Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about history's most interesting dead people. In each episode, Alex and Kelly dive into the life of a famous person that you have heard of, but probably don't know much about. Our stories are about actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, musicians, inventors, explorers and more! We also cover things that used to be popular but have fallen out of favor. Things like pet rocks, drive in theaters, Jolt Cola, and many other trends of yesterday make up our "dead ends". But whether we are talking about interesting historical figures or past trends, the show is funny, light-hearted, entertaining, informative and educational. You will definitely learn something new and probably have some laughs along the way. Everyone will eventually move to Dirt Nap City, so why not go ahead and meet the neighbors?
If you love hearing stories from Dirt Nap City, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Here's the link: https://www.patreon.com/DirtNapCityPodcast
If you have comments about the show or suggestions on who we should cover, please email us at not@dirtnapcity.com - we really appreciate you listening!
Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
The Sears Catalog - Home Shopping Before The Internet
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Step back in time to an era when a massive, dog-eared book was the most important delivery of the year. This episode explores the incredible history of the Sears, Roebuck and Co. Catalog, an American institution that was the original "Everything Store," years before Amazon.
From its humble beginnings selling watches in 1888, the Sears Catalog exploded into a colossal volume, serving as the central marketplace for millions of rural Americans. For those far from city stores, this catalog was a window to the world and a lifeline. Just flip through its pages and you could order virtually anything: sparkling jewelry, the latest fashions, essential farm equipment, reliable tools like Craftsman, and even live animals like poultry.
But the most audacious product of all? Houses! Between 1908 and 1940, Sears sold over 70,000 kit homes, shipping 30,000 pre-cut pieces of lumber, nails, and instructions in a single boxcar. Sears didn't just sell goods; it built communities, offering mail-order convenience and satisfaction guarantees that were decades ahead of their time. They pioneered the business model of direct-to-consumer sales, essentially creating the first great home-shopping network.
Sears perfected the art of home shopping and had the infrastructure—a massive supply chain, trusted brands, and a loyal customer base—to dominate the 21st century. Yet, when the Internet arrived, Sears failed to capitalize on its own pioneering legacy.
We’ll dissect the missteps that led to the retailer's decline. While they had the foundational concept of ordering from home and centralized distribution, internal mismanagement, a failure to invest in a unified digital strategy, and a slow, cautious approach to e-commerce allowed agile rivals like Amazon to replicate and vastly improve their model. The very company that invented mail-order convenience let the future of home ordering pass it by.
Join us as we mourn the loss of the Sears Catalog, a retail giant that once held the dreams of a nation in its pages and became a powerful cautionary tale about the perils of failing to adapt.
Drop us a quick text and we’ll reply in the next episode!
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
Subscribe and listen to learn about people you've heard of, but don't know much about.
Someday we'll all live in Dirt Nap City, so you should probably go ahead and meet the neighbors!
Hey, Kelly. You want to do a dead end? What is that? We're doing that again. Well, a dead end, for those of you who aren't familiar with dead ends, that's where instead of we take a break, and instead of talking about people who don't exist anymore, we talk about items, philosophies, animals, products, companies, those types of things that we miss, that don't exist anymore, that used to be a big part of our lives, and either don't exist anymore or just kind of are on the periphery now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01They're they're uh they're gone but not forgotten. Yeah, so if I told you that all of a sudden there was a point, there was a point in time um that all of a sudden, instead of people going to stores, they could sit at home and from the comfort of their own homes order something. You might think that I would be talking about the internet in the late 90s, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But actually a hundred years earlier, the same kind of revolution happened.
SPEAKER_02Really?
SPEAKER_01With the Sears catalog. Ah, I thought you might be going there. No, the Sears catalog for me is something that I'm kind of obsessed about. Because Sears really, like they were the internet before the internet, and then as soon as the internet came out of the thing, they stopped meaning the internet. They they kind of went under and didn't harness the think about this. They had information, buying information on just about every household in the United States for a hundred years, right? And then the minute that they needed that, they lost it, they dropped it, they they dropped the ball.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they did.
SPEAKER_01That has been one of the biggest mysteries to me in business history, and it's kind of fascinating me for a long time. Um, so let's talk about the Sears catalog a little bit. The Sears catalog actually became came before the Sears stores. Really? The Sears stores only came as a response to like, let's do a brick and mortar version of the catalog. Did they call it brick and mortar back then, or was it just called a store?
