Richard Warren Sears And Sears, Roebuck, & Company

Richard Warren Sears and Sears, Roebuck, & Company


     Richard Warren Sears was born on December 7, 1863, in Stewartville,

Minnesota. He was the son of James Warren and Eliza A. Sears, both of English

ancestory. His father led anything but a happy life. He had failed in his quest

for gold during the California Gold Rush of 1849 and was a bitter soldier in the

Civil War, which he blamed on politicians. He had earned a sizable sum of money

working as a blacksmith and a wagonmaker, but he lost it all in a stock-farm

venture. Richard's father gave up soon afterwards, leaving Richard to be the

family breadwinner at the age of 16.

     Richard worked in the general offices of the Minneapolis and St. Louis

Railway in Minneapolis to support his family. He then decided to move Redwood

Falls, Minnesota, where he thought that he could earn more money because of the

small town setting. There he worked as a station attendant, doing chores for his

board and sleeping in the loft of the railroad station. In his spare time, he

learned how the mail-order business worked.

     Richard got his opportunity to get into the mail-order business in 1886

when a shipment of watches from a Chicago wholesaler was refused by a town

jeweler. Therefore, the shipment sat in the railroad station until Richard

contacted the wholesaler, who offered him the watches for twelve dollars each.

He bought the watches and sold them by sending letters to other station

attendants describing the watches and offering them at the discount price of

fourteen dollars each. He sold those watches and ordered more to sell. To sell

these he advertised in a small way in St. Paul newspapers. He made a large

profit from this operation.

     In a few months Richard made such a profit that he abandoned the railroad

business entirely and started his own mail-order business under the name of the

R.W. Sears Watch Company. In one year he made so much money that he was able to

begin advertising in magazines with a national circulation and move the business

to Chicago.

     On March 1, 1887, he set up a shop on Dearborn Street in Chicago with a

staff of three people, one to handle bookkeeping and correspondence and two

stenographers. Soon after the opening of his new shop, he found a need for a

watchmaker to repair watches returned by customers. This watchmaker was a young

man by the name of Alvah Curtis Roebuck from Hammond, Indiana.

     Richard Sears became even more successful by opening up the huge rural

market. His advertising was aimed at the farmer, who was independent and stayed

away from big companies. He portrayed himself to them as a fellow independent

businessman, and was able to prove it by his low prices and his willingness to

send watches on approval for just the payment of a deposit.

     He was also able to succeed with farmers because he remembered life in

small towns with great affection. Although he enjoyed his commercial success, he

longed for the laid-back, small town way of life. In 1889, Richard sold the R.W.

Sears Watch Company for $72,000 and moved to Iowa to enjoy the small town life.

     Richard Sears would soon bore of his new life and decided to start a new

company with his old business partner A.C. Roebuck. This new business was about

the same as the previous one. It was a mail-order operation selling watches and

jewelry under the name of A.C. Roebuck and Company. This new business was even

more successful than the first, mostly because of its low prices and guarantee

of satisfaction.

     In September 1893, A.C. Roebuck and Company changed its name to Sears,

Roebuck, and Company, the same name it carries today. Soon after, they moved the

company to Chicago, where they could fill orders more easily to their major

markets in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and Iowa.

     Later that year the first of the Sears catalogs that have become so

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