't manage a canoe.
Eddie is a mo--n. Always has been. Always will be.