How a single sheet of paper in 1872 built American mail order
Aaron Montgomery Ward opened for business in Chicago in August 1872 with capital of $1,600 and a catalog that was one sheet of paper. Britannica records that the first list offered about 150 items to farm families who had no other way to shop beyond the nearest general store.
The idea was credit as much as it was mail. Montgomery Ward sold on terms, buy now and pay later, to customers the company had never met in towns its managers had never visited.
The sheet became a book and the book became a habit. Rural households ordered stoves, sewing machines, coats and wedding rings from a merchant that existed only as paper and a postal address.
Hold that scale in mind before the rest of the story. Montgomery Ward replaced the general store with the mail decades before the telephone was common, and more than a century before a shopping cart appeared on a screen.
The day two soldiers carried the chairman out of his office
By the Second World War the company was run by Sewell Avery, who spent more energy fighting Washington than fighting his competitors.
In April 1944 Attorney General Francis Biddle went to Chicago to press Avery to extend a union contract, so that Montgomery Ward warehouses would keep supplying the home front. Avery refused.
The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming, in its account of the seizure, records what Avery told the Attorney General: "To hell with the government!"
Biddle stopped arguing. Two soldiers lifted Avery by an arm each and carried him out of his own office, still sitting upright, past the photographers waiting outside. The federal government took control of Montgomery Ward facilities, and the picture of a chairman being removed from his own building ran on front pages nationwide.
It is a strange thing for a catalog company to be remembered for, and it set the tone for the next sixty years. Montgomery Ward was rarely the retailer that moved first, and often the one arguing with whoever wanted it to.
Why did Montgomery Ward shut down its own catalog in 1985?
Ownership left retail entirely in the 1970s. Britannica records that Mobil Oil Corporation bought 54 percent of the voting shares of Marcor, the parent company of Montgomery Ward, in 1974, and that Marcor merged into the new Mobil Corporation two years later. An oil major now owned the business that invented mail order.
The catalog did not survive the arrangement. In 1985, Britannica records, Montgomery Ward ended its 113-year-old mail-order operation to concentrate on its retail stores.
Read that twice. The company that taught the country to buy sight unseen from a printed list closed that business to bet everything on mall anchors, roughly a decade before anyone typed a card number into a browser.
The stores then walked into a fight they could not win. Britannica notes that in the 1990s Montgomery Ward faced stiff competition from discount retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart. Sears and Kmart were losing the same shoppers to the same discounters, and both outlasted Montgomery Ward by decades.
What the 1997 bankruptcy and the 1999 handover changed
Montgomery Ward filed for Chapter 11 protection in July 1997, Britannica records, after a decade of losing ground to those discounters. GE Capital, by then the largest claim holder against the company, financed it through the case.
The reorganization took two years, and the creditor ended up with the keys. A later opinion from the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware states the outcome in one line: "The Debtors emerged from Ward I with 100% of the equity owned by General Electric Capital Corporation."
The court record dates the plan precisely. It was confirmed on July 15, 1999 and took effect on August 2, 1999.
That left Montgomery Ward owned outright by a finance company rather than a retailer, and carrying the problem it had taken into bankruptcy: hundreds of large stores that shoppers no longer had a reason to drive to. From August 1999 on, one owner held every share, so one owner could end the company whenever the numbers stopped working.
December 28, 2000: how 128 years of Montgomery Ward ended
Three and a half years after the first filing, that is what happened. UPI reported on December 28, 2000 that Montgomery Ward would close its 250 stores and 10 distribution centers across 30 states during the first and second quarters of 2001, and put the job losses at 37,315 nationally.
Chairman and chief executive Roger Goddu announced the decision in a statement. "Today's filing comes after an exhaustive exploration of options for continuing the business," he said.
He was blunter in the next line. "Sadly, today's action is unavoidable," Goddu said in the same 2000 statement.
The decision was not entirely his. GE Capital withdrew its financial support after a weak holiday season, and without that backing there was no version of Montgomery Ward that opened in January. Britannica ends the story in a sentence: the company announced in December 2000 that it was going out of business, and closed its remaining stores in 2001. The liquidation ran store by store through the first half of that year, with the fixtures sold after the merchandise.
Is Montgomery Ward still in business in 2026?
Yes as a name, no as a store. There has been no Montgomery Ward department store anywhere in the United States since 2001, the store count has been zero for 25 years, and the company that ran those stores no longer exists.
The trademark changed hands at an auction. The Monroe Times reported that in 2008 Midwest Catalog Brands, a subsidiary of the Wisconsin direct marketer Swiss Colony, bought the Montgomery Ward catalog and internet brand for $15.5 million in a foreclosure sale, along with the Charles Keath and HomeVisions catalogs.
Swiss Colony now trades as Colony Brands Inc., still family owned and still based in Monroe, Wisconsin, and Montgomery Ward is one brand in a portfolio that also holds Seventh Avenue, Ginny's and Country Door. What wards.com sells is furniture, appliances, electronics and home goods on installment credit, buy now and pay later. That is the mechanism Aaron Montgomery Ward used in 1872, pointed at a browser instead of a mailbox.
So the answer to who owns Montgomery Ward now is Colony Brands, and the answer to whether the old company survived is no. A retail name outliving its stores is common enough: Woolworth did the same thing in a different way.
Where to find one today: the paper is the collectible. Christmas Wish Books, fall and winter catalogs, store signage, appliance manuals and Wards-branded hand tools turn up in the vintage listings on Etsy. Year, page count and condition drive the asking price far more than anything else, so check that a catalog is complete before paying for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Montgomery Ward still in business?
Montgomery Ward exists in 2026 only as an online and catalog retailer at wards.com, with no physical stores anywhere. The original Montgomery Ward chain announced in December 2000 that it was going out of business and closed its remaining stores during 2001. Colony Brands Inc. has run the name as a direct-marketing business since 2008.
When did Montgomery Ward close its stores?
Montgomery Ward announced on December 28, 2000 that it was closing all 250 of its stores, and UPI reported that the shutdown would cost 37,315 jobs across 30 states after 128 years in business. The stores and 10 distribution centers were wound down through the first half of 2001. Montgomery Ward had already closed its mail-order catalog in 1985, after 113 years.
Who owns Montgomery Ward now?
Colony Brands Inc. of Monroe, Wisconsin, the family-owned direct marketer formerly called Swiss Colony, has owned the Montgomery Ward brand since 2008, when its Midwest Catalog Brands subsidiary bought it for $15.5 million at a foreclosure sale. Before that, the original retailer was owned outright by General Electric Capital Corporation, which took 100 percent of the equity when the company left Chapter 11 in August 1999. No department store company owns the name today.