Montgomery Ward

Montgomery Ward was an American department store, founded as the world's first mail order business in 1872 by Aaron Montgomery Ward, and shut down due to bankruptcy in 2000.

Downfall

After World War II, Montgomery-Ward was the third-largest department store chain. It stuck to its old commitment to urban stores, ignoring the general move to suburbs in America by the middle class. Its old rivals, Sears and J.C. Penney, situated themselves in the new suburban shopping malls that Montgomery-Ward top executives thought too expensive... until the company lost far too much market share to compete with the other two behemoths. Low-price competition from K-Mart, Target Corporation, and Wal-Mart stripped away even more of Montgomery Ward's old customer base.

Montgomery-Ward, having lost its market share and saddled with unprofitable stores, went bankrupt in 1982. Eventually Mobil Oil , flush with cash during the oil shortage, bought the chain and pumped money into the chain, renovating the remaining stores and resteructuring the store into boutique-like mini-stores within the department stores in an effort to revive the chain. Eventually Mobil sold out, and Montgomery-Ward drifted along as it had, and by 2000 the chain was liquidated in bankruptcy.