The record of human history is a timeline marked with significant events. We take these events as milestones as the march of nations and even civilizations progress. We teach these to our children as a way to connect to the past.
However, most are related to war or some aspect of the government and politics. We remember the Battle of Manila as the Philippines fought for independence from the United States. We commemorate the Bataan Death March when thinking of World War II. The Plaza Miranda bombing and 1986 People Power Revolution are an indelible part of Philippine history as is the assassination of John F. Kennedy and “9/11” in the US.
But an equally important part of history is found in the world of business and commerce, even though there are no national holidays to observe these events.
As of the first quarter of 2018, 1.45 billion users visited Facebook daily. How many are aware that its web site was launched on February 4, 2004? A certain company was founded on August 29, 1997, and today 15 percent of all global Internet traffic goes through Netflix Inc.
The events of business are as critical to our history as all the other important events. Can we measure the difference in the significance of December 7, 1941 and September 15, 2008? The Japanese Imperial Navy bombed Hawaii plunging the world into war. The collapse of financial institution Lehman Brothers plunged the world into near financial collapse and froze the global banking system.
Sears, Roebuck and Company, usually known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1892. Sears’s father lost the family fortune in the stock market and he was forced to take a job as a railroad station agent. One time, a local jeweler received a large shipment of watches that he did not want and Sears bought them, selling to his co-workers for a big profit.
He teamed up with Alvah C. Roebuck, a watch repairman, and published his first mail-order catalog, offering watches and jewelry.
Five years later they established another mail-order company selling everything from sewing machines to automobiles. Rural farmers were at the mercy of local stores where prices were “negotiated.” Sears catalog posted fixed prices. At the peak, the catalog was 532 pages.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, Sears Inc.—now a public company—built many urban department stores to function also as warehouses for their rural mail-order business. By 1993 the company stopped its catalog sales and devoted itself to brick-and-mortar locations.
Sears Holdings Corp. is expected to file for bankruptcy in the coming weeks.
Amazon.com Inc. is an American electronic commerce company, founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994. After reading a report on the potential future of Internet marketing, Bezos created a list of 20 products that could be marketed online. He finally decided that his new business would sell books.
With 180,000 employees, Amazon now has about a 5-percent share of US retail spending.
Amazon has effectively put book retailer Barnes and Noble “out of business.” Major pharmacy retailers have lost $12.8 billion in stock-market value since Amazon entered the sector. Sports apparel retailers are in “intensive care” as Nike shoes announced it is now selling on Amazon.
Major department stores Costco and Macy’s are losing ground every day. And now Sears will soon be gone, beaten by the same business model of “direct mail-order sales” they created 100 years ago.