Sears Was Amazon 100 Years Before Amazon Existed

Five Sears stores are still open in America. At their 2005 merger, Sears and Kmart together had about 3,500 stores — today, five full-size Sears stores remain. For most of the twentieth century, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States — and it sold the country almost everything through a printed catalog 1,100 pages thick: tools, appliances, insurance, even entire houses by mail. It was Amazon, running on trains, a hundred years before Amazon existed. Then, in 1993, Sears killed the catalog — and dismissed 50,000 workers. Amazon was founded in 1994. This is the full rise and fall: the railroad clerk who invented mail-order, the empire that built the tallest building on Earth, the merger that joined two dying giants, the comeback paid for by selling its own stores, and the collapse. Chapters: 00:00 The Hook 00:26 The Peak 02:20 The Rise 04:48 The Poison 06:36 The Moment 08:26 The Comeback That Almost Worked 10:17 The Collapse 11:47 The Last Image Next: Nokia — the king of phones. #Sears #BusinessHistory #Documentary