Sears

Sears is an American multinational department store chain headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, in Greater Chicago. The company was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1893 as a mail order catalog. Julius Rosenwald took control in 1895 and expanded its sales and profits greatly. In 1925, it began opening local department stores. The business peaked in the 1950s and 1960s, then began a long, slow contraction. In 2005, it was bought out by Kmart, which renamed itself Sears Holdings.