Anybody need a cheap watch?
A hundred years ago, where would you go to buy a pocketwatch if you were on a budget? Down at the ol` train station of course! Did you know that railroad stations in 500 towns across the USA sold watches? The best watches were found in the northern states and it wasn`t the train company selling them - it was the telegraph operators! You see, telegraph operators were located in the railroad stations because the telegraph lines followed the railroad tracks from town to town. For a period of 9 years, telegraph operators sold more watches than all the retail stores combined! How did this happen?
Sometime about 1885, a huge crate of watches arrived on a train in North Redwood, Minnesota. No one ever came to claim them.
So, a wrangler named Richard (the station agent), sent a telegram to the manufacturer and asked them what they wanted to do with the watches. The manufacturer didn't want to pay the freight back, so they wired Richard to see if he could sell them. And Richard did just that! He sent a wire to every agent in the system asking them if they wanted a cheap, but good, pocket watch. He sold the entire case in less than two days at a handsome profit.
That started it all. He ordered more watches from the watch company and encouraged other telegraph operators to set up a display case in their stations, offering high quality watches for a cheap price to all the travelers . It worked! It didn't take long for the word to spread and, before long, people other than travelers came to the train station to buy watches. Richard became so busy that he had to hire a professional watch maker named Alvah, to help him with the orders. The rest is history -as they say. The business took off and soon expanded to many other lines of dry goods. Richard and Alvah left the train station and moved their company to Chicago -- and it's still there! Yes, it`s a little-known fact that for a while in the 1880 's , the biggest watch retailer in the United States was at the train station. And it all started
with a telegraph operator, Richard
Sears, and his partner, Alvah
Roebuck !
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