The Downfall of Sears

Read the case study and answer the questions that follow.

Sears, a department store company that sells clothing, home goods, exercise equipment, electronics so much more was founded by Richard W$.$ Sears in $1886$ as the R$.$ W$.$ Sears Watch Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In $1887,$ Sears moved his company to Chicago where he partnered with Alvah C$.$ Roebuck and the two began the Sears, Roebuck and Co$.$ in $1893.$ By $1895,$ Sears was producing a $532-$page catalog which included a large variety of items for mail$-$order sale including clothing, shoes, wagons, furniture, china, musical instruments, firearms, seeds, watches, jewelry, and more. $1906,$ the mail$-$ord world. A second office was opened in Dallas, Texas and quickly floor space, was the largest business building in the of the customers in the Southwest. In $1906,$ Sears began selling stock on the open market and became a publicly owned company.

In $1925,$ Sears Executive Robert E$.$ Wood realized that change was sweeping post$-$World War I America, including a move to brick$-$and$-$mortar retail shopping. From $1925$ to $1927,$ Wood successfully opened $27$ retail Sears stores in various locations. By the late $1920$s$,$ Sears had also began selling some of its mail$-$order merchandise under Sears' own trade names including Craftsman, Kenmore, and DieHard. The retail stores were so successful that in $1931,$ Sears retail sales business processes to include brick$-$and$-$mortar retail stores in addition to the mail$-$order catalog offerings. This allowed Sears to continue to flourish and expand.

As personal car ownership gained popularity, in $1931,$ Wood launched Allstate Insurance Co$.$ as a wholly owned Sears subsidiary. Recognizing that the majority of the insurance business was being generated from smaller towns and not the metropolitan markets, Sears innovatively installed insurance sales locations within Sears retail stores to further enhance compete in the new marketplace.

Over the next several decades, Sears continued to lead and innovate, customizing its retails stores to bring efficiency to customer shopping. Sears opened stores south of the border as well as in Canada, where Sears Canada Inc. became one of Canada's largest retailers. In another pioneering effort, Sears built the $110-$story Sears Tower to house the company headquarters in downtown Chicago. When it was opened in $1973,$ the tower, at $1,454$ feet, was the world's tallest building.

In $1981,$ Sears went through another restructuring and as part of its wildly successful financial services strategy, acquired the Dean Witter Reynolds Organization, Inc. and Coldwell Banker & Company, forming the Dean Witter Financial Services

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