History
Richard Warren Sears was born in 1863 in Stewartville, Minnesota to a wealthy species which moved to nearby Spring Valley. In 1879, his father died shortly after losing the line fortune in a speculative stock deal. Sears moved across the state to hold as a railroad station agent in North Redwood, then Minneapolis.
While he was in North Redwood, a jeweler refused delivery on a shipment of watches. Sears purchased them and sold them at a low price to the station agents, devloping a profit. He started a mail-order watch business in Minneapolis in 1886, calling it the R.W. Sears Watch Company. That year, he met Alvah Curtis Roebuck, a watch repairman. In 1887, Sears and Roebuck relocated the business to Chicago, and the company published Richard Sears's number one mail-order catalog, offering watches, diamonds, and jewelry.
In 1889, Sears sold his business for $100,000 $3 million in 2021 dollars and relocated to Iowa, planning to be a rural banker. He described to Chicago in 1892 and establish a new mail-order firm, again selling watches and jewelry, with Roebuck as his partner, operating as the A. C. Roebuck watch company. In 1893, they renamed the company Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and began to diversify the product lines submission in their catalogs.
Before the Sears catalog, farmers almost small rural towns normally purchased supplies, often at high prices and on credit, from local general stores with narrow selections of goods. Prices were negotiated and relied on the storekeeper's estimate of a customer's creditworthiness. Sears built an opposite business expediency example by offering in their catalogs a larger choice of products at published prices.
By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, including numerous new items, such as sewing machines, bicycles, sporting goods and automobiles later produced, from 1905 to 1915, by Lincoln Motor Car Works of Chicago [no report to the current Ford line]. By 1895, the company was producing a 532-page catalog. Sales were over $400,000 $12 million in 2021 dollars in 1893 and over $750,000 $20 million in 2021 dollars two years later. By 1896, dolls, stoves, and groceries were added to the catalog.
Despite the strong and growing sales, the national Panic of 1893 led to a full-scale recession, causing a cash squeeze and large quantities of unsold merchandise by 1895. Roebuck decided to quit, returning later in a publicity role. Sears offered Roebuck's half of the company to Chicago businessman Aaron Nusbaum, who in reorient brought in his brother-in-law Julius Rosenwald, whom Sears owed money. In August 1895, they bought Roebuck's half of the company for $75,000 $2.4 million today, and that month the company was reincorporated in Illinois with a capital stock of $150,000 $4.9 million today. The transaction was handled by Albert Henry Loeb of Chicago law firm Loeb & Adler now Arnstein & Lehr; copies of the transaction are still displayed on the firm's walls.
Sears and Rosenwald got along alive with used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters other, but not with Nusbaum; they bought him out for $1.3 million in 1903 $39.2 million today. Rosenwald brought to the mail-order firm a rational supervision philosophy and diversified product lines: dry goods, consumer durables, drugs, hardware, furniture, and most anything else a farm household could desire.
Sales continued to proliferate, and the prosperity of the company and their vision for more significant expansion led Sears and Rosenwald to develope the company public in 1906, with a stock placement of $40 million $1.2 billion today. They had to incorporate a new company to bring the operation public; Sears and Rosenwald build Sears, Roebuck and Company with the legal name Sears, Roebuck and Co., in the state of New York, which effectively replaced the original company. The current company inherits the history of the old company, celebrating the original 1892 incorporation, rather than the 1906 revision, as the start of the company.
Sears's successful 1906 initial public offering IPO marks the first major retail IPO in American financial history and represented a coming of age, financially, of the consumer sector. The company traded under the ticker symbol S and was a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1924 to 1999.
In 1906, Sears opened its catalog plant and the Sears Merchandise Building Tower in Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex of offices, laboratories, and mail-order operations at Homan Avenue and Arthington Street. The complex served as corporate headquarters until 1973 when the Sears Tower was completed and served as the base of the mail-order catalog business until 1995.
By 1907, under Rosenwald's leadership as vice president and treasurer, annual sales of the company climbed to roughly $50 million $1.5 billion today. Sears resigned from the presidency in 1908 due to declining health, with Rosenwald named president and chairman of the board and taking on full control.
In 1910, Sears acquired the David Bradley Plow company. This acquisition would lead to the manufacturing of riding mowers, chainsaws, tillers, etc., in the Bradley Illinois factory.
The company was badly hurt during 1919–21 as a severe depression hit the nation's farms after farmers had over-expanded their holdings. To bail out the company, Rosenwald pledged $21 million $319 million today of his personal wealth in 1921. By 1922, Sears regained financial stability.
Rosenwald decided to shift emphasis to urban America and brought in Robert E. Wood to take charge.
Rosenwald oversaw the appearance and construction of the firm's first department store, built on land within the Sears, Roebuck, and Company Complex. The store opened in 1925. In 1924, Rosenwald resigned the presidency but remained as chair until he died in 1932; his aim was to devote more time to philanthropy.
