Sears, Roebuck and Company - Business in United States of America

Identification: Retail department store
Date: Founded in 1886
Significance: As one of the pioneers of the mail order retail industry and a leading retailer of the twentieth century, Sears, Roebuck introduced or popularized a number of innovative business practices in its efforts to adapt to changing markets.
During its early years, the Sears, Roebuck and Company sold only watches and other jewelry. However, its founders, R. W. Sears and Alvah C. Roebuck, quickly developed the company according to the mail-order retail model pioneered by Montgomery Ward, which used newly constructed railroad networks to ship a variety of goods at low cost to small towns and rural areas. Offering a steadily increasing variety of items in its annual catalogs, Sears, Roebuck provided cash-strapped Americans with an alternative to relatively expensive general stores and dry-goods merchants during the economic depression of the 1890’s, outstripping the sales volume of other mail-order houses. By the early twentieth century, the company offered thousands of items, ranging from the most modest of household goods to automobiles and homes.
After assuming a dominant position among mail order retailers serving rural markets, Sears, Roebuck began making inroads into urban retail markets, opening its first department store in Chicago in 1925. Several more stores in the Chicago area opened during the 1920’s and early 1930’s. Early Sears department stores proved successful, but they failed to match the market dominance of the company’s mail-order business, because they were competing with numerous established urban retailers.