Vintage Simpsons-Sears LTD Steam Iron

THE IRON IS UNTESTED.
Sears, Roebuck and Company, commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in 1892, and reincorporated by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald in 1906. Formerly based at the Sears Tower in Chicago and currently headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, the operation began as a mail ordering catalog company and began opening retail locations in 1925. The first location was in Chicago, Illinois. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box chain Kmart, which formed Sears Holdings upon completion of the merger.

Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States; Walmart and Kmart surpassed Sears in sales in 1990. In 2018, Sears was the 31st-largest retailer in the United States. After several years of declining sales, Sears' parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. Sears announced on January 16, 2019 that it had won it's bankruptcy auction and would shrink and remain open with 425 stores, including 223 Sears stores. Nevertheless, the trend of Sears and Kmart store closures continues, with only 95 stores, including 61 Sears stores, expected to remain open after a wave of store closures announced in July 2020. By February 2021, only 29 stores were operational.

In 1952, General Robert E. Wood, the Chairman of U.S. retailer Sears, Roebuck and Company, sent a letter to Edgar G. Burton, President of the Robert Simpson Company of Toronto, proposing a partnership between their two companies in order to serve the Canadian market. The deal to create Simpsons-Sears Limited, a Canadian catalogue and department store chain separate from the Simpsons chain, was signed on September 18, 1952, and the terms were 50-50. Each company put up $20 million and had equal representation on the new company's Board of Directors. The new company was to have two main objectives. The first was to expand Simpsons' existing mail-order business, which was sold to the new company. The second goal was to build a string of stores modelled on Sears, Roebuck's format right across the country.

The agreement also contained a provision that would prove to be a major bone of contention in the coming years. Under its terms, Simpsons-Sears could not open a retail store within 25 miles of Simpson's existing stores in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Regina, and London. In return, Simpson's promised not to build any stores outside of those five cities. Simpsons-Sears mail-order business, however, was free to operate anywhere in Canada, and so was the new Simpsons-Sears Acceptance Company, the credit arm of the operation.

The business operations of Simpsons-Sears began when the first Simpsons-Sears Spring/Summer Catalogue rolled off the presses of Photo-Engravers and Electrotypers, Ltd. and were delivered to 300,000 Canadian homes in early 1953.

On Thursday, September 17, 1953, the first Simpsons-Sears retail store opened in Stratford, Ontario at 9:15am. The second Simpsons-Sears store opened in Kamloops, B.C., in December of that year.

In the 1960s, Simpson's was among the first 10 Canadian companies to start using computers in all their locations, and programming was done in Toronto and Montreal by accounting clerks, many of whom were women. Enormous rooms with special ventilation were built to house IBM punch card mainframe machines in those two locations.

In 1972, Simpsons and Simpsons-Sears agreed to end the 25-mile restriction and permit Simpsons and Simpsons-Sears stores anywhere. The following year, when Simpsons-Sears opened a store in the city of Mississauga, approximately 30 km (19 mi) west of Toronto, the company decided to use the Sears name alone in order to prevent confusion with Simpsons stores operating in Toronto.

***Please look at the attached photos for size and condition. Photos are part of the description representing the condition report and can be used for authentication prior to the sale date. We urge bidder's to view all attached photos in detail. All items are sold "AS IS". Thank you for your interest and good luck bidding.

Notes: Please inspect all photos carefully before bidding. Thank you for your interest and good luck bidding.

18%

Vincenza Marsullo | (860) 997-3332 | fil14fy@gmail.com

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Torrington, CT 06790

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Sunday, 7/25, 11:00 am to 4:00 pm

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