Before there was Amazon — or, for that matter, Home Depot or Walmart or Kmart — there was Sears.
From its beginnings as a mail-order watch business in Minneapolis 132 years ago, the company grew to become America's everything-under-one-roof store and the biggest retailer in the world.
For generations of Americans, the brick-like Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog was a fixture in just about every house — a miscellany of toys and clothes and furnishings and hardware that induced longing for this or that dream purchase. The Sears brand loomed as large over the corporate landscape as its 108-story basalt-like headquarters did over the Chicago skyline.
People stand outside a Sears department store in Hackensack, N.J., Monday, Oct. 15, 2018. Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, buckling under its massive debt load and staggering losses. (AP PhotoSeth Wenig)
"It was the Amazon of its day," said Mark Cohen, a professor of retailing at Columbia University and a former Sears executive.
But how the mighty have fallen: Plagued by falling sales and heavy debt, Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization Monday and announced plans to close 142 of its roughly 700 remaining stores and eliminate thousands of jobs in a bid to stay afloat, if only for a while.
Analysts have their doubts it will survive.
A sign for a Sears department store is displayed in Norristown, Pa., Monday, Oct. 15, 2018. Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, buckling under its massive debt load and staggering losses. (AP PhotoMatt Rourke)
"In our view, too much rot has set in at Sears to make it (a) viable business," Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said in a note to investors.
Its bankruptcy was years in the making. Sears diversified too much. It kept cutting costs and let its stores become fusty in the face of increasing competition from the likes of Walmart and Target. And though it expanded onto the Internet, it was no match for Amazon.
"In point of fact," Cohen said, "they've been dead for a very long time."
A Sears department store is shown in Norristown, Pa., Monday, Oct. 15, 2018. Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, buckling under its massive debt load and staggering losses. (AP PhotoMatt Rourke)
In its bankruptcy filing, Sears Holdings, which operates both Sears and Kmart stores, listed assets of $1 billion to $10 billion and liabilities of $10 billion to $50 billion. It said it has lined up $300 million in financing from banks to keep operating and is negotiating an additional $300 million loan.
The company once had around 350,000 employees; as of Monday's filing, it was down to 68,000. At its peak, it had 4,000 stores in 2012; it will now be left with a little more than 500.
Sears was born in 1886, when Richard W. Sears began selling watches to supplement his income as a railroad station agent in North Redwood, Minnesota. By the next year, he had opened his first store in Chicago and had hired a watchmaker named Alvah C. Roebuck.
The company published its first mail-order catalog in 1888. Together with companies like Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney, Sears helped bring American consumer culture to middle America.
"It's hard to imagine now how isolating it was to live in a small town 100 years ago, 120 years ago," said Marc Levinson, author of "The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America." ''Back before the days of cars, people might have a ride of several days in a horse and buggy just to get to the nearest train railhead, nearest train station."
"What Sears did was make big-city merchandise available to people in small towns," he said.
There was a time when you could find just about anything for your house in the Sears catalog — including a house. Between 1908 and 1940, the company sold about 75,000 build-from-a-kit houses, many of which are still standing.
Sears' offerings could cover you from cradle to grave: It even sold tombstones. In between, there was everything from girdles to socket wrenches, dresses to guns, dolls to washing machines.
The Sears catalog "was second only to the Holy Bible in terms of the household importance," said 71-year-old novelist Allan Gurganus, author of "The Last Confederate Widow Tells All." He grew up in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and recalls the way tenants on his grandfather's farm loved the catalog.
When the new one would arrive, Gurganus said, the old one was consigned to the outhouse as reading material and, well, toilet paper. He said they always started at the back of the book when pulling out pages.
"That's where the least important parts are — the plumbing fixtures and so forth," he said with a laugh. "I was especially interested in the underwear ads."
Gurganus uses the catalog as a research tool for his novels. A 1917 edition occupies his bedside table. He still has the six-string Silvertone guitar he ordered in 1963.
For generations, Sears was an innovator in practically every area, including home delivery, product-testing laboratories and employee profit-sharing. When post-World War II prosperity led to the growth of suburbia, Sears was well-positioned to cash in on another major development — the shopping mall.
