Finally, in the 50s and 60s the company anticipated the growing importance of suburbs and began moving the majority of stores into what would become suburban malls. Coinciding with the rise of automobiles and urbanization, Sears began opening large department stores in 1925, again placing their product where average American wanted to purchase it. The catalog gave everyday rural Americans access to goods they would be unlikely to be able to afford from their local general store. published a 532-page catalog with an array of merchandise. By 1895, the company, now name Sears Roebuck & Co. In 1886, Richard Sears began selling watches in rural Minnesota, and in the century that followed his company showed impressive skill in adapting to be able to best deliver to its customers. We are not a discounter, nor an avant-garde department store…We reflect the world of Middle America, and all of its desires and concerns and problems and faults.” We are not a store for the whimsical, nor the affluent. The company’s value proposition was to offer a wide range of high quality moderately priced goods to the everyday American consumer, as communicated in an internal motto: “Sears is a family store for middle-class, home-owning America. By 1994 the company hold sold the tower, and as of 2015 the company is averaging yearly losses of over $1 billion. 'When I heard it on the news morning, I felt for them because these are your sisters and brothers working and you think 'oh my goodness.In 1972, when Sears built the world’s tallest skyscraper as its headquarters in Chicago, three out of four Americans visited one of its store locations each year. 'It made me think, if I stay with them how long are they going to be around? How long will I be in a job? 'I noticed through the staff lounge that the morale was going down a bit like it did at the Bay before it picked up and that didn't make me want to stay,' she recalled. She spent a few months working on signage for Sears before moving on to other opportunities.

Riach knows all too well what the employees are going through. After more than 30 years working in retail, Ms. Patricia Riach came into the store to buy some socks for her husband whose birthday is coming up next month. 'The department stores aren't around any more. Was she surprised by the news? 'A little, but just more sad,' she said. But, other than that, when I do, the products are good …'

Now I have to go out of my way to come to Sears. One of the biggest locations was at Yorkdale and I'm in the area. A woman holding a few hangers' worth of clothes who preferred to go by Malina recalled shopping at the Sears at Toronto's Yorkdale Shopping Centre before it was closed in 2014.

Decline of sears