"Kodaking"

They also owned a credit-card/banking company (Discover) An early internet / bulletin-board (Prodigy) An insurance company (AllState) but never found the synergies to help them add value for an integrated customer.

Yeah, the smaller towns only had "Sears Catalog Stores" where you could pick up your orders. I recall that you could actually order a house from the Sears catalog at one time...

Exactly, they had all that knowledge and infrastructure ready to go and could easily have become the Amazon of today.

​@@igorschmidlapp6987 my parents live in a 1915 Sears kit home. The quality and craftsmanship is something you just don't find in today's products. The wood used in 1915 alone will last longer than the average stick home today.

We grew up with Sears (my parents first credit card) with one exception. My father worked at GE so our appliances were GE until my sister went to work for Sears after graduation. Then we had Kenmore products. She worked in the catalog department and made announcements on the loud speaker. Sales and what the special was in the cafeteria. She had a wonderful voice!

Sears carried "Quality" clothes, tools, shoes, purses, etc

Craftsman is the best!!

In the 1960s, Sears would give mothers of twins an additional set of a purchased layette for free. My twin and I wore Sears exclusively throughout elementary school. Kids didn’t care - all of our friends wore “Toughskins” everything! 😂

I have a 20-year-old Kenmore dryer that still works well.

So do I.

❤

Beautifully penned. Thank you

Matt - that is definitely a great idea!! I’m sure everyone was laughing & having a good time before they even sat down to enjoy their pizza!!

@@soniatriana9091 Yes, and it was a good pop culture history lesson for kids, too.

Makes me regret mum letting us cut up the clubby books, as we called them, to paste into scrapbooks

@@pamelaadam9207 Why “Clubby Books”? What does that mean?

@mattkaustickomments it's a Scottish term for the catalogues we has here. You had your agents who got a commission from sales and people could join a wee circle or club to pay in instalments hence the clubby books

Invisible paint, rocket powered roller skates, giant horseshoe magnets, miles of railroad track with rocket powered sled, giant springs, the list goes on forever.

Yee😊

@@user-iz9mu1qj8e Wow! This took me back to a nice place and a hearty chuckle! Thanks!

Chuck Jones, who created and Directed the REAL Road Runner cartoons (as opposed to former animator Rudy Larriva’s crummy ones, made when Warner Bros. re-opened their animation department in the later 1960’s) always loved the idea that there was this company called “Acme” that made all this stuff for coyotes to order for catching road runners, and that these items NEVER worked!

My grandma had one. It was the kind you step on the bottom for power. I miss her so much

I have a 1912 singer that paid $150 to fix. The gentleman who repaired it said the repair should last another 100 years.

When my son was in school, we'd go through the Penney's catalog for school clothes, which he loved to pick out. Over the years, I bought almost all my curtains from them - including some I have now, which came from their online catalog. They also have some great fashion jewelry sales.

Penney's and Dillard's was considered peak sophistication in my childhood 😁

I ordered my bridesmade dresses in 1983 from Penny's catalog!

We used to pick out clothes we liked and marked the pages too. Many times we ended up making outfits on our sewing machine instead of buying.

​@@retroredo9850 Yes, all the stores had a bridal salon back in the day! What a wonderful era!

I’m one of 4 children, my mom had us circle what we wanted in the Sears and JCPenney catalogs- it was the perfect way to track all of our wish lists😊

And, us boys used to look at the ladies underwear models... "Puberty Porn"... ;-P

@KirklandRA, I’m glad my daughter had the opportunity, but am sad my grandsons won’t have the same experience. A long distance friend gave me an idea to tell my daughter.

Yes. The Toy section was in the back. My brother and I went straight to it, circling our favorites.

Yes me too

That sounds absolutely brilliant! I'm going to find a picture of one - I've always been partial to the German Hufhaus buildings, too. I wonder if the look is similar.

I live in one in Iowa model 115 it was 725 dollars for the kit

@@daltondea4214 Ooh, how lovely! I hope it keeps going for many more years.

Amazing

You can still find those old products and RESTORE them!

Kenmore refrigerators used to be reasonably reliable for years. Now, if you want a refrigerator that will enable you to get to know your repairmen, then buy a Kenmore (or any other brand that is actually manufactured by LG or Samsung...the parties primarily responsible for so many crap fridges in the past decade).