By the late 1960s, Sears was the world's largest retailer. In 1975, it completed the black Sears Tower, which at 1,450 feet (442 meters) was the world's tallest skyscraper for 25 years.
Between 1981 and 1985, the company went on a spending spree, acquiring the stock brokerage Dean Witter Reynolds and the real estate company Coldwell, Banker. It launched the Discover credit card nationwide.
"They diverted all of their retail cash flow into other enterprises," Cohen said. "And the retail business had come apart at the seams."
Sears eventually got rid of those businesses. And to save money and generate capital, it sold off some of its most familiar brands, Craftsman and DieHard among them. In 1993, it killed the general merchandise catalog. Not long thereafter, its sold its skyscraper.
Sears introduced its popular "Come see the softer side of Sears" ad campaign in 1993 and had a turnaround starting in the mid- to late 1990s, but it didn't last long.
Hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert bought the company in 2005 and created Sears Holdings Corp. He began cutting expenses and selling off real estate, but the hemorrhaging continued.
Retail historian Vicki Howard, author of "From Main Street to Mall: The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store," said Sears was too slow to adapt as consumers drifted away from the malls and more toward online shopping and big-box stores farther out in the suburbs.
Levinson said that for too long, Sears catered to "a broad middle market" and failed to change with the times.
"There are a lot of stores specializing in particular parts of the market, and no longer very many stores that are seeking to serve everyone," he said. "And so Sears was stuck there in the middle at a time when the market was fragmenting."
Eventually, Cohen said, Sears will disappear.
"It's an American tragedy," he said. "It did not have to be this way."
Breed contributed to this report from Raleigh, North Carolina, D'Innocenzio from New York.
HAVANA (AP) — Cuban soldiers wearing white gloves marched out of a plane on Thursday carrying urns with the remains of the 32 Cuban officers killed during a stunning U.S. attack on Venezuela as trumpets and drums played solemnly at Havana's airport.
Nearby, thousands of Cubans lined one of Havana’s most iconic streets to await the bodies of colonels, lieutenants, majors and captains as the island remained under threat by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
The soldiers' shoes clacked as they marched stiff-legged into the headquarters of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, next to Revolution Square, with the urns and placed them on a long table next to the pictures of those killed so people could pay their respects.
Thursday’s mass funeral was only one of a handful that the Cuban government has organized in almost half a century.
Hours earlier, state television showed images of more than a dozen wounded people described as “combatants” accompanied by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez arriving Wednesday night from Venezuela. Some were in wheelchairs.
Those injured and the remains of those killed arrived as tensions grow between Cuba and the U.S., with Trump recently demanding that the Caribbean country make a deal with him before it is “too late.” He did not explain what kind of deal.
Trump also has said that Cuba will no longer live off Venezuela's money and oil. Experts warn that the abrupt end of oil shipments could be catastrophic for Cuba, which is already struggling with serious blackouts and a crumbling power grid.
Officials unfurled a massive flag at Havana's airport as President Miguel Díaz-Canel, clad in military garb as commander of Cuba's Armed Forces, stood silent next to former President Raúl Castro, with what appeared to be the relatives of those killed looking on nearby.
Cuban Interior Minister Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casa said Venezuela was not a distant land for those killed, but a “natural extension of their homeland.”
“The enemy speaks to an audience of high-precision operations, of troops, of elites, of supremacy,” Álvarez said in apparent reference to the U.S. “We, on the other hand, speak of faces, of families who have lost a father, a son, a husband, a brother.”
Álvarez called those slain “heroes,” saying that they were an example of honor and “a lesson for those who waver.”
“We reaffirm that if this painful chapter of history has demonstrated anything, it is that imperialism may possess more sophisticated weapons; it may have immense material wealth; it may buy the minds of the wavering; but there is one thing it will never be able to buy: the dignity of the Cuban people,” he said.
Thousands of Cubans lined a street where motorcycles and military vehicles thundered by with the remains of those killed.
