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Sears aims not just at the selective shopper but at people who will buy nearly everything at its stores—and keep on buying practically forever. It is out after more customers like the Don Martins of Houston. For three generations, going back to Sue d'Amico, 75, Don Martin's mother-in-law, the family has bought nearly all its important goods at Sears, from a new roof to a garage-door opener to countless appliances, clothes and Cabbage Patch dolls. Says Lola Martin, Don's wife: "It's always been there, and it will always be there. When we shop at Sears, we say, 'We're going to Sears.' When we go somewhere else, it's just a store."
Such loyalty, bolstered by Sears' more up-to-date image and its merchandising innovations, is producing impressive earnings reports. Sears in the first half of this year earned $570 million, up 21% from the same period last year, on revenues of $17.8 billion. The merchandise group did even better, earning a record $213 million, up 42% from January to June. Those performances came on top of the company's 56% earnings gain, to $1.3 billion, in 1983 over 1982. Sales last year reached nearly $36 billion, more than Du-Pont, General Electric or Gulf, and just behind IBM and Texaco.
When Sears does well, the ripples spread throughout the economy. As merchant to the millions, the company is the grand marshal of the American material parade. Sears sells 37% of America's replacement car batteries, 22% of its paint, 39% of its clothes dryers, almost half of its portable flush toilets. It reaches its customers not only through its more than 800 retail stores but through 2,389 catalog-sales centers in localities that range in size from Los Angeles to Arkville, N.Y. (pop. 600), and Muleshoe, Texas (pop. 4,842). The largest Sears stores are in Troy, N.Y., and Roseville, Mich. The most profitable one is in Honolulu. The smaller catalog stores like the one in Lawrence, Kans., have only a counter stacked with the latest "wish book," other catalogs, a few appliances on display and a life-size cardboard cutout of Tiegs.
The merchandise in Sears aisles and in the catalogs constitutes a breathtaking array of how Americans are spending their money in the waning years of the 20th century. In a mixture of utility and Middle American chic, there are gas barbecues and girdles, personal computers and auto-ignition analyzers, draperies, fake-fur coats, electric generators, two-stage oxyacetylene welding outfits, lingerie, swimsuits, exercise equipment, Franklin stoves, blood-pressure monitors, telephones, 718-piece mechanics' tool sets, portable drills and socket wrenches. Sears sells queen and worker bees, dairy and livestock equipment, horse blankets and saddles and, for $1,200, a pair of majestic swans to "transform your pond or lake into an enchanting, romantic setting."
The most intriguing thing about Sears is that so many Americans buy so many things there, and have been doing so for so long. Sears is a fixture of Americana, like baseball, the Rotary Club or the Boy Scouts. In Robert Redford's baseball movie The Natural, set in the late 1930s, the Scoreboard bears an