Companies that vanished: Montgomery Ward, offering quality goods for 130 years

My Mom and Dad met in the early 1920's when they were both working in the Montgomery Ward mail order house in Kansas City,Mo. In 1929 Wards opened a mail order house in Albany, NY and Dad was transferred there and remained in the merchandising dept. until he retired in the mid 1960's. So I literally grew up in, at, and around Wards (it was walking distance from my home)!My sister worked there after high school. I worked during high school. I was one of a line who would receive the package, review the figures, and stick the refund check or money due notice into the package before final sealing and mailing. Then Mom went back later and worked as an operator taking mail order call-ins. I still have a cast aluminum roasting pan with the MW logo on the handle. It's older than I am (I'm 68) and it still has that original handle on the lid! It was a very good place to work and shop.
Dotty Clarkson

when i first got out on my own it was hard to get credit from any one. Montgomery Wards was the only company to take a chance on a young potential customer and issued me my first credit card. At that time they were the only company around that offered not just a revolving line of credit but a new idea called easy pay. I got both! They gave good service and sold quality products. I still have an old 27 " console color TV thats still gives me great service bought back before I was married 20 years ago.

I loved Montgomery Ward in Joplin, Missouri. I worked there for a time, but always shopped there. I really miss their drapery department, paint department, and the entire store actually. We lost our K-Mart, Shopco, Venture, Albertson's, Montgomery Wards and probably some that I cannot think of because of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is a lot of junk for a high price. They did not put these stores out of business with low prices, as they are high, but by ad matching. People took the ads from these store and went to Wal-mart to shop and thus we lost our good stores. I had a Chairman of the Board card at Ward's because I purchased furniture, paint, clothes and just about anything you could think of. I do not shop at Walmart as I know them for what they are. They have a leader in each department and then everything else in the department is very high. Their groceries and produce are also very high. I have no use for them. I really miss Ward's and wish they would come back like Walgreen's did.

I got my first Sock Monkey at Montgomery Ward. I found that funny, because they always called it "Monkey Wards."

I worked for M.W. in Tampa, Niles,Il, and Clearwater, Fl. 18 years of ups and downs. I closed down most of the Florida stores in 2001 and was done in July 2001.
I want to know why the Wards building is still standing in Chicago with The Wards logo on it
??????

I am an 83-year-old living in Tucson,Az now, but as a child I remember having to go to the Post Office with money in hand and the order form for Montgomery Ward. I really had no idea what I was doing except that it would bring me new shoes or clothing. Mom let me pick out my first ready-made outfit from their fall catalog of a suspender dress, rust skirt and white rust print blouse, for my 16th birthday. WOW! that was something. Prior to that mom let me pick out three different materials and she copied the latest styles from the wards catalog to get me ready for school. Of course, I miss those days.

Re: Montgomery Wards. I remember the stores in Kingston, Poughk. NY, and in Ohio, where I lived when I first came to the US. I still have clothes I bought years ago at 'Monky Wards'. They are lovely quality. These stores had class. There was none of today's overstuffed rails, which attest to so much waste and unnecessary output, coupled with the problem of no sales persons, or people who are just uninformed--and quite often a few behavioral problems, too. All of this is 'improved' by constant 'sales', in themselves a sign of how cheap the product and the poor in rest of the world producing all this wasteful stuff, are considered to be by the store owners whose only interest is squeezing out the most money they can.
New buildings have taken the place of the old M-W's store--in keeping with that wasteful practice, too. Montgomery-Wards was special.
JS

Robby, you brought back many memories of the Wards on Broadway in Menands. We lived on South St. in North Albany not far away. Used to go there with my parents in the fifties. That's where I got my first bicycle.

Wards, Sears, and JC Penney were the places my parents shopped for us as a family and their products were good quality. Their appliances lasted 20 years or more! I've heard that the name brand products that WalMart sells are actually cheaper versions of those products made specifically for WalMart to be sold at reduced prices! I shop at WalMart for some things like household products for cleaning, storage, etc., and some grocery items like bread, soda, paper and canned goods but for meats, produce and dairy I go to the major grocery stores and get better quality products. I don't buy dogfood at WalMart anymore, either.

What I miss the most was my job. I had been with Ward's for over 40 years, had worked at several stores, and was the manager of a major financial department in the corporate office in Chicago when I had to leave the company. I had to leave behind 100's of friends that I had made over the years. Almost all of them were dedicated to seeing that our customers received a good value and they wanted to come back and shop

I miss our Montgomery Wards. We bought our 1st set of wedding rings there years ago. They would up-grade rings every so often. I finally replaced our furniture in our family room. But I just could not give our "Montgomery Ward" chair and couch away. It was pretty warn, but it had one heck of a nice king size hide-a-bed in it. One of our friends children took the set for house. It was 19 yrs. old. We got our moneys worth.....

I was an Electric Ave and Rooms and more Group Merchandiser in Brainerd Mn and stayed until we close in April of 1999. I miss the store,people. I dont miss the pressure I was forced to put on my salespeople to sell service contracts and stain protection agreements. But still over all it was the best 12 years of my life. I now manage for Alco and the fun is coming back!

MWDC in Maryland was my first job after my kids started school and I remember everyone I worked with and I miss them. I had the best boss too. It was the worst paying job but I'd go back in a heartbeat. They gave me the computer skills I use to this day.

Sears bought out the rights to Wards appliance service business .. A&E Factory Service, and still operates it under the A&E name.

The service contracts Wards customers had when it became defunct were picked up by another warranty company and continued to be honored through their expiration dates, and were still serviced by A&E.

Some of the Wards A&E service managers and many of the service technicians were offered jobs either within the newly held Sears A&E or within the Sears Product Repair organization itself.

When Whirlpool sold its service business off to Sears, it was absorbed into the A&E division as well. Then when Maytag was bought by Whirlpool, it eventually sold out its service business to Sears and was absorbed into the A&E division as well!

So Wards may not live on its original form, but its appliance service business lives on through Sears.

Does anyone remember that it was GE who put Ward's out of business, to offset a billion dollars in gains from selling Dean Witter? This put 94,000 people out of work. It was the biggest bankruptcy in history, to that point. The bankruptcy sale was the most profitable in history also, showing that there was still a great deal of value left in the company. Lackluster Holiday sales were caused by lack of goods in the stores because GE knowingly held back on funding, this after claiming to back the company in order to induce vendors to manufacture, and ship goods to Wards. Unbeknownst to the vendor community GE had secured their loans to vendors borrowing from GE Financial against Ward’s assets. GE let everyone think that it was backing Wards 100%. The shame of it was that Ward’s employees were working their asses off to bring the company back to profitability and making great gains. And don’t forget GE encouraged the opening of new credit accounts by the 1000’s, to help the company? No, so it would have another asset to sell off. It was one of the first dirty big business deals of the new millennium. Thank you Jack Welch - for showing the way to companies like Enron. One of the 94,000.

Wards in Decatur, IL on Franklin St. I loved that store as a child. I'm sorry they closed. Wards was wonderful