Montgomery Ward
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Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a
mail-order Mail order is the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote methods such as: * Sending an order form in the mail * Placing an order by telephone call ...
business and later a
department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store under one roof, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store mad ...
chain that operated between 1872 and 2001; its common nickname was "Monkey Wards". The current Montgomery Ward Inc. is an
online shopping Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of th ...
and mail-order catalog retailer that started several years after the original Montgomery Ward shut down.


Original Montgomery Ward (1872–2001)


Company origins

Aaron Montgomery Ward Aaron Montgomery Ward (February 17, 1843 – December 7, 1913) was an American entrepreneur based in Chicago who made his fortune through the use of mail order for retail sales of general merchandise to rural customers. In 1872 he founded Montg ...
started his business in Chicago; conflicting reports place his first office either in a single room at 825 North Clark Street or in a loft above a livery stable on Kinzie Street, between Rush and State Streets. In 1883, the company's catalog had grown to 240 pages and 10,000 items. In 1896, Ward encountered its first serious competition in the mail order business, when
Richard Warren Sears Richard Warren Sears (December 7, 1863 – September 28, 1914) was an American businessman who co-founded the department store Sears, Roebuck and Company with his partner Alvah Curtis Roebuck. Early life Sears was born in Stewartville, Minnes ...
introduced his first general catalog. In 1900, Ward had total sales of $8.7 million, compared to $10 million for
Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...
, and both companies vied for dominance during much of the 20th century. By 1904, Ward had expanded such that it mailed three million catalogs, weighing each, to customers. In 1908, the company opened a building stretching along nearly one-quarter mile of the
Chicago River The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of that runs through the city of Chicago, including its center (the Chicago Loop). The river is one of the reasons for Chicago's geographic importance: the related Chic ...
, north of downtown Chicago. The building, known as the Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalog House, served as the company headquarters until 1974, when the offices moved across the street to a new tower designed by
Minoru Yamasaki was an American architect, best known for designing the original World Trade Center in New York City and several other large-scale projects. Yamasaki was one of the most prominent architects of the 20th century. He and fellow architect Edward ...
. The catalog house was declared a
National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...
in 1978 and a Chicago historic landmark in May 2000. In the decades before 1930, Montgomery Ward built a network of large distribution centers across the country in
Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...
,
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,
Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more t ...
,
Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...
, Portland, and St. Paul. In most cases, these reinforced concrete structures were the largest industrial structures in their respective locations. The Baltimore Montgomery Ward Warehouse and Retail Store was added to the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 2000.


Expansion into retail outlets

In 1926, the company broke with its mail-order-only tradition when it opened its first retail outlet store in Plymouth, Indiana. It continued to operate its catalog business while pursuing an aggressive campaign to build retail outlets in the late 1920s. In 1928, two years after opening its first outlet, it had opened 244 stores. By 1929, it had more than doubled its number of outlets to 531. Its flagship retail store in Chicago was located on Michigan Avenue between Madison and Washington streets. In 1930, the company declined a merger offer from rival chain Sears. Losing money during the
Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
, Ward alarmed its major investors, including J. P. Morgan, Jr. In 1931, Morgan hired a new president, Sewell Avery, who cut staff levels and stores, changed lines, hired store rather than catalog managers, and refurbished stores. These actions allowed the company to become profitable before the end of the 1930s. Ward was very successful in its retail business. "Green awning" stores dotted hundreds of small towns across the country. Larger stores were built in the major cities. By the end of the 1930s, Montgomery Ward had become the country's largest retailer, and Sewell Avery became the company's chief executive officer.


Government seizure

In April 1944, four months into a nationwide strike by the company's 12,000 workers, U.S. Army troops seized the company's Chicago offices. The action was ordered due to Avery's refusal to settle the strike as requested by the
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...
administration, concerned about the adverse effect on the delivery of goods in wartime. Avery had refused to comply with a War Labor Board order to recognize the unions and institute the terms of a collective bargaining agreement. Eight months later, with Montgomery Ward continuing to refuse to recognize the unions, President Roosevelt issued an
executive order In the United States, an executive order is a directive by the president of the United States that manages operations of the federal government. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources. Article Two of the ...
seizing all of Montgomery Ward's property nationwide, citing the War Labor Disputes Act as well as his power under the Constitution as commander-in-chief. In 1945, President
Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. As the 34th vice president in 1945, he assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt that year. Subsequen ...
ended the seizure and the
Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
dismissed the pending appeal as moot.


