Mark's Text Terminal

The Weekly Text for 17 January 2025 from Mark’s Text Terminal is this reading on Sears Roebuck along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Why? Because I have it, for one thing. But for people of a certain age in the country (that is, my age or older) remember that Sears, along with JC Penney, were in the retail firmament the rough equivalent of Amazon today. There was no Internet, so that comparison breaks down; but both retailers issued mail-order catalogues that arrived, at least in my household, fairly regularly throughout the year. The Sears Catalog, which began offering full lines of hard goods, began publication in 1893. By 1908, Sears actually offered home kits in its catalog–among the sewing machines, sporting goods, musical instruments, saddles, firearms, buggies, bicycles, baby carriages, and some clothing (all introduced in 1894), and Edison’s Graphophone (introduced in 1908). Growing up, all my school clothes came from Sears (there was a store at the corner of Ingersoll Street and East Washington Avenue, if memory serves, in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, where the city, last I knew, has its bus barn). The company’s Craftsman tool line (now owned by Stanley Black & Decker) was among the best available–and guaranteed for life. I owned quite a few of them, as did my uncle, who owned an auto parts store and was a freelance small aircraft designer and builder.

Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 15 October 2019. According to the Wikipedia page on the retailer, as of April 2024 there are 11 Sears stores–ten in the continental United States and one in Puerto Rico–remaining. Near where I now live, in Flatbush, Brooklyn, there is a remnant store–an art deco beauty–at the corner of Beverly Road and Flatbush Avenue; the building is empty, but New York City landmarked it in 2012, so it is protected.

So you can see that Sears Roebuck was an important part of the American retail landscape for a long time.

There is something to be learned about business cycles, branding, management, retail trends–and potentially a whole host of other topics in business education. There has been no small amount of ink spilled on what led to Sears’ downfall; just search “Why Sears went out of business.”

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.