SPEAKER_02Everything was brick and mortar back then, so they probably didn't. That's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_01It's like it's like in China, they don't call it Chinese food, they just call it food. Right. No, Sears Roebuck and Company started in 1893 and sold watches and jewelry through mail order catalogs for mostly rural customers that couldn't get out to. I mean, think about it. If you lived in the country, that's an all-day event going to the big city to buy yourself a watch or something like that. But you still need to know what time it is, right?
SPEAKER_02I mean, do you do you? Is the rooster crowing when it should be? Are the crops going in when they should be?
SPEAKER_01Yes, you do. So these books were just like these little booklets that sold jewelry and watches, and they would go it. You'd get it in your mailbox if you lived in the country, and this would be if you don't have access to the big city stores like um like Macy's or Montgomery Wards. Yeah, I don't know what companies were around in 1893. Woolworths, but that's what they would do, and it was really successful. Like the people out in the country were really buying this stuff, and they opened their first retail store in 1925, so they were already around like almost 30 years.
SPEAKER_02Wow, as a mail order company before they before they had a brick and mortar store.
SPEAKER_01Wow, okay, and they opened in Chicago, and they started building more stores after that, but the catalog was the big thing for decades. The catalog was the big thing, and you could order everything in the Sears catalog. It was like Home Depot plus Amazon plus eBay plus um you know uh farm and tractor supplies. I mean, think about it, it was for it was more for rural people. So you could buy farm equipment, yeah. You could even buy homes. Did you know that? You could buy homes.
SPEAKER_02I I've heard of that, like a kit. They would they would deliver a kit to you and you could build it, which you could still do today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, do you know how the kit works?
SPEAKER_02Uh you get some Amish guys, they bring it to you on a wagon, and then they put the barn up for you.
SPEAKER_01Nope.
unknownNo?
SPEAKER_02How does it work?
SPEAKER_01It was called the Magnolia Kit. And it's like in the 1920s, it would cost like five or six thousand dollars. And it would come in usually by um train would deliver crates, like 30 crates of lumber. And the lumber would have numbers on it, and they would send you the blueprint, and you'd get you wouldn't do it yourself, you'd get like some construction guys, and it was it was just like uh you know, uh Lincoln logs kind of thing where you would just by number you would put up the house. Sometimes they even had like wait, do that hand motion again.
SPEAKER_02Is that is that the international symbol for putting up house? Why not? Why not? That would be the homage thing.
SPEAKER_01This isn't video.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yes, but it was pretty funny. I wish people could have seen that. You would put up the house. Isn't that how you put up a house like this? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You've obviously built a lot of houses, yeah, for sure. Um no, don't you think that's cool that that they would have numbers on all the wood, and you would just put it like putting together an IKEA cabinet, except for it'd be your whole damn house.
SPEAKER_02Pro probably easier than an IKEA cabinet, honestly. Right? Seriously, you know, you know what do you do with that extra couple of pieces left over? Is it gonna collapse on you, or did they send extra pieces?
SPEAKER_01Um I mean, some of these houses were like 2,900 square feet with 10 rooms. It wasn't like you're putting up a trailer. I mean, these would be substantial. They even offered a schoolhouse, a brick schoolhouse that you could buy for $11,500. I don't know if anyone actually bought it, but for $11,500, you could build a brick school house.
SPEAKER_02Which this was in the early 1900s? I mean 1920s.
SPEAKER_01That's that's the schoolhouse last million dollars today, probably. 1908. Actually, 1908. Look that up. How much was eleven thousand five hundred dollars in nineteen oh eight? What would that be today?
SPEAKER_02That is four hundred and eighteen thousand.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You so the nails, the screws, and all the hardware came with it. They would include the windows and the doors, factory made, ready to install. They would ship the shingles or the the tiles for the roof. They would include the trim for the the like the floors and the the crown molding and the cabinetry. Sometimes they would include the plumbing fixtures, sometimes they would include paint and linoleum. Sears wanted it to be a one hot one-stop shop for buying a home. Now, I don't know if a lot of people bought homes this way. I really don't think they did, but I think by having that as an option, it really told the buyers that you don't have to go anywhere else. We have literally everything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So I was interested, I was interested in learning about like kind of through the decade what the Sears catalog was selling. Um, so I I I I did a little dive here, and you know, in the 1910s, they were mostly selling like farm equipment, um, and and that kind of thing. You could buy yourself, you know, machinery and wagons and fences and beekeeper stuff, and you know, mostly mostly for farms. You could also though buy sewing machines. Oh, yeah. Um, you need the Singer sewing machine customer. Um I see an ad here for a pretz pretzeloff hardware sewing machines. I don't know about Singer. Um in the 1920s is when they uh launched Kenmore.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's appliances and craftsman. Oh, tools.