Post War

After World War II, Sewell Avery believed the country would fall back into a recession or even a depression. He decided to not open any new stores, and did not even permit expenditure for paint to freshen the existing stores. His plan was to bank profits to preserve liquidity when the recession or depression he anticipated hit, and then buy up his retail competition. Without new stores or any investment back into the business, Montgomery Ward declined in sales volume compared to Sears. Many have blamed the conservative decisions of Avery, who seemed not to understand the postwar years' changing economy. As new shopping centers were built after the war, Sears was perceived to have better locations than Ward. Nonetheless, for many years Ward was still the nation's third-largest department store chain. In 1955, investor Louis Wolfson waged a high-profile
proxy fight A proxy fight, proxy contest or proxy battle is an unfriendly contest for control over an organization. The event usually occurs when a corporation's stockholders develop opposition to some aspect of the corporate governance, often focusing on dir ...
to obtain control of the board of Montgomery Ward. The new board forced the resignation of Avery. This fight led to a state court decision that
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
corporations were not entitled to stagger elections of board members." In 1961, company president John Barr hired Robert Elton Brooker to lead Montgomery Ward as president in its turnaround. Brooker brought with him a number of key new management people, including Edward Donnell, former manager of Sears' Los Angeles stores. The new management team achieved the turnaround reducing the number of suppliers from 15,000 to 7,000 and the number of brands being carried dropped from 168 to 16. Ward's private brands were given 95 percent of the volume compared with 40 percent in 1960. The results of these changes were lower handling costs and higher quality standards. Buying was centralized but store operations were decentralized, under a new territory system modeled after Sears. In 1966, Ed Donnell was named company president. Brooker continued as chairman and chief executive officer until 1976. In 1968, Brooker helped engineer a friendly merger with
Container Corporation of America Container Corporation of America (CCA) was founded in 1926 and manufactured corrugated boxes. In 1968 CCA merged with Montgomery Ward & Company, Inc., becoming MARCOR. MARCOR maintained separate management for the operations of each company, but ...
, the new parent company being named MARCOR. Despite the merger, the company continued to struggle into the 1970s. In 1973, its 102nd year in business, it purchased a small
discount store Discount stores offer a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down costs. Types (Uni ...
chain, the
Miami Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...
-based Jefferson Stores, renaming these locations Jefferson Ward.
Mobil Mobil Oil Corporation, now known as just Mobil, is a petroleum brand owned and operated by American oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil, formerly known as Exxon, which took its current name after history of ExxonMobil#merger, it and Mobil merge ...
, flush with cash from the recent rise in oil prices and looking to diversify, bought a controlling share of MARCOR in 1974, only to acquire the company outright in 1976. The company was an early entrant in the
home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...
market with the CyberVision 2001 in 1978, developed by the Authorship Resource, Inc., of Franklin, Ohio, and primarily manufactured by United Chem-Con. However, mounting competition from other computer companies as well as manufacturing problems compelled the three companies to pull the plug on the CyberVision product by the early 1980s. By 1980, Mobil realized that the Montgomery Ward stores were doing poorly in comparison to the Jefferson stores, and decided that high quality discount units, along the lines of Dayton Hudson Company's Target stores, would be the retailer's future. Within 18 months, management quintupled the size of the operation, now called Jefferson Ward, to more than 40 units in the
Delaware Valley The Philadelphia metropolitan area, also known as Greater Philadelphia and informally called the Delaware Valley, the Philadelphia tri-state area, and locally and colloquially Philly–Jersey–Delaware, is a major metropolitan area in the Nor ...
and Richmond metropolitan areas, and planned to convert one-third of Montgomery Ward's existing stores to the Jefferson Ward model. The burden of servicing the new stores fell to the tiny Jefferson staff, who were overwhelmed by the increased store count, had no experience in dealing with some of the product lines they now carried, and were unfamiliar with buying for northern markets. Almost immediately, Jefferson had turned from a small moneymaker into a large drain on profits. The company sold the chain's 18-store northern division to Bradlees, a division of Stop & Shop, in 1985. The remaining stores closed. In 1985, the company closed its catalog business after 113 years and began an aggressive policy of renovating its remaining stores. It restructured many of the store layouts in the downtown areas of larger cities and affluent neighborhoods into
boutique A () is a retail shop that deals in high end fashionable clothing or accessories. The word is French for "shop", which derives ultimately from the Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in anc ...
-like specialty stores, as these were drawing business from traditional department stores. In 1986, fellow MARCOR firm, Container Corporation of America, was divested by Mobil. This effectively dissolved the MARCOR division and left Montgomery Ward as a direct subsidiary of Mobil. Analysts saw the CCA sale as an effort to go back on their diversification efforts, as the debts incurred since MARCOR’s acquisition began to weigh the oil giant down, and many predicted Montgomery Ward was next to be sold. These theories were confirmed in January 1987, when Mobil stated they would be looking into spinning off the company in the near future. In March 1988, the company management undertook a successful $3.8 billion (~$ in )
leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is the acquisition of a company using a significant proportion of borrowed money (Leverage (finance), leverage) to fund the acquisition with the remainder of the purchase price funded with private equity. The assets of t ...
, making Montgomery Ward a privately held company. File:Montgomery Ward Bluefield, WV.jpg, A Montgomery Ward Building in
Bluefield, West Virginia Bluefield is a city in Mercer County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 9,658 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Bluefield micropolitan area extending into Virginia, which had a populatio ...
File:Abandoned Montgomery Ward.jpg, A vacant Montgomery Ward store, Regency Mall,
Augusta, Georgia Augusta is a city on the central eastern border of the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. The city lies directly across the Savannah River from North Augusta, South Carolina at the head of its navigable portion. Augusta, the third mos ...
File:Vacant Montgomery Ward Huntington Beach.JPG, A former Montgomery Ward store, Huntington Center,
Huntington Beach, California Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County, California, United States. The city was originally called Pacific City, but it was changed in 1903 to be named after American businessman Henry E. Huntington. The population was 198,711 as of ...
, demolished in 2010 File:Electric Ave Logo - Montgomery Wards.JPG, An "Electric Avenue" logo on a closed store in Panorama City, California, 2010