Kenmore, made to last! If they went out, they were fixable. Today, appliances are as much to fix as it is to buy a new one. Everything today is made to be disposable. Sad.

Kenmore made the best washers! A perfect & truly Delicate cycle.

Sears' downfall was in not getting into online shopping.

@@zyxw2000 Maybe they didn't want to go Chinese.

@@user-gt8st3qf4o They were already selling Chinese merchandise.

Me too

That was like the wait for the toy out of the cereal box, send 3 UPC codes and a self addressed stamped envelope the wait 4-6 weeks.

if i can’t get it same day i essentially throw a temper tantrum. i’m 54 so i know the 4-6 week concept; i got super spoiled, super fast

An old what? THAT is the question.

So do I. In the 50 and 60s three to four weeks would have astounded us. It was usually 6 weeks. We looked forward to the wish books each year.

❤

More forgotten than missed but we always had that old reproduction Sears catalog from, wanna say--1880's, to look at for fun.

Anybody else remember going to the "Five and Dime" store? The ancestor of the dollar stores, where things were priced for five and ten cents...

@@igorschmidlapp6987 Sure do, just barely, didn't quite live up to the name by then tho. Thanks for reminder, I'd nearly forgotten.

Don't forget the Golden Rule Store, aka J.C. Penney.

​@@Mrbfgray many old catalogs are online for viewing. It is a lot of fun to look through the old catalogs. My favorite products are the kit homes.

Very well said

Isn't that the truth! Who even watches it, now?

History Channel is on UKposts, and all it has is sleazy videos about interplanetary aliens. I keep reporting it to YT, but it has a huge viewership.

History Hit is UK based but it's that real history the "History Channel" has been missing for so long.

Yes, sadly. The History Channel as we knew it, is history.

Yup!! The Lemon Frog Shop!!!

Me too! To think we could possibly have enough to buy things! My first purchase - my parents took me to Sears and I bought a sewing machine!! Then I could make my own clothing! I remember like it was yesterday!

Yes I would babysit and make my own clothes since 7th grade. I made curtains bedspreads sew for my grandmother eventually sewed for a bridal shop

I bought all my Oneida silverware from Service Merchandise, they had a store near Playa del Rey, kind of across the way from the Hughes aircraft plant... my father worked for Hughes he was recruited out of college to come to California, my mom ever the planner towed -the Airstream trailer out here to live in in Culver City...😍 they finally bought a house in West Chester, very near the airport, that was removed by eminent domain LAX..LAXVESPA-LOSANGELES

Good advice. 😊

So so true. Thanks for the shot of reality

And to think Walmart & Target outlived Sears & Montgomery Ward. 🏢

I am a 3rd generation mechanic. I can say with confidence that early Craftsman tools were and are FAR better than they were even in the 90s and early 2000s. On that note, I found that Craftsman tools wear out entirely too fast in a commercial setting where you depend on them 10 hours a day, 5 and 6 days a week. When I started as a mechanic, thats all I had, was Craftsman tools. But the local Sears refused to warranty them when I went in wearing a uniform shirt from a shop I worked at. They said they were not warranted for commercial use, and refused to exchange them for me permanently. So I started buying Cornwell tools. And that is now 95% of the tools I own. Having a good tool truck driver is half the battle of buying any tools from a tool truck. I still have S-K socket sets that were my grandfather's when he ran a shop in my old town. I still use them, 60 years old or not. He'd be mad if I didn't. He'd tell me they are tools, not decorations! What's the point in having them if you aren't going to use them!?! And something that makes my eyes roll os teachers that say they have to spend their money to do their jobs. "Welcome to the club." Is my my response.

Craftsman hand tools before the 1990's were excellent

Then china didn't have the factories like america did .

​@@robertschemonia5617 I think teachers get a tax credit for out-of-pocket school expenses, but it's capped at $300. Probably as a small business, you get a bigger write-off for your expenses.

@@Here4TheHeckOfIt nope. Not even close. I'd have to spend $15k out of pocket per year to be able to have a tax deduction. I do not own my own business, so that kind of stuff is just itemized if I spend enough, not a tax deduction expense.

