Spiegel published a catalog, like its competitors Sears, Aldens, and Montgomery Ward, which advertised various brands of apparel, accessories, and footwear, as well as housewares, toys, tools, firearms, and electronics.

After encountering financial difficulty in the early 2000s, the company was purchased by Patriarch Partners and focused on women's style and fashion products.

After spending the final few months of the Civil War in a Confederate prison camp, Joseph Spiegel settled in Chicago, where his brother-in-law, Henry Liebenstein, ran a furniture business.

After the fire, Joseph Spiegel and a partner named Jacob Cahn rebuilt the business, and by 1874 the company was prospering again under the leadership of the two men.

In 1885 Spiegel began running regular advertisements in several Chicago newspapers, and the following year the company moved to a larger building on State Street.

After a couple of unsuccessful partnerships with independent clothing manufacturers, Spiegel, May, Stern and Company began offering its own line of women's apparel.

After experiencing considerable economic losses in the early years of the Depression, Spiegel entered a period of growth and profits beginning in 1933.

By 1948, Spiegel was operating 168 retail stores featuring a wide range of merchandise, including clothing, furniture, electronics, housewares, and auto supplies.

The following year, Spiegel unveiled its Budget Power Plan, a liberal policy under which customers were offered a line of credit sometimes as high as $1,000, with very low monthly payments.

[citation needed] Spiegel benefited from television exposure and advertising in the form of prizes given away on several game shows, most notably The Hollywood Squares, The Price Is Right, and Let's Make a Deal.

Often these programs would award contestants gift certificates of a certain dollar amount toward catalog items, giving winners the flexibility to choose their own prize.

Also during that time, Spiegel began encountering significant competition from discount stores such as Kmart, which were rapidly establishing a national presence.

In 1976, to help turn the company around, Beneficial hired Henry "Hank" Johnson, a veteran of the mail order operations of Montgomery Ward and Avon.

Accordingly, the Spiegel catalog was completely revamped; low-budget items were replaced by upscale apparel and accessories for career women.

Although Spiegel still ranked fourth in catalog sales during this time, trailing Sears, JCPenney, and Montgomery Ward, the company's strategies were being followed closely by its larger competitors.

In 1982, Beneficial sold Spiegel to Otto-Versand GmbH, a large, private West German company prominent in catalog sales.

[10] In 1987, six million shares of nonvoting stock were sold to the public, marking the first time since 1965 that Spiegel was not completely privately held.

In 1988, Spiegel acquired Eddie Bauer, Inc., a retail chain specializing in sportswear and outdoor equipment from General Mills.

[16] In August 1993, Spiegel announced its purchase of Newport News (formerly Avon Fashions), a catalog company specializing in moderately-priced women's clothing.

[20] In 1994, Spiegel formed a joint venture with Time Warner Entertainment to create two home shopping services for cable television.

[22] The channel was tested in five markets that year:[23] Rochester, New York; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Nashua, New Hampshire; Columbus, Ohio; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

[28] Time Warner and Spiegel decided, however, there was a greater potential gain in launching a website for Catalog 1 and capitalizing on the increasing popularity of the Internet.

Accordingly, they scaled back their cable television operation and began working on a home page through Time Warner's popular Pathfinder site.

The addition demonstrated the company's commitment to providing innovative benefits to its workers, and employees began referring to it as "call in well day."

In the August 17, 1998, issue of the Puget Sound Business Journal, Eddie Bauer's president and CEO, Rick Fersch, commented on the company's problems: "We were overplanned, overstocked, overstyled, overcolored—and it was over warm (last winter) and that meant trouble.

Although its revenue decreased during 1998, the company turned a profit and achieved positive cash flow, according to a fiscal year-end document released by Spiegel in early 1999.

Eddie Bauer's performance disappointed again during the year, but Spiegel's other subsidiary catalog, Newport News, posted solid results.

After years of shrinking economic fortunes, the company suffered large financial losses and changed ownership three times within the early 2000s.

[36] The following year, a group headed by Golden Gate Capital Partners and Pangea Holdings Ltd., purchased the Spiegel and Newport News catalog businesses.

In 2016, Spiegel announced it would become the first American fashion digital catalog to feature a transgender model on its cover when Arisce Wanzer was selected.