SPEAKER_01Right. So like you could buy like a range, like a stove for like 38 bucks. You could buy a refrigerator for 28 dollars. Wow. Um, a washer and dryer combination for 445 dollars. Um, you could buy wrenches, craftsman wrenches for about um well, depending on the size, you could buy an eight-inch wrench for a dollar thirty-five. That's the craftsman. And that stuff still exists, Kenmore and Craftsman, right? Yeah, I think that's really the biggest part of Sears now, is Kenmore and Craftsman.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because I don't know if if if there was ever Sears branded stuff, like like if there was stuff, it was it they either sold other people's stuff. I remember the Sears catalog had a toy section, it had a it had a toy um section, and a lot of times around Christmas time, my sister and I would open it up and circle things that we were after.
SPEAKER_01I was just gonna say, you sit down, I was doing the same thing in the mid-70s. You'd sit down with your pen and you'd circle all the stuff you wanted. And then there was a number, and then your grandmother would call that number, uh, the phone number, and then she would give like a 10-digit code and say, I want this, and they'd they'd I mean it was very much like a manual version of the internet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I wonder if they paid COD. Probably did. Now, I'm wondering on the other end what was going on when they were writing these big numbers out, then right.
SPEAKER_02You get it wrong by one digit, and instead of a washer and dryer, you end up with uh a baby doll.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or a house, or a house, yeah, a schoolhouse. Now, in the 1930s, they they kept with the kit homes, um, but then appliances started being more common. Refrigerators, radios. Um, you could get a radio with a self-tuning dial um for uh $64. AC electric. Um, remember that AC electric? You could uh I wonder what a self-tuning dial is. Probably where like it would my guess is if you remember how you'd hit that static, you know, yeah. And then it would get better. My guess is it would land on like kind of the ideal frequency.
SPEAKER_02But those were actually those radios, I believe, were actually physical wires or strings that were moving, and they were rotating a crystal or something, weren't they? Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, these dials are huge. They look like clock dials. Yeah, yeah. Um, and then they would have instead of the like they would have the no it looked like a clock, and instead of the like it's AM radio, it would say like 550, 600, 650, but then also there were stickers you could put with the name of the radio station right next to it. Right. 101 KLOL. Yeah, well, this was AM, but Houston's rock. Um 590 KTRK. Yeah, sure. Why not? All that stuff. Um, in the 1940s, then um they were selling baby chicks. You can buy baby chicks for backyard farming.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna ask you if you could buy animals on on the Sears catalog. It sounds like you could. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01No, so what do you think about the idea of backyard farming?
SPEAKER_02So, so well, I think you know I grew up having a few chickens, and our first one started out as a baby chick. It was an Easter baby chick, and I don't think we got it at the I don't I don't know where my parents got it, but maybe they got it from the Sears catalog. I don't know, but it showed up, and you know what they did to baby chickens back then for Easter? They would dye them. So you might get a little chicken? You might get so that so the baby chicks had a fluffy little coat of this, it were they weren't really feathers yet, it was just kind of this down fluff kind of stuff. They would, I don't know if they sprayed it or dipped them into something, but you could get them blue or pink or red.
SPEAKER_01The actual chicks, yeah, instead of being yellow, they would be different colors. Yes, yes. That's probably why we digest the eggs today, right?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. I this is a weird thing that it's just coming back to me, but I wonder if Sears offered them in different colors. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01By the 1950s, they were started selling toys, and then they started the Christmas catalog was called the Wish Book. Oh, yeah, yeah. I love that. That's so Sears catalog were a year-round, but that Christmas one that you're remembering was called the Wish Book. The wish book. And the big toy in the 1950s, do you know what it was?
SPEAKER_02Hula hoop. Uh uh uh uh wait, a string-lined airplane, like that you went around in circles and it was on a string.
SPEAKER_01No, it was a specific, specific toy. Um that I'm sure you played with later. The 1950s. Legos? No, it was G.I. Joe. G. You know, I never had a GI Joe. I had a I had a really cool GI Joe in the 70s that had like uh really cool hair.
