In the first ever Stratagems episode, we will deconstruct one of the most iconic American retailers of the past 150 years. However, this is not the big box Sears you may know. This is the mail order catalog Sears, before it ever opened a single retail store. This is the Sears that reshaped America during the early 19th century and was led by its iconic namesake founder: Richard Sears.

This episode will tell the story of how Richard founded Sears and how the organization grew to hundreds of million of dollars in revenue (billions today) by relying primarily on a single advertising channel: the Sears catalog.

However, a great strategy doesn’t last forever and we’ll be reminded of this lesson by the time we get to the end of the episode.

Episode Chapters:

(03:17) Richard Sears and the $165k gold watches

(18:21) Farmers are God's chosen people

(29:40) Railroads as the new basis for civilization

(42:48) Roebuck & the failed retirements

(53:29) The consumer's guide to everything

(01:27:48) Richard was born, he lived, he died, in an age of schemes

(01:54:20) The golden age of mail order

(02:20:00) Conclusion

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* Background music is called "Adding the Sun" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) / Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

Episode 1