Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck and Company

Emmet and Jeuck wrote a scholarly history of Sears, Roebuck and Company, commissioned by the company and published in 1950, based on access to internal records.

The history covers the company from Richard Sears's watch-selling operation in the 1880s through the mail order business built on the catalogue, the relationship with Julius Rosenwald who imposed financial and operational discipline on Sears's promotional instincts, the construction of the Chicago mail order plant with its scheduling system that processed enormous order volumes, the supply arrangements including equity stakes in manufacturers, and the decision under Robert Wood in the 1920s to open retail stores.

That decision is the analytical centre. Wood, who had come from Montgomery Ward and before that from the Panama Canal construction, read census data showing the shift of population from farms to cities and the growth of automobile ownership, and concluded that the rural mail order customer base would decline while urban customers who could drive would want stores. Sears opened stores with parking, located away from downtown, which was a departure from the department store model. The company became the largest retailer in the United States.

The book also covers the private label strategy, the manufacturer relationships, the profit-sharing plan that made employees substantial shareholders, and the organisational structure.

This is an academic business history from 1950 and it stops there, so the postwar expansion, the Sears Tower period, the diversification into financial services and the long decline and eventual bankruptcy are all outside it. It remains one of the better documented accounts of how a mass retailer was actually built, and its treatment of the mail order operating system is unusually detailed.