Beginnings Richard Warren Sears was born in 1863 in
Stewartville, Minnesota, to a wealthy family which moved to nearby
Spring Valley. In 1879, his father died shortly after losing the family fortune in a speculative stock deal. He 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. On September 16, 1893, they renamed the company
Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and began to diversify the product lines offered in their catalogs. 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 over $400,000 ($ in dollars) in 1893 and over $750,000 ($ in 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
economic depression, 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 $75,000 ($ in dollars), and that month the company was reincorporated in Illinois with a capital stock of $150,000 ($ in dollars). 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.
Early 20th century , now the John D. and Alexandra C. Nichols Tower , in
Memphis, Tennessee Sears and Rosenwald got along well with each other, but not with Nusbaum; they bought his interest in the firm for $1.3 million in 1903 ($ in dollars). Rosenwald brought to the mail-order firm a rational management philosophy and diversified product lines: dry goods, consumer durables, drugs, hardware, furniture, and nearly 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 take the company public in 1906, with a stock placement of $40 million ($ in dollars). They had to incorporate a new company to bring the operation public; Sears and Rosenwald established
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
Chicago's West Side. The building was the anchor of what would become the massive
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 $50 million ($ in dollars). 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. To bail out the company, Rosenwald pledged $21 million ($ in dollars) of his personal wealth in 1921. By 1922, Sears had regained financial stability.
Boom years 1930s Sears store in
Brooklyn, New York City () in
Portland, Oregon, shown here in 2017, that opened in 1999 in a former
JCPenney that closed in 1998. The store closed in 2018.
Brick and mortar Rosenwald decided to shift emphasis to urban North America and brought in
Robert E. Wood to take charge. Rosenwald oversaw the design 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 goal 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 main 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 U.S. 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, • innovative store design, and • unconventional product mix and retailing practices. Many stores at this time were designed 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 excellent examples of the
modern architecture of the time—styles made famous by
Bertram Goodhue and
Eliel Saarinen. which was the first to have an open plan selling floor (instead of breaking up the floor into discrete sections).
Americas , Venezuela, in 1950 Sears opened a small store in Downtown
Havana, Cuba, in 1942. Sears opened its first store in
Mexico City in 1947; the Mexican stores would later spin off into
Sears Mexico, now owned by billionaire
Carlos Slim's
Grupo Sanborns, which in 2020 operated more than 75 stores across Mexico. Sears had sales of US$78 million in other territories in 1953. Over time, Sears expanded into all Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and all Central American countries. Currently Sears operates in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
Expansion From the 1920s to the 1950s, Sears built many urban department stores in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico (apart from, but not far from, existing
central business districts), and they overshadowed the mail-order business. Following World War II, the company expanded into suburban markets and malls. In 1959, it had formed the
Homart Development 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 — and marketed widely under its
private labels, e.g., marketing the
Sears Archer 600 typewriter as a
rebranded Silverette model, manufactured by
Silver Seiko Ltd. of Japan. 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 half of the David Bradley factory in Bradley, Illinois to the Newark Ohio Company that was shortly acquired by Roper Industries.
1970s pinnacle Sears reached its pinnacle in the 1970s. In 1974, Sears completed the 110-story
Sears Tower in Chicago, which became the
world's tallest building, a title 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 given 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 Arena (renamed to
Now Arena in 2020) is a 10,001-seat multi-purpose arena located in Hoffman Estates adjacent to the former Prairie Stone campus.
Video games Sears formed a stable
OEM relationship with
Atari, Inc., being responsible for distributing home versions of
Pong in 1975 and eventually the
Atari Video Computer System under their Tele-Games brand, where the company published games under different titles. Sears released several models of the VCS as the Sears Video Arcade series starting in 1977, with the final Sears-specific model, the Video Arcade II, releasing during the fall of 1982. Three games developed by Atari were exclusively released by Sears:
Steeplechase,
Stellar Track, and
Submarine Commander.
Mail order The Sears catalog became known in the industry as "the Consumers' Bible". The company began selling to foreign customers after the American occupation of
Greenland in World War II and the 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, particularly 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 alternative to white-owned stores, bypassing the stores' frequent intention to deny them fair access to merchandise. However, as the nation urbanized, Sears's catalog business faced competition from city department stores. Rural North America's population was slow-growing and possessed far less spending power than urban North America.
