Sears to State Street

Six Chicago department stores doing an annual business of $155,000,000 in a full-page advertisement last week publicly welcomed a competitor to State Street. That the competitor would undersell them was self-evident, for the competitor was none other than Sears, Roebuck & Co., whose famed mail order catalog is indispensable in farm houses from Maine to New Mexico. But far-sighted storekeepers knew that Sears, Roebuck would bring to Chicago's Loop district many a shopper who had never bought there before, hoped thereby to gain more trade than they would lose.

First Sears store .in the shopping heart of a major city, the new store was Sears's 381st retail market place. Cost of the experiment was not large. For its ancient (1891) Leiter Building the Levi Leiter Estate will get 1 1/2% of Sears's net sales for five years, with a minimum guarantee of $75,000 above taxes after three years. The 20-year lease may be revised after five. Remodeling cost $990,000. Sears hopes soon to be doing a $15,000,000 per year business in store No. 381. Other Loop stores sell from $15,000,000 (The Fair) to $60,000,000 (Marshall Field & Co.).

Like Manhattan's R. H. Macy & Co., Sears will run no charge accounts. Unlike Macy's, it will run installment accounts. Peculiarly Sears departments include a dentist, a barber shop, a pet shop, a tombstone department. Floors are not partitioned off. Each contains 35,000 sq. ft. packed with merchandise.

Modest President Robert Elkington Wood of Sears, Roebuck, as usual, did not attend last week's opening, let the credit go to Manager Chauncey T. Ray. Manager Ray started work on State Street at the age of eleven, as cash boy for Charles Gossards' (now Carson Pirie Scott), later went to Marshall Field. He left in 1930 to become an assistant manager of a Sears, Roebuck store. Last week, at 47, he was back on State Street as manager of a store that may become biggest of all.

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