Its merchandise emphasized durability and practicality over fashion, and its store layout allowed customers to select goods without the aid of a clerk. Sears was one of the first department stores to cater to men as well as women by selling tools and hardware. The company responded by opening its first brick and mortar department store in 1925 on Chicago’s West Side.Įarly Sears department stores typically opened in working class neighborhoods outside of the major city shopping districts. City dwellers with easy access to a variety of stores had little need for huge mail order catalogues. Sears StoresĪs increasing numbers of Americans moved to cities in the twentieth century, Sears faced the loss of rural consumers. The Wish Book began to diminish in size during the late 1990s and early 2000s, as merchandizing shifted to online purchases. The catalogue, which arrived in mailboxes in late August or early September, soon became a holiday tradition with warm, colorful Christmas scenes decorating the cover. Items featured in the first catalogue included the popular Miss Pigtails doll, Lionel electric train sets, a Mickey Mouse watch, boxes of chocolate and even live singing canaries. The catalogue contained toys and other holiday gifting merchandise. The first Sears Christmas Wish Book catalogue came out in 1933. Due to their high-quality materials and practical design, many Sears homes are still in use. Kit homes used drywall, asphalt shingles, and “balloon” style light-frame construction to cut down on the cost of skilled labor and allow for D.I.Y. Sears Modern Homes typically arrived with a detailed instruction manual and two boxcars worth of building materials. Consumers could purchase a small bungalow for as little as $450. Mass-produced materials lowered manufacturing costs. Between 19, Sears sold 70,000 to 75,000 pre-fab kit homes by mail order. Sears took advantage of new homebuilding materials and construction techniques at the turn of the twentieth century. Sears has been publicly owned and traded company ever since. In 1906, Rosenwald and Sears sold stock on the open market. The company needed capital for its rapidly expanding business. Rural Americans could now purchase hundreds of different items-shoes, women’s garments, wagons, fishing tackle, furniture, china, musical instruments, firearms and bicycles-by mail.Ĭhicago clothing manufacturer Julian Rosenwald bought the company in 1895, though Sears remained president. The Sears catalogue contained more than 500 pages of merchandise by the late 1890s. The Sears and Roebuck mail order business quickly took off. The Sears catalogue gave America’s farm families a lot of options at a lower cost and often included delivery. Local general stores were typically high-priced and offered little selection. Sears and Roebuck quickly expanded the business into a general mail-order catalogue that catered to America’s enormous 19th-century rural population-roughly two-thirds of Americans lived in rural areas in the late 1890s.
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