“They are people willing to defend their principles and values, and we must pay tribute to them,” said Carmen Gómez, a 58-year-old industrial designer, adding that she hopes no one invades given the ongoing threats.
When asked why she showed up despite the difficulties Cubans face, Gómez replied, “It’s because of the sense of patriotism that Cubans have, and that will always unite us.”
Cuba recently released the names and ranks of 32 military personnel — ranging in age from 26 to 60 — who were part of the security detail of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during the raid on his residence on January 3. They included members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior, the island’s two security agencies.
Cuban and Venezuelan authorities have said that the uniformed personnel were part of protection agreements between the two countries.
A demonstration was planned for Friday across from the U.S. Embassy in an open-air forum known as the Anti-Imperialist Tribune. Officials have said they expect the demonstration to be massive.
“People are upset and hurt. There’s a lot of talk on social media; but many do believe that the dead are martyrs” of a historic struggle against the United States, analyst and former diplomat Carlos Alzugaray told The Associated Press.
In October 1976, then-President Fidel Castro led a massive demonstration to bid farewell to the 73 people killed in the bombing of a Cubana de Aviación civilian flight financed by anti-revolutionary leaders in the U.S. Most of the victims were Cuban athletes.
In December 1989, officials organized “Operation Tribute” to honor the more than 2,000 Cuban combatants who died in Angola during Cuba’s participation in the war that defeated the South African army and ended the apartheid system. In October 1997, memorial services were held following the arrival of the remains of guerrilla commander Ernesto “Che” Guevara and six of his comrades, who died in 1967.
The latest mass burial is critical to honor those slain, said José Luis Piñeiro, a 60-year-old doctor who lived four years in Venezuela.
“I don’t think Trump is crazy enough to come and enter a country like this, ours, and if he does, he’s going to have to take an aspirin or some painkiller to avoid the headache he’s going to get,” Piñeiro said. “These were 32 heroes who fought him. Can you imagine an entire nation? He’s going to lose.”
A day before the remains of those killed arrived in Cuba, the U.S. announced $3 million in additional aid to help the island recover from the catastrophic Hurricane Melissa.
The first flight took off on Wednesday, and a second flight was scheduled for Friday. A commercial vessel also will deliver food and other supplies.
Jeremy Lewin, the State Department official in charge of foreign assistance, said the U.S. was working with Cuba’s Catholic Church to distribute aid.
“There’s nothing political about cans of tuna and rice and beans and pasta,” he said Thursday, warning that the Cuban government should not intervene or divert supplies. “We will be watching, and we will hold them accountable.”
Lewin said he saw no contradiction between cutting off Venezuelan oil and offering aid, saying that “the Cuban regime was taking illegitimate profits from the narco-terrorists.”
He said the U.S. hopes that delivering aid via the Catholic Church will be part of a new and broader push to deliver assistance directly to the Cuban people.
“Ultimately, the regime has to make a choice," Lewin said. “Step down or better provide towards people.”
Lewin added that “if there was no regime,” the U.S. would provide “billions and billions of dollars” in assistance, as well as investment and development: “That’s what lies on the other side of the regime for the Cuban people.”
The announcement riled Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez.
“The U.S. government is exploiting what appears to be a humanitarian gesture for opportunistic and politically manipulative purposes,” he said in a statement. “As a matter of principle, Cuba does not oppose assistance from governments or organizations, provided it benefits the people and the needs of those affected are not used for political gain under the guise of humanitarian aid.”
Coto contributed from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Military members pay their last respects to Cuban officers who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, at the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces where the urns containing the remains are displayed during a ceremony in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A motorcade transports urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, through Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Soldiers carry urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, at the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (Adalberto Roque /Pool Photo via AP)
A motorcade transports urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, through Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
A motorcade transports urns containing the remains of Cuban officers, who were killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, through Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
People line the streets of Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, to watch the motorcade carrying urns containing the remains of Cuban officers killed during the U.S. operation in Venezuela that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Workers fly the Cuban flag at half-staff at the Anti-Imperialist Tribune near the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in memory of Cubans who died two days before in Caracas, Venezuela during the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by U.S. forces. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
