It was originally about two inches thick. Later it dropped to half that size, but it was still filled with nearly anything you could imagine. JC Penney’s tried, but nothing could compete with the Sears Christmas catalog. The colorful, collection of each Christmas season’s dreams and wonders first published in 1933 with the name Sears Christmas Book. Richard Sears first published his original Sears Catalog in 1894, calling it a Book of Bargains. Around the country the Sears catalog was often referred to as the book of wishes. In 1968 Sears officially named the catalog the Christmas catalog the Sears Wish Book.
From ant farms to zeppelins, Holly Hobbie dolls to Red Ryder BB guns, it served as the research document for informed Christmas lists (complete with footnotes) from around the world. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that letters to Santa often included page numbers from the Sears Wish Book. The book was often perused over the season, as the dreams and goals changed. Folded page corners, circled item numbers, torn out pages left on the kitchen counter as subtle reminders, the book was definitely ready for the trash can by the time New Year’s day arrived.
Sears was once the GIANT of retail. The company dominated the competition. JC Penney’s was competitive, but Sears ruled. Sears , Roebuck, and Company had its beginning when Richard Warren Sears, working as a railroad agent, bought a shipment of watches that had been shipped to and refused by a Jewelry Store. Though he’d been born into a wealthy family, his father lost the family fortune before passing away in 1879. After successfully selling that initial shipment of watches, he began a mail order watch company. He teamed up with a watch repairman, Alva Curtis Roebuck, and published his first catalog in 1887 for the R.W. Sears Watch Company, relocating from Minneapolis to Chicago. He sold that company to become a banker in Iowa, but later reunited with his old teammate at the A.C. Roebuck Watch Company.
The duo renamed the business in 1893. The Sears, Roebuck and Company expanded their line of catalog goods to include hard to find items, including automobiles, bicycles, and sewing machines. The 1894 catalog sported 322 pages of goods. By 1895 the book was up to 532 pages. With materials cut and shipped to build, Sears Roebuck kit homes began to dot the landscape from 1908 to 1940, selling over 70,000 homes.
The once great titian of retail began to focus on non-retail ventures in the 1980s. Getting into investing with purchases of Dean Witter and Coldwell Banker, joining with IBM to launch Discover Card, while Walmart was gaining speed and expanding into areas where Sears had only a small presence or catalog reach. Soon the competition was too much, and other poor decisions followed. In 1993 it discontinued its catalog operations, and later sold off Western Auto to Advanced Auto. It sold 85% of its retail operations in Mexico. In 2003 it sold off its credit card operations to Citibank. In 2004, a struggling KMart Corporation, just emerging from bankruptcy, purchased Sears. The bleeding didn’t stop. The Sears Holdings Corporation sold off Land’s End, and popular brands Craftsman and Kenmore. Store numbers dropped from 3,500 to 695.
In 2018, Sears Holdings filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Try as they might to re-engineer their brand, to gain a new foothold, the entity once commonly known as Sears continued to falter, going through series after series of store closings. By 2023, there were just 13 stores left – 12 in the US and 1 in Puerto Rico. The dreams of the watch seller dying as time ticked by.
It is a sad tale. Taking their eye off the ball; forgetting what had made Sears a household name; succumbing to competition with no vision for the future, cost them their retail life. A catalog company, with warehouses and systems to ship all over the world. With simple focus on what Sears was good at, teaming up with IBM for reasons other than creating credit card debt; they might have become the Amazon that rules the internet.
