was a teenager. As a young man, Richard Sears wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life, but he had a strong entrepreneurial spirit and was determined not to follow the example of financial disaster set by his father.
Richard Sears’ knack for business first began to manifest itself while he was the station agent at North Redwood Falls. Since the job occupied only a few hours of his time each day, he had ample time to make money in other ways to help support his family. Two of his side enterprises involved selling lumber and coal to local farmers and Native Americans in the area. But when a shipment of pocket watches was refused at the station by a local jeweler, Sears’ sharp business mind saw a golden opportunity.
Sears knew that the recent establishment of time zones in the United States by the railroads would force farmers to begin using something more precise than the position of the sun to determine local time and to get their crops to the railroad depots on time for shipping. Consequently, he contacted the owner of the abandoned watches and arranged to buy them for $12 apiece (nearly $300 in today’s dollars). Sears, however, had no intention of going into the retail watch business.
Instead, he offered the watches to other
station agents up and down the line for $14 each. Since similar watches were being sold in general stores for $25 apiece, the other agents had no trouble reselling the watches to local farmers and making a profit.
As soon as Sears’ supply of watches was gone, he ordered another shipment and then another. Within six months, he had made about $5,000 (roughly $120,000 in today’s dollars) and decided to take a risk and move his fledgling watch business to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he founded his first company, the R. W. Sears Watch Company.
Starts and Stops
It was during his time in Minneapolis that Sears’ extraordinary flair for writing advertising copy first became apparent. By creating ads that spoke directly to his prospective customers, he was able to convince normally skeptical rural buyers to place mail orders for his watches. By taking out ads in local newspapers and farm publica- tions, Sears began to generate sales at a rate that surprised even him. Orders came in at such a frantic pace that in 1887 he decided to move his company to Chicago, where he could take advantage of the city’s more central location in the Midwest and its extensive network of railroads.
Inevitably, with so many watches sold, some of them were re- turned for repairs. Knowing that he needed to employ a watch repairman, Sears placed the following advertisement in the Chicago Daily News: “Wanted: Watchmaker with reference who can furnish tools. State age, experience and salary required.” The ad was answered by a thin, rather reserved young man about Sears’ age. His name was Alvah Curtis Roebuck. Sears hired him immediately.
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