Sears was founded as a mail-order catalog company by Richard Warren Sears in 1886.
Richard Sears began by selling watches after receiving a shipment that a railroad station agent did not want. In 1886, he established the R.W. Sears Watch Company in Minneapolis. Alvah C. Roebuck joined him as a watchmaker, and the business developed into a broad mail-order retailer.
The Sears catalog became an important retail tool for customers in rural areas who lived far from department stores. Sears later opened physical stores and merged with Roebuck's name in its corporate identity. It is sometimes confused with Montgomery Ward, another major American catalog retailer founded earlier, in 1872.