page_title: Sears
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Sears / Early history / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: American business executive and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (1882-1932)
context_page_description: Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1893, and was reincorporated by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald in 1906. Formerly based at the Sears Tower in Chicago and currently headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, the operation began as a mail ordering catalog company and began opening retail locations in 1925. The first location was in Chicago, Illinois. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box chain Kmart, which formed Sears Holdings upon completion of the merger.
  Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States; Walmart and Kmart surpassed Sears in sales in 1990. In 2018, Sears was the 31st-largest retailer in the United States. After several years of declining sales, Sears' parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. Sears announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction and would shrink and remain open with 425 stores, including 223 Sears stores.
context_section_description: In 1863, Richard Warren Sears was born in Stewartville, Minnesota to a wealthy family, which moved to nearby Spring Valley. In 1879, Sears' father died shortly after losing the family fortune in a speculative stock deal. Sears moved across the state to work as a railroad station agent in North Redwood, as well as in Minneapolis.
  While in North Redwood, a jeweler refused delivery on the shipment of watches. Sears purchased them, then sold them at a low price to the station agents and made a profit. He started a mail-order watch business in Minneapolis in 1886, calling it "R.W. Sears Watch Company." Within the first year, he met Alvah C. Roebuck, a watch repairman. In 1887, Sears and Roebuck relocated the business to Chicago; later that year, the R.W. Sears Watch Company published Richard Sears' first mail-order catalog, offering watches, diamonds, and jewelry.
  In 1889 Sears sold his business for US$100,000 ($2.8 million today) and relocated to Iowa, intending to be a rural banker. Sears returned to Chicago in 1892 and established 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 to Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and began to diversify the product lines offered in their catalogs.
  Before the Sears catalog, farmers near small rural towns usually 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 took advantage of this by publishing catalogs offering customers a wider selection of products at clearly stated prices.
  By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, including many 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 relation to the current Ford line). By 1895, the company was producing a 532-page catalog. Sales were greater than $400,000 ($11.4 million today) in 1893 and more than $750,000 ($23 million today) two years later. By 1896, dolls, stoves, and groceries had been 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 turn brought in his brother-in-law Julius Rosenwald, to whom Sears owed money. In August 1895, they bought Roebuck's half of the company for $75,000 ($2.3 million today). The company was reincorporated in Illinois with a capital stock of $150,000 ($4.6 million today) in August 1895. The 1895 transaction was handled by Albert Henry Loeb of Chicago law firm Loeb & Adler (now Arnstein & Lehr, LLP). Copies of the transaction documents are now displayed on the walls of the law firm.
caption: Julius Rosenwald
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