Richard Warren Sears And Sears, Roebuck, & Company :: essays research papers

Richard Warren Sears and Sears, Roebuck, & CompanyRichard Warren Sears was born on December 7, 1863, in Stewartville,Minnesota. He was the son of jam Warren and Eliza A. Sears, both of Englishancestory. His father led anything but a happy life. He had failed in his questfor gold during the California Gold look sharp of 1849 and was a bitter soldier in theCivil War, which he blamed on politicians. He had gather ined a sizable sum of moneyworks as a blacksmith and a wagonmaker, but he lost it all in a stock-farmventure. Richards father gave up soon afterwards, leaving Richard to be thefamily breadwinner at the age of 16.Richard worked in the general offices of the Minneapolis and St. LouisRail personal manner in Minneapolis to support his family. He then decided to move RedwoodFalls, Minnesota, where he thought that he could earn more money because of thesmall town declineting. There he worked as a station attendant, doing chores for hisboard and sleeping in the loft of the railro ad station. In his spare time, helearned how the mail-order business worked.Richard got his opportunity to get into the mail-order business in 1886when a shipment of watches from a Chicago wholesaler was refused by a townjeweler. Therefore, the shipment sat in the railroad station until Richardcontacted the wholesaler, who offered him the watches for twelve dollars each.He bought the watches and sold them by sending letters to other stationattendants describing the watches and pass them at the discount price offourteen dollars each. He sold those watches and ordered more to sell. To sellthese he advertised in a small way in St. Paul newspapers. He made a largeprofit from this operation.In a few months Richard made such a profit that he abandoned the railroadbusiness entirely and started his own mail-order business under the name of theR.W. Sears Watch Company. In one year he made so much money that he was able tobegin advertising in magazines with a national circulation and move th e businessto Chicago.On March 1, 1887, he set up a shop on Dearborn Street in Chicago with astaff of three people, one to handle bookkeeping and correspondence and cardinalstenographers. Soon after the opening of his new shop, he found a need for awatchmaker to repair watches returned by customers. This watchmaker was a juvenileman by the name of Alvah Curtis Roebuck from Hammond, Indiana.Richard Sears became even more successful by opening up the huge ruralmarket.