Sears Through the Years Edward Lampert, 2012 2014 2016

▶ ▶ After years of red ink, the retailer may sell its best-known brands ▶ ▶ “Leaner, meaner, but with no reason to walk through the door”

Once upon a time, Sears was the Amazon.com and Walmart of U.S. merchandising. Customers could order just about anything for delivery—even a kit to build a 10-room colonial-style house— from the Sears catalog, a compendium of the American dream with a reach into the rural parts of the country that helped make Sears, Roebuck America’s largest merchant. Sears helped create the shopping mall in the 1950s, working with developers to build the retail centers that grew with the exodus to the suburbs. And when customers needed financing, it created a massive credit arm that paved the way for the Mastercards and Visas of today.

“They stood like a colossus on top of the American retail market—bigger than the next four companies combined,” says Craig Johnson, president of consultant Customer Growth Partners. That was as recently as the 1980s. “Now they’re a 98-pound weakling.”

It’s been 11 years since hedge fund magnate Edward Lampert merged Sears with another ailing company, Kmart Holding, which he bought out of bankruptcy in 2003, to form Sears Holdings. Sales have plunged by almost half, the result of defecting customers and the sundering of assets such as the Lands’ End clothing brand in 2014. Sears has lost more than $8 billion in the past five years. Its stock, once trading above $100, closed at $13.30 in late May. Some mall owners are eager to replace its stores with those of more vibrant tenants. And on May 26, the company said it would consider selling some of its crown jewels: the Kenmore appliance, Diehard battery, and Craftsman tool brands.

“They have been in a desperate state for a number of years,” says Matt Mcginley, an analyst at Evercore ISI, the lone Wall Street firm still covering the company. “I wouldn’t say any of the asset sales have been from a position of strength in the past three or four years. They’ve been done to fund substantial operating losses.” Sears declined a request for comment for this story. The retailer has suffered from an

industrywide decline as Americans spend differently and on different things. People are buying fewer clothes, spending more on dining and other experiences, and saving more. In the mid-’80s, 45 percent of consumer spending went to goods, the remainder to services. Today thosehose figures are 31 percent and 69 percent,ent, respectively, according to Customerer Growth’s Johnson. When Americansns do buy goods, they’re shifting whereere they shop—not just to online, but too offmall retailers, such as Walmart, Costco Wholesale, and T. J. Maxx.

That’s left department stores more ore and more on the margins, with bigger gger chains such as Macy’s swallowing g smaller regional merchants—and others such as Mervyn’s filing for bankruptcy and being liquidated. In the he

1886 Railway station agent Richard Sears begins selling watches to other station agents in Minneapolis. 1887 Watchmaker Alvah Roebuck joins the young Sears, and they start selling goods by mail. 1893 Sears, Roebuck founded. 1896 Distributes its first large

featuring a wide array of items, from women’s garments to wagons. 1913 Launches the Kenmore brand of appliances. 1925 Opens its first retail store, in a Chicago mail-order plant.

Launches the Craftsman tool brand.

Retail sales exceed those of mail orders for the first time. Launches Allstate Insurance, selling by mail only. Two years later, opens Allstate sales offices inside Sears retail stores. 1945 Sears annualual sales exceed $1b

. 1953 Sears expandsands to Canada. 1973 The 110-storyory Sears Tower opens ens in Chicago as the e world’s tallest building. 1981 Buys Dean Witter Reynolds Organization in a big expansion intoto