SPEAKER_02That was was it was it hair that was uh like a um like thread, you know, like a cloth kind of hair, or was it just painted on hair?
SPEAKER_01No, it was not painted on. It was not painted on. Okay. It was like that's why I mentioned it. It was like it was like hair, hair. I mean, it wasn't hair, it wasn't long hair. It was like um G.I.
SPEAKER_02Joe was not a hippie. GI Joe was not a dirty long-haired hippie, so don't be even say it talking about that.
SPEAKER_01Wasn't really a crew cut though either. It was kind of like um like Tom Selleck? No, it was kind of like Mr. T. Like a tight, like a tight afro. Like nothing. No, more like a tight afro.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so so uh Billy D. Williams kind of look. Um, but G.I. Joe um was big in the 50s. I never had a G.I. Joe. Did you have a Stretch Armstrong? Of course, yeah. See, here's the thing with those. I don't know why. I considered G.I. Joe, Stretch Armstrong, Ken. I thought they were girls' toys because they were dolls, and but action figures, like like Star Wars action figures, which were smaller, I thought were okay for boys, but I I really had this weird sense of yeah, I wasn't I would had a yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, I had a um, I guess um, I I didn't have any hangups like that, you know. You had a baby alive. I just played with what I played with, and I didn't it didn't bother me. I wasn't in I was comfortable enough in my dingling. You wanted to play with your dingling. I um in the 1960s, they started selling um more lifestyle things, outdoor equipment. Also, the toys um were like um um like car sets, you know, like uh kind of like hot wheel type of things with like parking garages. Then they started selling the AMFM radio turn like turntable with the uh oh yeah consoles, you know. 180 bucks for that console. Wow, that's a lot for back then. Um, in the 70s, they started going with the plaid pants and the wide leg, that whole style thing. Every now and then I'll send you an ad, I'll text you an ad for Sears back in the day. Brady Bunch style. Oh, yeah, that's great. Coordinates. Yeah, yeah, you remember coordinates? No, was that a was that a brand? No, well, I think it might have been, but coordinates are just like this goes with this. You know, remember Garanimals when we were kids? Oh, well, it's not coordinates, it coordinates. But they were called coordinates.
SPEAKER_02They were it was a oh I well, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Where this this pant goes with this shirt, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I never subscribed to that. I I usually I close my eyes and pick randomly.
SPEAKER_01It does, that's for sure. VCRs started popping up in the 70s. VCRs were not cheap. VCRs, a tabletop VCR, uh, I have an ad here for eight hundred and eighty-five dollars for a in the 70s. Yeah, that's a lot.
SPEAKER_02I remember I remember a couple of friends who had VCRs early on. Um, and yeah, it was kind of wild to be able to put in a tape and watch something that that you didn't have to watch on air, you know. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it's wild because the VCR has the the VHF and UHF buttons, you know, and you stuffed like tune that stuff in the early versions of VCRs, pre-cable TV, and and I mean 900 bucks for VCR. Yeah, yeah. Here's something for a three-way VCR, but I don't know what three I guess it's a player and a recorder and a tuner.
SPEAKER_02Oh, so so maybe you could record shows because you could use it as a tuner to tune into a TV station and then record the show using it.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Right, you would watch one and record one. That was that whole concept back then.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, by the 1980s, they were coming out with the it was still about 800 bucks for like a Betamax. Um, they would have portable VCRs. I see a picture here of a guy with one like around his uh um uh shoulder, got a strap on it, carrying it. I think that was like for recording, like you could hook it up to a camcorder. Yep, yep. Um yeah, um, but this idea of watching whatever you want, whenever you want, I mean, people don't realize today that that was not a given. No. In the 1990s, they were selling cell phones that were lightweight, that were only two pounds. Um, and the last big Sears catalog book was published in uh January of 1993. Really? They they stopped after that right before the internet. Wow, isn't that crazy? In 1984, Sears revenues were $38 billion. Um, about 20% of that was from the catalog. Um just you know, really doing well. Um, but man, the internet was just they didn't they were so slow to adopt it. Um, they didn't come up with a website until 1998. Wow, yeah. That was when AOL was already going out of business. Five years after the catalog stopped, they decided, hey, we should start from scratch and do a website. Like that's just my so my um what I imagine is that the people that were in charge at Sears were too old to understand what was happening in the early 90s and didn't see it coming, yeah, or thought that it was gonna be a fad or whatever. They were really focused in the 1980s and 90s, they were focused on physical expansion, real estate. They bought Kmart, they bought or they merged with Kmart, they bought Allstate Insurance Company, they were really getting into the appliance game, they were taking on you know Maytag and and and those kind of companies, and that's where their focus was. They thought that people still wanted the in-store or the catalog experience. They thought that people wouldn't want to put their their credit card information into a website, and and that's all true.