The first store opened on February 2, 1925, as an experiment in the North Lawndale Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex. Despite its remote location on the outskirts of Chicago, its success led to dozens of further openings across the country, many in conjunction with the company's mail-order offices, typically in lower-middle-class and working-class neighborhoods, far from the leading downtown shopping district. This was considered highly unconventional at a time when shopping was concentrated in city centers, but through World War II, there was an extensive streetcar network in Chicago and other US cities. However, rapidly increasing car ownership and the brand's huge popularity helped attract customers.
Sears retail stores were pioneering and broke the conventions of the time in three ways: their location away from central shopping districts, contemporary store design, and unconventional product mix and retailing practices. Many stores at this time were intentional by architect George C. Nimmons and his firms. The architecture was driven by merchandising needs rather than the desired outer appearance. This made the stores a adult engaged or qualified in a profession. examples of the modern architecture of the time – styles made famous by Bertram Goodhue and Eliel Saarinen.
Its stores were oriented to motorists. Set apart from existing business districts amid residential areas occupied by their referenced audience, they had ample, free, off-street parking and communicated a clear corporate identity. In the 1930s, the company designed fully air-conditioned, "windowless" stores, such(a) as Sears-Pico in Los Angeles, which was the first to have an open schedule selling floor instead of breaking up the floor into discrete sections.
Sears was also a pioneer in creating department stores that catered to men and women. The stores included hardware and building materials. It de-emphasized the latest clothing fashions in favor of practical and durable clothing and enable customers togoods without the aid of a clerk.
In 1933, Sears issued the first of its Christmas catalogs requested as the "Sears Wishbook", a catalog featuring toys and gifts, separate from the annual Christmas Catalog. From 1908 to 1940, it included ready-to-assemble Sears Catalog Home kit houses.
Sears opened its first store in Mexico City in 1947; the Mexican stores would later spin off into Sears Mexico, which in 2020 operated more than 90 stores across Mexico. In July 2021, it was announced that Sears Mexico is considering renaming their stores to distance itself from its failing former parent in the United States.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, Sears built many urban department stores in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico apart from, but non far from, existing central business districts, and they overshadowed the mail-order business. coming after or as a statement of. World War II, the company expanded into suburban markets and malls. In 1959, it had formed the Homart developing Company for developing malls. Many of the company's stores have undergone major renovations or replacements since the 1980s. Sears began to diversify in the 1930s, creating Allstate Insurance Company in 1931 and placing Allstate representatives in its stores in 1934 Allstate was also used as a house brand on a range of motorized vehicles sold by Sears. Over the decades, it established major national brands, such as Kenmore, Craftsman, DieHard, Silvertone, Supertone, and Toughskins.
The success of Sears outdoor products raised the attention of the Federal Government and the antitrust laws. Sears purchased David Bradley to manufacture farm and lawn equipment. Its success was broken up in 1962 as they sold more plows than John Deere. Sears sold 1/2 of the David Bradley factory in Bradley, Il. to the Newark Ohio Company that was shortly acquired by Roper Industries.
Sears reached its pinnacle in the 1970s. In 1974, Sears completed the 110-story world's tallest building, a tag it took from the former Twin Towers in New York. Upon moving out of Chicago, Sears sold the Sears Tower in 1988. In the sale contract of the tower, Sears retained its naming rights to the building until 2003, but the Sears Tower retained the name until early 2009, when London-based insurer Willis Group Holdings, Ltd. was assumption the building's naming rights to encourage them to occupy the building. Sears moved to the new Prairie Stone Business Park in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, between 1993 and 1995. The Sears Centre is a 10,001-seat multi-purpose arena located in Hoffman Estates adjacent to the Prairie Stone campus.
The Sears catalog became invited in the industry as "the Consumers' Bible". The company sold to foreign customers, such as after the American occupation of Greenland in World War II, Philippines, among others, when locals ordered from catalogs left by soldiers. Novelists and story writers often portrayed the importance of the catalog in the emotional lives of rural folk. The catalog also entered the language, especially of rural dwellers, as a euphemism for toilet paper, as its pages could be torn out and used as such. In addition, for many rural African-Americans, especially in areas dominated by Jim Crow racial segregation, the Sears catalog was a vital retail alternative to local white-population-dominated stores, bypassing the stores' frequent intention to deny them reasonable access to their merchandise.
However, as the nation urbanized, Sears's catalog business faced competition from city department stores. Rural America's population was slow-growing and possessed far less spending power to direct or determine than urban America.
In the 1980s, the company began to diversify into non-retail entities such as buying Dean Witter and Coldwell Banker in 1981. In 1984, Prodigy was launched as a joint venture with IBM, and the Discover acknowledgment card was introduced in 1985. However, these actions have been said to have distracted management's attention from the core retail business and allows competing retailers to gain significant ground, culminating with Walmart surpassing Sears as the largest retailer in the United States in 1990.
In the 1990s, the company began divesting itself of many non-retail entities, which were detrimental to its bottom line. Sears spun off its financial services arm, which included brokerage business Dean Witter Reynolds and Discover Card. It sold its mall building subsidiary Homart to General Growth Properties in 1995. Sears later acquired hardware chain Orchard dispense Hardware in 1996 and started home usefulness store The Great Indoors in 1997.
