Mail order advertising has its roots in the 1800s, when Richard Sears, a railroad clerk in Minnesota, found himself with an abandoned case of pocket watches. Using his list of other railroad clerks throughout the Midwest, he marketed these watches and quickly sold them. Sears recognized immediately that an entrepreneur with a list of accurate names and addresses and a stock of quality merchandise no longer needed a store. He only needed a good message delivery vehicle and first-rate customer service. And so began the company that would later become known as Sears Roebuck. With the advent of the telephone, telemarketing followed suit. Along with direct mail and telemarketing came governmental regulation.