SPEAKER_02There are people that don't.
SPEAKER_01That's all true, but that tells you that tells you a lot about those people is that the people that were making the decisions were the same, they didn't have any people that could see like were futurists, right? That could see what the internet could be, or even imagine what the internet could be. They just had a room full of naysayers. And that just tells you why you always need to have younger people and diverse group of people making decisions. Because if it's just a bunch of old white guys, which I'm sure it was in the 1980s, they got caught napping, man. Um, by the time they were out there with a website in 1998, Amazon had already started, eBay had already started, even Walmart.com was already like uh started. Um when they did start, it was a terrible website. It would people the orders were were coming slow, slow. I mean, if there's anybody that should have had fulfillment, logistics, all that down, it should have been Sears, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they were shipping houses in the early 1900s. Why couldn't they ship 100 years later?
SPEAKER_01They just like lost their way. Yeah. I just think that's amazing.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, we talked about the toy section, we talked about the houses. Uh, you know, there's one section of the Sears catalog that we should probably give a shout out to. Do you know where I'm going with this? I do. I do. The ladies' underwear section.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. What do you want to say about that, Kelly?
SPEAKER_02Um, you know, I learned a lot. Just say that. The Sears catalog got Kelly through puberty.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, that's pretty awesome. They had in 1902, they sold a thing called the Heidelberg Electric Belt. And it was supposed to cure all sorts of male ailments from nervous disorders to impotence. And it was a vibrating belt that you strapped along around your waist, and it was supposed to cure you.
SPEAKER_02It's crazy, right? The Heidelberg, I I well, I mean, if it if it prom if it does what it promised, that sounds pretty good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they also they all like all kinds of health belts back then for people with weak nerves, you know. That vibrated a lot of vibration going on. Remember, even they had the like at gyms, you could go and you're gonna get it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, you could get on that big thing with the strap and put it around your waist and it was thing, yeah. There was also there was also a thing you could get into that had light bulbs all around you that were supposed to be good for your skin or something.
SPEAKER_01They also sold the first um hearing aids that were called ear trumpets, and they were just they were just like Yeah, it was a big round-shaped thing, kind of like those uh kind of like on a Victrola. Right, it was exactly just a cone. Right, yeah, yeah. You're right, you could buy animals, you could buy baby chicks, puppies, rabbits, mink, and rabbits both for meat and for pets. Right, right. You could buy weapons from the Sears catalog. They sold guns, rifles, ammunition, swords, sabers, crossbows, ninja stars, knuckle duster. What's a knuckle duster? Is that like brass knuckles?
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_01What's a knuckle duster? A knuckle duster, yeah, brack brass knuckle. I've never heard of a knuckle duster.
SPEAKER_02That is a knuckle. Well, that definitely sounds like uh um it just came from brass knuckles.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like a um knuckle dragger, right? Isn't that what they call it?
SPEAKER_02Like a metal bar outfitted over the knuckles, often with holes forefingers for inflicting injury by a blow with the fist.
SPEAKER_01Brass knuckles. Yeah. They sold false teeth kits. Uh this this is um disturbing maternity corsets? That sounds awful. Um yeah, so you can buy it all, man. With the Sears catalog, and now you can't I wonder if you can I bet you can buy some old Sears catalogs, though, on eBay. Probably buy them on eBay, yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Full circle.
SPEAKER_01So I don't know. I I get worked up every time I think about the missed opportunity that Sears had in the 1990s. They just dropped the ball, man. So let that be a warning to everybody who brushes off things like AI, um podcasts, podcasting. I mean, you know, some of the stuff does turn out to be a fad like Pat Rock's, but um a lot of times you should listen. Should always listen. That's a good policy.
SPEAKER_00Listen to DirtNet Viddy and read this, read the series cataloging pages in my own shed, dreams of riches danced in my head for the number set on the dead, missed the women on your side from the line the summer space. Imagine drones with sears flare flying bloomers through the air, but now it's quiet, no one cares The kingdom lost beyond repair, and it's a lot of people, and it's a lot of people.