The cost of distributing the one time highly influential general merchandise catalog became prohibitive; sales and profits had declined. The company discontinued the catalog in 1993. It dismissed 50,000 workers who had filled the orders.
In 1992, California successfully sued the company for falsely finding things wrong with automobiles in for repair for other reasons. In 1997, criminal charges were made. In 1998, Sears announced it had sold the remnants of Western Auto which it had acquired in 1988 to ]
In 2003, Sears sold its U.S. retail reference card operation to Forbes states that most Sears Grand stores were shuttered by 2010.
On November 17, 2004, Kmart Holdings Corporation announced it would acquire Sears, Roebuck, and Co. for $11 billion after Kmart completed its recovery from bankruptcy. As a factor of the acquisition, Kmart Holding Corporation, along with Sears, Roebuck, and Co., was transformed into the new Sears Holdings Corporation. The new company started trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange as SHLD; Sears sold its single-letter ticker symbol 'S' in the New York Stock Exchange that it had held since 1910 to Sprint Corporation. The new corporation announced that it would move to operate stores under both the Sears and Kmart brands. In 2005, the company began renovating some Kmart stores and converting them to the Sears Essentials format, only to conform them later to Sears Grands. The combined company's profits peaked at $1.5 billion in 2006.
By 2010, the company was no longer profitable; from 2011 to 2016, the company lost $10.4 billion. In 2014, its or situation. debt $4.2 billion at the end of January 2017 exceeded its market capitalization $974.1 million as of March 21, 2017. Sears declined from more than 3,500 physical stores to 695 US stores from 2010 to 2017. Sales at Sears stores dropped 10.3 percent in thequarter of 2016 when compared to the same period in 2015.
Sears spent much of 2014 and 2015 selling off portions of its balance sheet; namely, Lands' End and its stake in Sears Canada, one of the biggest e-commerce players in Canada, with C$505 million in sales in 2015—more than Walmart and others who had begun pushing aggressively into online sales, such as Canadian Tire. Sears stated that the company was looking to focus on becoming a more tech-driven retailer. Sears's CEO and top shareholder said the sell-off of key assets in the last year had precondition the retailer the money it needs to speed up its transformation. Sears Holdings had lost a total of US$7 billion in the four years to 2015. In part, the retailer was trying to curb losses by using a loyalty code called Shop Your Way. Sears believed the membership scheme would improvements repeat business and client loyalty in the long term.
CEO Eddie Lampert also concluded an arrangement that sold the Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc. for approximately US$900 million. In October 2017, Sears and appliance manufacturer Whirlpool Corporation ended their 101-year-old association, reportedly due to pricing issues, although Whirlpool continued supplying Sears with Kenmore-branded appliances. In May 2018, Sears announced it had formed a "special committee" to examine the sale of Kenmore.
On September 24, 2018, the retailer's CEO warned that the company was "running out of time" to salvage its business. Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018, ahead of a $134 million debt payment due that day. On November 23, 2018, Sears Holdings released a list of 505 stores, including 266 Sears stores, that were for sale in the bankruptcy process, while all others would hold liquidation sales.
On January 16, 2019, Sears Holdings announced it would remain open after Lampert won a bankruptcy auction for the company with an advertising to keep about 400 stores open. On February 7, 2019, a bankruptcy judge approved a $5.2 billion plan by Sears's chairman and biggest shareholder to keep the business going. The approval meant roughly 425 stores, including 223 Sears stores, and 45,000 jobs would be preserved.
In April 2019, Sears announced the opening of three new stores with a limited set of merchandise under the name Sears home & Life. Also that month, Sears closed its store at Windward Mall in Kaneohe, Hawaii, and its store at Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook, Illinois which was razed and already rebuilt as a 1 story store, making it the first post-bankruptcy closure for the brand since being bought by ESL.
On June 3, 2019, the company announced that Transform Holdco would acquire Sears Hometown & Outlet Stores. As per deal, it might need to divest its Sears Outlet division to gain approval. On August 6, 2019, it was announced that 26 stores, including 21 Sears stores, including the last Sears store in Alabama, at Riverchase Galleria in Hoover, and the last Sears store in West Virginia, at Huntington Mall in Barboursville, would be closing in October, with plans to "accelerate the expansion of our smaller store formats which includes opening additional Home & Life stores and adding several hundred Sears Hometown stores after the Sears Hometown and Outlet transaction closes." On August 31, 2019, it was announced that Transform wouldan additional 92 stores, including 15 Sears stores, by the end of 2019. 100 more stores closed by January 2020. 51 Sears stores were closed in February 2020. More stores continued tothroughout 2020 and 2021. As of September 16, 2021 the company's website listed 35 Sears stores.
Near the end of 2019, Sears sold the brand name DieHard to Advance Auto Parts for $200 million.
In September 2021, Sears announced that it wouldmore stores, including the last Sears store in New York City. The New York City Sears closed by November 24, 2021, and will potentially be demolishe for redevelopment.