Before there was Amazon.com, there was Sears. Whether it was through their catalog or their department stores, it was the place to be when you needed everything. It was the place to get appliances, clothes, hardware, and snow blowers. Until 1989, it was the largest revenue retailer in the United States, now its 31st. After just avoiding liquidation, Sears will be down to 400 stores (from 3,500 stores) and it will surely die. As a fan of business history, the missteps made by Sears along the way brought them to the verge of eventual extinction. These missteps are great lessons for us as plan providers because we can avoid these catastrophic errors by looking at where Sears went wrong.