The Amazon of its day, Sears` woes were years in the making
(WorldNews Business)

Before there was Amazon - or, for that matter, Home Depot or Walmart or Kmart - there was Sears. From its beginnings as a mail-order watch business in Minneapolis 132 years ago, the company grew to become America`s everything-under-one-roof store and the biggest retailer in the world. For generations of Americans, the brick-like Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog was a fixture in just about every house - a miscellany of toys and clothes and furnishings and hardware that induced longing for this or that dream purchase. The Sears brand loomed as large over the corporate landscape as its 108-story basalt-like headquarters did over the Chicago skyline. ......