Sears

From 1908 through the 1940s, Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600. An estimated 100,000 homes were built, but fewer than 5,000 have been identified today.

At various times in its existence, the Sears catalog sold everything from heroin to tombstones. But by the 2000s, the catalog was no longer in publication.

Between 1908 and 1940, "kit homes" that buyers could build themselves were advertised in Sears’ famous catalog—and many of them are still standing today.

Former Sears CEO and hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert was once kidnapped from his home in Greenwich, Connecticut by criminals looking to get rich. Some argue that the incident colored Sears’ history.

The Sears Wish Book was a holiday-themed version of its catalogs that helped people make Christmas gift wish lists and more from the 1930s until the early 2000s. See what they looked like with editions in this archive.

There’s no shortage of potential culprits for Sears’ death, from hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, to Amazon, to the 2008 stock market crash.

When the Sears catalog was popularized, Black Americans didn’t always have an easy time shopping in US stores due to racism and Jim Crow laws. Some say that the Sears catalog was radical at the time for helping Black Americans avoid retail shopping in the South—often a negative experience.

America’s top companies by revenue have changed a lot in the past few decades. Sears, for instance, isn’t on the 2023 list, while Amazon isn’t in the 1994 edition.

Sears owned the financial services company Dean Witter, which rolled out the Discover Card in 1986. The Discover Card is just one of many Sears inventions that seems to have outlasted Sears’ peak popularity, including Allstate Insurance and the clothing brand Lands End.

At its peak, Sears was the largest retailer in the world, making elite objects accessible to the middle class. But in 2018, the company officially filed for bankruptcy due to massive debt and losses.