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•2 The 100 Greatest Business Ideas of All Time

Add to Sears’ idea the relatively new nation-wide railway system and post of-

fice, and the stage was set for the introduction of mail order. Sears understood the

farmers well and was able to attract them with the right products and advertising

campaigns as well as, of course, keen prices derived from the bulk buying

Add to Sears’ of many products. To watches and jewellery were added shoes, furniture,

idea the china, musical instruments, saddles, firearms, bicycles and many other

relatively new things that filled the catalogue, which by 1895 went to 532 pages.

nation-wide A fast expansion followed with a move to a 40-acre, $5 million mail-

railway system order plant on Chicago’s west side. With more than 3 million square feet

and post office, of floor space, this was the largest business building in the world.

and the stage Suited to mail order was the innovative technique of using a network

was set for the or pyramid of people to distribute the catalogue. It is in the annals of

introduction of company history that in 1905 Sears wrote to the company’s best custom-

mail order. ers in Iowa, asking each of them to distribute catalogues among their friends

and relatives. The original customers sent Sears the names of the people

they had supplied with the catalogue, and received gifts as premiums for their work.

But Sears’ innovation did not stop there. Attention to the market had alerted

him to the opportunity, listening to the customers forced the company to experi-

ment and move into other areas. Mail order, when it got big, was hampered by the

physical difficulty of filling orders and the organisational problem of getting the

right thing to the right person at the right time. The company history includes the

story of the customer around the turn of the century who complained: ‘For heaven’s

sake stop sending me sewing machines. Every time I go to the station I find another

one there. You have shipped me five already.’

Sears executives worked hard on the logistics of mail order. Every order was

given on its arrival a time to be shipped, and managers accepted no excuses for not

making this happen. Products and parts had to be in the appropriate bin in the

assembly room at the assigned time. They travelled to the room by an intricate

system of belts and chutes – perhaps the first automated warehouse.