“‘The Sears catalog had an even bigger impact in 1900 than Amazon has had today,’ said Robert Gordon, a professor at Northwestern University and author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Like today’s e-commerce powerhouse, the Sears catalog provided shoppers more choice than ever before, and at lower prices. Sears freed shoppers from the tyranny of the local general merchant and improved their living standards. ‘The cost of living went down the minute Sears became available.'” Sears was the original retail disrupter. But times change. Here’s Bloomberg on the long, slow, painful, unprecedented Fall of Sears.