Sears, Roebuck and Co. - Fashion Company Profile
Sears, Roebuck and Co. is the Chicago mail-order house founded in 1893 by Richard W. Sears and Alvah C. Roebuck - the catalog and department store institution behind Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard, now a much-reduced brand under Transformco.
Company Snapshot
- Status
- Brand continues under Transformco - Sears, Roebuck merged into Sears Holdings in 2005; after the 2018 bankruptcy the Sears stores and brand passed to Transformco in 2019, and only a handful of stores remain
- Type
- Subsidiary brand - owned by Transform SR Brands LLC (Transformco), an ESL Investments company
- Headquarters
- Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States (founded in Chicago)
- Founded
- September 16, 1893, in Chicago, Illinois - renamed from the mail-order watch business Richard W. Sears began in 1886 with Alvah C. Roebuck
Company Profile
The Sears that shoppers meet today is a remnant: the button above leads to sears.com, where Transformco keeps the name alive online and in a handful of stores, while brands such as Kenmore and DieHard continue under their current owners. This page carries no shop box - Sears is a retailer, and what remains of it sells through its own site. The profile itself keeps the company's own 2009 summary, from the era when 'more than 2,300 Sears-branded stores' and 12 million service calls a year were simply what Sears was, together with the 1893 naming story that started it all.
The dated record this profile keeps is the company's own summary from the end of its independent era. In 2009 Sears described a full-line and specialty retail business operating more than 2,300 Sears-branded and affiliated stores in the United States - 929 full-line stores and some 1,200 specialty stores - plus more than 100 in Canada, a merchant services group making more than 12 million service calls a year, and the Shop Your Way membership program. Its brands were household words: Kenmore appliances, Craftsman tools and DieHard batteries, alongside WeatherBeater paint, the Covington apparel lines and the Lands' End clothing business it had acquired in 2002. Sears also recorded its community work, including its partnership with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
The Brand After the Stores
Sears, Roebuck had already ceased to be independent when that summary was written: it had merged with Kmart in March 2005 to form Sears Holdings Corporation, the subject of the companion profile in this letter. After Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 in October 2018, the Sears brand, its stores and its service businesses passed to Transformco in February 2019. The full-line department store that once defined American middle-class shopping has since contracted to a handful of locations; the Sears name continues mainly online and through the Kenmore and DieHard brands under their new owners. This page keeps the 2009 summary as the record of the company at the end of its long run, and the naming story - a watch seller and a watchmaker, renamed in Chicago in 1893 - at the head of it.
Common Questions
When was Sears, Roebuck and Co. founded?
The company took the name Sears, Roebuck and Company on September 16, 1893, in Chicago, growing out of Richard W. Sears' mail-order watch business begun in 1886 with watchmaker Alvah C. Roebuck.
What brands is Sears known for?
Kenmore appliances, Craftsman tools and DieHard batteries are its signature proprietary brands; its 2009 summary also lists WeatherBeater paint, Covington apparel and Lands' End, acquired in 2002.
Who owns the Sears brand now?
Transformco (Transform SR Brands LLC), which bought the surviving Sears business from Sears Holdings' bankruptcy in February 2019. Only a handful of Sears stores remain open.
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