Bankruptcy, restructuring, and liquidation

By the 1990s even its rivals began to lose ground to low-price competition from the likes of Target and
Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...
, which eroded even more of Montgomery Ward's traditional customer base. In 1997, it filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...
, emerging from protection by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois in August 1999 as a wholly owned subsidiary of
GE Capital GE Capital was the financial services division of General Electric. Its various units were sold between 2013 and 2021, including the notable spin-off of the North American consumer finance division as Synchrony Financial. Ultimately, only one div ...
, which was by then its largest shareholder. As part of a last-ditch effort to remain competitive, the company closed over 100 retail locations in 30 U.S. states, abandoned the specialty store strategy, rebranded the chain as simply ''Wards'', and spent millions of dollars to renovate its remaining outlets to be flashier and more consumer-friendly. GE Capital reneged on promises of further financial support of Montgomery Ward's restructuring plans. On December 28, 2000, after lower-than-expected sales during the Christmas season, the company announced it would cease operating, close its remaining 250 retail outlets, and lay off its 37,000 employees.


As online retailer

At its height, the original Montgomery Ward was one of the biggest retailers in the United States. After its demise, the familiarity of its brand meant its name, corporate logo, and advertising were considered valuable intangible assets. In 2004, catalog marketer Direct Marketing Services Inc. (DMSI), an Iowa
direct marketing Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a Target market, pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as ''direct response ...
company, purchased much of the
intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...
assets of the former Wards, including the "Montgomery Ward" and "Wards" trademarks, for an undisclosed amount. DMSI applied the brand to a new online and catalog-based retailing operation, with no physical stores, headquartered in
Cedar Rapids, Iowa Cedar Rapids is a city in Linn County, Iowa, United States, and its county seat. The population was 137,710 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Iowa, second-most populous city in Iowa. The city lies o ...
. DMSI then began operating under the Montgomery Ward branding in June 2004, selling many of the same kinds of products as the original company. The new company does not honor its predecessor's obligations, such as gift cards and items sold with a lifetime guarantee. David Milgrom, then president of the DMSI-owned firm, told the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...
, "We're rebuilding the brand, and we want to do it right." Four years later, in July 2008, DMSI announced it was on the auction block, with the sale of its assets scheduled for the following month. On August 5, 2008, the catalog retailer Swiss Colony purchased DMSI. Swiss Colony—which changed its name to Colony Brands Inc. June 1, 2010—kept Montgomery Ward alive and relaunched the Wards website September 10, 2008, with new catalogs mailing in February 2009. A month before the catalog's launch, Swiss Colony President John Baumann told
United Press International United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ce ...
the retailer might also resurrect the original Montgomery Ward's Signature and Powr-Kraft
store brand A private label, also called a private brand or private-label brand, is a brand owned by a company, offered by that company alongside and competing with brands from other businesses. A private-label brand is almost always offered exclusively by th ...
s. Among the new store brands Wards started under Colony was a home and kitchen brand called Chef Tested. By 2020, some Chef Tested and Montgomery Ward–brand home and kitchen items were being sold on
Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...
.


See also

* Montgomery Ward Building (disambiguation) *


References


Further reading

* *


External links

*
Christmas Catalogs and Holiday Wishbooks (Website)
– Dozens of Montgomery Ward Christmas catalogs {{authority control 1872 establishments in Illinois 2001 disestablishments in Illinois Companies based in Chicago Companies based in Iowa Companies based in Wisconsin Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1997 Defunct department stores based in Chicago Defunct online retailers of the United States Defunct retail companies of the United States Former ExxonMobil subsidiaries Manufactured home manufacturers Re-established companies Retail companies based in Illinois Retail companies disestablished in 2001 Retail companies established in 1872 Retail companies established in 2004