[8] In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings.

[9] After several years of declining sales, Sears' parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018.

[14][15] Richard Warren Sears was born in 1863 in Stewartville, Minnesota, to a wealthy family which moved to nearby Spring Valley.

On September 16, 1893,[18] they renamed the company Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and began to diversify the product lines offered in their catalogs.

Before the Sears catalog, farmers near small rural towns usually purchased supplies, often at high prices and on credit, from local general stores with narrow selections of goods.

Sears built an opposite business model by offering in their catalogs a larger selection of products at published prices.

By 1894, the Sears catalog had grown to 322 pages, including many new items, such as sewing machines, bicycles, sporting goods and automobiles (later produced, from 1905 to 1915, by Lincoln Motor Car Works of Chicago [no relation to the current Ford line]).

Despite the strong and growing sales, the national Panic of 1893 led to a full-scale economic depression, causing a cash squeeze and large quantities of unsold merchandise by 1895.

[22] Rosenwald brought to the mail-order firm a rational management philosophy and diversified product lines: dry goods, consumer durables, drugs, hardware, furniture, and nearly anything else a farm household could desire.

[25] The building was the anchor of what would become the massive 40-acre (16 ha) Sears, Roebuck and Company Complex of offices, laboratories, and mail-order operations at Homan Avenue and Arthington Street.

By 1907, under Rosenwald's leadership as vice president and treasurer, annual sales of the company climbed to roughly $50 million ($1.6 billion today).

[28] The company was badly hurt during 1919–21 as a severe depression hit the nation's farms after farmers had over-expanded their holdings.

Rosenwald oversaw the design and construction of the firm's first department store, built on land within the Sears, Roebuck, and Company Complex.

[32] Despite its remote location on the outskirts of Chicago, its success led to dozens of further openings across the country, many in conjunction with the company's mail-order offices,[33] typically in lower-middle-class and working-class neighborhoods, far from the main downtown shopping district.

Set apart from existing business districts amid residential areas occupied by their target audience, they had ample, free, off-street parking and communicated a clear corporate identity.

Over time, Sears expanded into all Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and all Central American countries.

[46] The Sears Centre is a 10,001-seat multi-purpose arena located in Hoffman Estates adjacent to the Prairie Stone campus.

[48] The company began selling to foreign customers after the American occupation of Greenland in World War II and the Philippines, among others, when locals ordered from catalogs left by soldiers.

Sears spun off its financial services arm, which included brokerage business Dean Witter Reynolds and Discover Card.

[54] In 1992, California successfully sued the company for falsely finding things wrong with automobiles in for repair for other reasons.

Sears's CEO and top shareholder said the sell-off of key assets in the last year had given the retailer the money it needs to speed up its transformation.

[65] CEO Eddie Lampert also concluded an arrangement that sold the Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc. for approximately US$900 million.

[69] Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018, ahead of a $134 million debt payment due that day.

[11] On February 7, 2019, a bankruptcy judge approved a $5.2 billion plan by Sears's chairman and biggest shareholder to keep the business going.

[87][88] Transformco announced in December 2021 its plans to sell the 2.3 million sq ft (210,000 m2) Sears headquarters in Hoffman Estates, which includes 100 acres (40 ha) of undeveloped land.

From 2006 until 2020, it had the naming rights to an 11,000-seat multi-purpose family entertainment, cultural and sports center in Hoffman Estates, the Now Arena.

[98] The company also underwrote the PBS television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, under the name The Sears-Roebuck Foundation, from the show's premiere in 1968 until 1992.

[100] It sponsored the #10 Gillett Evernham Motorsports car of Scott Riggs for the September 2, 2007, running of the Sharp AQUOS 500 at California Speedway through its Sears Auto Center branch.

Sears said the new base wage, often constituting a substantial (up to 40%) cut in pay, was done "to be successful in this highly competitive environment".

[107] Between September 26 and October 12, 2017, malware were installed in the computers operated by a service provider for sears.com and kmart.com e-commerce sites in which the credit card information of 100,000 customers were exposed via a malicious script.