Montgomery Ward Says Goodbye

Montgomery Ward Inc., the department store chain that helped pioneer American retailing, said Thursday that it is shutting down after more than 125 years in business and will file for bankruptcy.

The chain — with 250 stores and 37,000 employees in 31 states — fell victim to competition from other big retailers.

"Sadly, today's action is unavoidable," chief executive Roger Goddu said, citing weak holiday sales as the final straw for a struggling company that emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just last year.

The statement came hours after scores of Montgomery Ward employees began filing out of the company headquarters with boxes in hand.

Several said they had been told during a meeting that General Electric Co.'s GE Capital Unit, owner of Montgomery Ward, was pulling financial support after sluggish holiday sales. GE Capital referred all calls to Ward headquarters in Chicago.

"I'm just devastated," Anece Rich, a 28-year Wards employee who worked in the company's mail room, said as she left Wards headquarters. "They took care of us as best they could."

A supplier said Wards officials had stopped accepting orders at its distribution centers and had told him they were closing all 250 stores.

"They are shutting down. It's official," said Ronnie Goldfinger, senior VP of Highland Park-based Performance Marketing Inc., a manufacturer's representative that sold consumer electronics to Wards.

Retail analysts also said they had heard the end of the company was near.

"It's sad. It's too bad because a lot of effort has gone into trying to save the thing," said Sid Doolittle, a Chicago-based retail consultant who spent 28 years as a Wards executive.

Begun in 1872, Wards pioneered mail-order catalogs when it came out with a single sheet of dry-goods items for sale. It was the first U.S. mail-order house to sell general merchandise. Sears, Roebuck & Co. wasn't founded until 1886 and didn't put out its first general merchandise catalog until a decade after that.

Ward, known affectionately to its customers as "Monkey" Ward, opened its first store in Plymouth, Ind., in 1926.

Ward has been financially unstable for years. In 1999, it emerged from bankruptcy and announced a plan to revamp many of its stores.

But some analysts said it was too little too late.

"Wards has not established themselves as anything distinctive in the marketplace," said George Whalin, president of California-based Retail Management Consultants. "There's just no reason to go there unless maybe they're the closest store to your house."

Whalin said it had become increasingly difficult for Wards to survive in a retail market swamped with competitors— everything from Home Depot to Best Buy and Target.

News of Wards' apparent demise comes two days after Massachusetts-based discount retailer Bradlees, Inc. announced that it is going out of business.

"It's brutal. It's as ompetitive as anything out there," Whalin said.
Wards had been shooting for sales growth this year of about 9 percent. Instead, it hovered at a sluggish 2 percent.

"It's like leaving part of your life behind. My heart's breaking, but I'm going to go and look for another job, because that's all you can do," Sharon Bray, a 35-year employee who worked in systems quality assurance, told CBS-owned station WBBM.

She held out little hope that anything would save her job.

"No more Wards, not unless someone jumps in and buys us," she said.