I bought my boys clothes at Penny's bc they were durable and kept their color and shape. My mother worked for Penneys for 25 years and got a pension you don't see that anymore

Same age here. I miss the stores.

Part of it was that they used full dimension lumber, not the trimmed down stuff we use these days....(it is kiln dried and a lot easier to work with these days though, for sure!)

We used to shop at that Sears for my sister's shoes. She had a wide foot as a kid and they were the only Sears that carried the wide shoes. I could get my sneakers at the Montgomeryville store.

Anyone remember Spiegal's

Better than you could buy today!

My Kenmore sewing machine is 38 years old; still using it.

I remember my mum's old machine; it was controlled by a sort of knee operated handle, to which we referred as the 'knee-er'. I also remember it conking out after years of almost industrial use. My mother regarded her new machine as you would a device landing from hundreds of years in the future...

My family (4 kids) too, 50's, early 60's.

Us, too, on into the early 60's.

I know, I miss these stores!!

The thing was K Mart stores were always a mess, with very low quality items. My mother used to call them 'throw away clothes'. SO when they bought out Sears, that reputation hurt Sears. When they got rid of the Sears Hardware stores which was a treat to spend the better part of day in with my dad, he and I knew the writing was on the wall. Suddenly you couldn't get certain tools exchanged anymore, because Sears no longer supplied them. That in turn made people leery of buying appliances from them, because if 1 got an extended warranty and Sears went out of business, who would service the units under warranty? That actually happened to me in 2013 when I bought a fridge from a store that was closing. They wouldn't sell an extended service contract to me, but the price was so low, I decided to gamble. It is still running ok, but I've been told that if the electronic board ever does go out, it's n/a...

My older sister did that, folding each page until you could stand it up sorta' like a silo/barn.

Our family ordered from Spiegel's frequently.

I remember it. I don't remember ordering from it. I did spend time looking through it.

ME! As a 50's/60's kid!!

L

I got alot of car parts from them while I was in thre us navy,miss that catalog

He was spot on with that statement.

I remember

Surely that was added later to make this story Hollywood ish. At that time the government was given land & $ to new white settlers while stealing ideas and pattens from so called emancipated black slaves. All of this time period is still full of lies. For example where are the slave ships & why make the Musium African Americans into the shape of a slave ship? At that time they were sending native black Americans to Africa Liberia! Why?! Bcuz they were building lies for their false history. We natives showed all of them YT’s folk how to survive here in America. Don’t believe the HYPE!

They tore that building down. They are building a part of Rush Hospital on that site.

And from S.S. Kresge, came K mart, who built a giant new World Headquarters in the early seventies, in Troy, MI. My sister worked there in the payroll department, and my high school buddies worked in collections, for their new at the time, Credit Card department, even before the new headquarters was built. That building was closed about 30 years after being built, and was vacant for about a decade, before the space was leased out.

Now THAT'S Fun-🦵!!! After your comment, I had to go back & read the into!! Thnx for the 😂

LOL

Guess I'm a retail nerd. Knew both for years. Sears used the Allstate brand on a lot of things, insurance, tires, toy trains and others I'm sure. I actually remember going to a Montgomery Ward on Black Friday back in the 90's and getting a free copy of a Rudolph story book. Back then Black Friday was not crowded if you can imagine. Wal-Mart would give away free coffee and donuts.

And they had Craftman tools that lasted forever. When my Father in Law died, my Mother in Law allowed all their friends to their garage and they could have what they wanted.

Happy NEW YEAR!!🎉

The Zayre name is gone but the company legacy lives on as TJ Maxx, Home Goods and other chains. They also founded and spun off the BJs Wholesale Club.

@@LatitudeSkyI was visiting my cousin last week and she had yarn from ZAYRE!

I do, 70's child here.

Marshall Field’s at Christmas! They had an entire floor for toys!

Steven Wright once dated a mail-order bridesmaid.........

You too 🤣 I miss that time. Catalogs and telephone books aren't around anymore, and toilet paper is hard to come buy in stores. It's all computer technology.

I had the same reaction when J C Whitney stopped publishing their catalog.

Thanks for that informative history bit. 😊 A former Jeannette Pa.native.

The necessity for it came from the railroads, who needed it to schedule trains, that wouldn't crash into each other, because every town would be it's own time zone.