In 1894, the Sears catalog offered merchandise by mail order
More than a hundred years before Amazon and eBay existed, Sears was a pioneer in mail order merchandising in the United States. The Sears, Roebuck and Co. See the article : Travel to the United States during Covid-19: Things you need to know before you leave. catalog, which began with watches and jewelry in 1893, grew to include an endless variety of merchandise in 1894. Even more notably, Sears sold thousands of items exclusively by mail order – everything from clothes to kitchen stoves to kits to whole-house buildings – before opening its first retail store in 1924.
As early as 1744, none other than Benjamin Franklin suggested in a catalog of books that customers who could not visit his printing shop could send orders for the books to his attention and he was glad to send them. However, his mail order business was not as intentional as other early mail order dealers. Tiffany’s “Blue Book” was published in 1845, Montgomery Ward published a catalog in 1872 (basically a price list of more than 150 products with ordering instructions) and Hammacher Schlemmer published a catalog in 1881.
Mail order merchandising was closely aligned with U.S. expansion. The settlement of the western part of the country continued in earnest after the end of the Civil War and the railways expanded dramatically in the late 1800s. The RFD (Rural Free Delivery) was instituted by the U.S. Postal Service in 1896, so even remote areas of the country were included in the federal government mail routes. Since mail order publications could be delivered at least a cent per pound through the postal service, mail order merchants did not hesitate to produce large catalogs.
Sears, Roebuck & amp; Co. may not have been the first in mail order, but its catalog was considered to be the most extensive and innovative of any mail order merchandiser. Richard Sears, an enterprising man who started selling watches in 1886, joined watchmaker Alvah Roebuck the following year to open a shop in Chicago and then marketed the watches by mail order. In 1895, they were joined by clothing producer / investor Julius Rosenwald, who helped significantly expand the Sears catalog business.
Meta Sears, Roebuck & amp; Co. started selling merchandise beyond watches and jewelry, Richard Sears, who wrote most of the descriptive copy himself, described the Sears catalog as a “Book of Bargains” and “The Best Supply House in the World . ” Initially, the Sears catalog boasted more than 320 pages. Shortly after the first catalog appeared, items in every conceivable category were added – appliances, baby carriages, bicycles, books, clothes, dolls, sporting goods, groceries and, eventually, items such as cars, planes, refrigerators, sewing machines, stoves and washing machines.
Perhaps most unusual, the Sears catalog began offering kits to build homes from start to finish as early as 1908. More than four hundred home designs were available, with Sears supplying the entire precut, ready to assemble the materials needed to build each one. It is estimated that Sears sold as many as 75,000 home kits from 1908 to 1940.
Incredibly, every single item in the Sears catalog, no matter how small or large, was delivered to customers across the country.
Just a few years after publishing its first catalog, Sears began releasing Spring and Fall catalogs as well as specialty catalogs in various categories. In 1897, the first color section appeared in a Sears catalog. The 1903 catalog included a money back guarantee in the form of a handwritten note by Richard Sears. The 1905 catalog included samples of colored and woven wallpaper as well as a sample of material for men’s suits. Next year’s catalog also included paint samples.
By 1906, Sears had nearly $ 50 million in sales and about 9,000 employees, with a Chicago distribution center that had three million square feet of floor space. While Americans became more mobile in the 1920s and were able to shop locally, the Sears mail order business continued to thrive; the company has already had a stellar reputation for selling quality merchandise at affordable prices along with great customer service.
The company has also seen a bright future in brick and mortar stores. Sears opened its first store in 1924 and just five years later had more than 300 stores nationwide. Sears was also the pioneer of store brands, introducing the Sears motor buggy in early 1909 and the Sears “Auto-cycle” motor in 1911. introduced in 1929 – have survived to this day. Sears also entered the car insurance business in 1931 with the creation of Allstate Insurance. Later, Sears entered financial services, introducing the Discover credit card in 1985.
As the United States emerged from the Great Depression, Sears presented a Christmas present to the country in 1933: the first “Sears Christmas Book.” With a wide range of gifts from fruit cakes and tree ornaments to games and toys, the Christmas catalog published by Sears has become part of a cherished tradition for American holiday shoppers. Consumers often thought of the catalog as the “wish book,” but it wasn’t until 1968 that Sears actually renamed the Christmas Book a “Wish Book.” As evidence of its enduring popularity over the years, the 1933 edition of the Christmas Book contained a total of 87 pages – 62 pages of adult gifts and 25 pages of toys, but the The 1968 Book of Wishes was almost seven times larger, comprising a total of 605 pages. – 380 pages of adult gifts and 225 pages of toys.
The 1960s brought with it a different retail competition than anything Sears had faced before. Despite being the anchor shop in many malls, Sears began to lose its luster to people like Kmart, Target and Walmart. In 1993, Sears set up its primary print catalog. As a telling sign of the times, Amazon.com made its first shipment of books in 1995. The Sears Wish Book transitioned to an online catalog in 1998.
Retail competition eventually overtook Sears. Following a merger with Kmart in 2005, Sears was unable to maintain its retail sales success of previous years. In October 2018, Sears filed for bankruptcy. The company has been closing stores quickly since then; about twenty Sears store locations only remain in the United States along with a website, Sears.com.
Historically, the Sears catalog has been a reflection of American life over time as much as it was a merchandise catalog. Despite the decline of this great American retail icon, there can be little doubt that the Sears catalog will remain one of the greatest examples in the history of mail merchandising.
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