Sears closed its last downtown Chicago store in 1983, when many retailers were fleeing urban settings and following customers to the suburbs. Sears, which was founded in Chicago in 1893, relocated its headquarters staff from the landmark Sears Tower to a sprawling corporate campus in Hoffman Estates, Ill., about 35 miles northwest of Chicago, in 1995. The Pen Is Mightier Than the G.D.P. Montblanc has been marketing its luxury line of writing instruments, a k a pens, for 95 years, mostly to men. Now it is reaching out to women, with a new Boh me line of pens, a handbag collection and plans to double the number of its United States stores to 48 in a year. If the timing of such an expansion sounds economically ill-advised, it doesn't seem to worry Norbert A. Platt, the company's president and chief executive.
Luxury brands have to do with love and emotion.
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