Sears Roebuck and Company
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1886 Chicago, Illinois |
| Founders | |
| Headquarters | Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States |
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Number of locations
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695 (US; Q4 2016) |
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Area served
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| Products |
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| Revenue |
 US$ 17.036 billion (2014) |
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US$ 920 million (2014) |
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| Parent |
Sears Holdings (2005–present) |
| Subsidiaries | See below |
| Website | www |
Sears, Roebuck & Company, also known simply as Sears, is an American department store chain founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1886. Formerly based at the Sears Tower in Chicago and currently headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, it began as a mail ordering catalog company and began opening retail locations in 1925. The company was bought by the American big box chain Kmart in 2005, which had just emerged from bankruptcy at the time and renamed itself Sears Holdings upon completion of the merger. In terms of domestic revenue, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States until October 1989, when Walmart surpassed the record. It is currently the fifth-largest American department store company by sales as of October 2013 (behind Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and The Home Depot), and the twelfth-largest retailer in the country overall. Sears operates divisions in Canada and Mexico, as well as several other subsidiaries within its brand.
Richard Warren Sears was a railroad station agent in North Redwood, Minnesota, when he received from a Chicago jeweler an impressive shipment of watches which were unwanted by a local jeweler. Sears purchased them, then sold the watches for a considerable profit to other station agents, then ordered more for resale. Soon he started a business selling watches through mail order catalogs. The next year, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he met Alvah C. Roebuck, who joined him in the business.
Farmers did business in small rural towns. Before the Sears catalog, farmers typically bought supplies (often at high prices and on credit) from local general stores with narrow selections of goods. Prices were negotiated, and depended on the storekeeper's estimate of a customer's creditworthiness. Sears took advantage of this by publishing catalogs offering customers a wider selection of products at clearly stated prices. The business grew quickly. The first Sears catalog was published in 1888.
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Wikipedia