Sears

Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( SEERZ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer. The company was founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald. The company began as a mail-order catalog company and opened its first retail locations in 1925. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States, but was surpassed in 1989 by Walmart. In 2005, Eddie Lampert took control of the company through Kmart. The merger resulted in Sears Holdings. Sears' parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. After the bankruptcy, Transformco has shifted focus onto managing and selling off the remaining real estate assets. From 2,705 stores at its peak in 2011, only five stores are still open in the U.S. as of December 2025.