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The retail dynasty known as Sears was started in 1886<\/a> when Richard Warren Sears launched a mail-order watch business in Minneapolis.<\/span><\/p>\n In that first year, he met Alvah Roebuck, a watch repairman. Sears renamed the company the R.W. Sears Watch Co., moved it to Chicago and published the first mail-order catalog, offering watches, diamonds and jewelry.<\/span><\/p>\n Sears sold that business and started another in 1892 with Roebuck as a partner. Sears, Roebuck & Co. diversified the product lines offered in their catalogs. The catalogs freed rural consumers from local merchants who had a monopoly on supplies and prices.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1906, Sears became the first retail chain to go public. In 1933, the company published its first Christmas catalogs. From the 1920s to the 1950s, Sears focused on opening stand-alone stores in urban markets; in the 1960s, Sears dove deeply into the shopping-mall boom. <\/span>In 1974, Sears completed the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago, the world\u2019s tallest building. Sears, figuratively, towered over the competition.<\/span><\/p>\n But everything has a cycle. In 1991, Walmart passed Sears as the nation\u2019s No. 1 retailer. Walmart hyper-focused on prices, calculating that savings were more important than quality for the majority of Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2018 and survives only because its CEO won a bankruptcy auction to keep 400 stores open.<\/span><\/p>\n