Richard Warren Sears

Eleven years later, the catalog had grown to 240 pages with 10,000 items.

In 1886, Richard Sears and Alva Roebuck created a competing mail order company, But it wouldn't be a serious challenger until the 20th century.

Ward's made mail order into a primary shopping source for our spread-out, mostly rural land.

It didn't open a retail store until 1926, 13 years after Mr.

Okay, glad to know.

That's where Richard Sears grew up.

Did you know?

Solid as Sears.

Party in the USA is correct.

Turner, Sears Roebuck and Company was founded by Richard Sears back in 1886, but what did he originally sell? Sewing machines, washing machines, or watches?

I'm going to say watches.

Watches is correct, even though the first lawnmower I ever bought was from Sears Roebuck.

For instance, they gave us time zones, which were created by the major railroad companies to make shipping and passenger transport more standard.

Also, because he recognized the importance of telling time, a railroad agent named Richard Warren Sears turned a $50 investment in watches into an enormous mail-order empire.

And railroads made it possible for him, and his eventual partner Roebuck, to ship watches, and then jewelry, and then pretty much everything, including unconstructed freaking houses throughout the country.

Railroads were also the first modern corporations.

[laughs]

B, the founder of the company, Richard Sears, was using an envelope as TP and said to himself, "Well, why not mail everything?" Or C, their famous catalogs were widely prized as toilet paper.

C.

I'm gonna go with A.

Every major consumer trend in the United States for a century, Sears was a central part of it.

Sears started with a guy named Richard Warren Sears.

He was born in 1863 to a wealthy family in Minnesota.

His father lost everything on a bad stock market bet and then died very shortly after.