Decline , in
Chicago In the 1980s, the company began to diversify into non-retail entities such as buying
Dean Witter and
Coldwell Banker in 1981. In 1984, it launched
Prodigy as a joint venture with
IBM and
CBS, and introduced the
Discover credit card in 1985. However, these actions have been said to have distracted management's attention from the core retail business and allowed competing retailers to gain significant ground, culminating with
Walmart surpassing Sears as the largest retailer in the United States in 1990. Sears later acquired hardware chain
Orchard Supply Hardware in 1996 and started home improvement store
The Great Indoors in 1997. The cost of distributing the once 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 1998) to
Roanoke-based
Advance Auto Parts. The business deal was not what experts in the
after-market automotive industry expected: Sears, Roebuck became "one of the largest shareholders" after obtaining a 40% stake in Advance Auto Parts and merging their two store networks, which included Western Auto's wholesale and retail operations. The existing store network of Advance Auto Parts, comprising 915 stores in 17 U.S. states, merged with 590 U.S.-based Parts America Stores in addition to 40 Western Auto stores in the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In 1997, Sears sold 85% of
its Mexico affiliate to
Grupo Carso. Sears Holdings continued to produce specialty catalogs and reintroduced a smaller version of the Holiday Wish Book in 2007. In 2003, Sears sold its U.S. retail credit card operation to
Citibank. The remaining card operations for Sears Canada were sold to
JPMorgan Chase in August 2005. In 2003, Sears opened a new concept store called Sears Grand. Sears Grand stores carried everything that a regular Sears carried, and more. Sears Grand stores were about . 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 part 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 continue 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 change 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 total 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 U.S. stores from 2010 to 2017. Sales at Sears stores dropped 10.3 percent in the final quarter 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
CAD$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 given the retailer the money it needs to speed up its transformation. 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 explore the sale of Kenmore.
Bankruptcy and current operations , in
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in April 2019, with signage still intact. The store closed two months earlier, in February 2019. On September 24, 2018, Lampert warned that Sears 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, Lampert won the bankruptcy auction with an offer to maintain about 400 stores; Sears Holdings announced it would remain open. On February 7, 2019, Lampert's $5.2 billion plan to keep the business going was approved by a bankruptcy judge. The approval meant roughly 425 stores, including 223 Sears stores, and 45,000 jobs would be preserved. , as depicted in November 2020. It closed in June 2023 along with all other remaining small-format Sears stores in the U.S. 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 7, 2019, it was announced that 26 stores would close that October, including 21 Sears stores, among them the last Sears stores in
Alabama and
West Virginia, at
Riverchase Galleria in
Hoover and at
Huntington Mall in
Barboursville, respectively. The announcement also included 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, management announced that Transform would close an additional 92 stores, including 15 Sears stores, by the end of 2019. Near the end of 2019, Sears sold the brand name
DieHard to Advance Auto Parts for $200 million. A total of 100 more stores closed by December 2019. 51 Sears stores were closed in February 2020. More stores continued to close throughout 2020 and 2021 including the final Sears in Maine at The Maine Mall. In 2021, an unauthorized party accessed Transformco computer servers between June 3 and June 15 that held employee payroll and healthcare information that affected current and past Sears and other Transformco employees. in
Schaumburg, the last
Illinois Sears location to close on November 14, 2021 In September 2021, the company's website listed 35 Sears stores. That month, Sears announced that it would close more stores, including the last Sears store in New York City. The New York City Sears closed by November 24, 2021, with the potential to be redeveloped. Transformco announced in December 2021 its plans to sell the Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, which includes of undeveloped land. On January 19, 2022, Sears shut the remaining 15 Sears Auto Centers in the United States. In May 2022, it was announced that roughly 100 more Sears Hometown stores, including the last four in Michigan, would close permanently. On December 13, 2022, Sears Hometown filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was later revealed that all remaining Sears Hometown stores would be liquidated and permanently closed. On December 12, 2022, Sears Authorized Hometown Stores, LLC, and affiliated debtor Sears Hometown, Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and on December 26 announced the liquidation of the 115 largely owner-operated Hometown stores. Demolition of the company's former headquarters in Hoffman Estates began in August 2024 in order to build datacenters. By 2023, there were fewer than 20 locations still open in the United States and that year alone saw Sears exiting five more states:
Colorado,
Kansas,
Louisiana,
North Carolina and
Pennsylvania. The last store in Puerto Rico closed on August 31, 2025. there are five Sears stores remaining, two of which are in
Florida, including one that has been in operation since 1954. The company's U.S. website, Sears.com, remains active for online purchases via third-party sellers using the website as an
online sales portal. ==Corporate affairs==