Sears: How the Store That Sold America Everything Lost It All

Sears once sold America almost everything, from watches by mail to houses shipped by rail. Then it lost its lead, missed the shift to discount retail and online shopping, merged with Kmart, and filed for bankruptcy in 2018. Today only five stores remain. This is an original documentary narration from Business Rises and Falls. All visuals are illustration art, maps, charts, timelines and text cards. No archival photos, company logos or clips are used, and no image is presented as a real photo of a person or event. Key facts in this episode: Sears, Roebuck and Company was renamed on September 16, 1893. Its first retail store opened in Chicago in 1925. In 1973 it reported 837 retail stores and sales of almost 11 billion dollars. The Big Book catalog ended in 1993. Sears and Kmart combined in 2005. Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018, with 687 stores and about 68,000 employees. Assets were sold in early 2019 for 5.2 billion dollars, covering about 425 stores. As of December 2025, five Sears stores remain open in the United States. Sources named in the episode research file: Wikipedia, Sears, Roebuck and Co.; Wikipedia, Sears Holdings Corporation; HistoryNet, The 20th Century Retail Mecca That Was Sears, Roebuck and Co.; historic structures.com, Sears company summary; FundingUniverse, History of Sears, Roebuck and Co.; ND Insider timeline on the Sears rise and fall; Berkeley Law, A Financial Engineering Failure: Sears Files for Bankruptcy; CFO.com, Chairman Lampert Wins Auction to Save Sears; Investopedia, Who Killed Sears?; TheStreet, How 2,700 closures reduced a retail giant to five stores.