Demise of Sears Canada

In what already feels like old news in the news cycle of today, Sears Canada will eventually be no more.

Here's what I take away from the coverage so far:

• Nobody is surprised
• Online shopping is partly to blame, but so is a lack of investment on the part of Sears.
• Sears is a source of memories of bygone days. It's mostly older people that lament the passing of Sears, and they sound as if they are talking about Werther's Originals.

From my own perspective, it's been awhile since I shopped there with intent. There isn't a Sears close by, and when I did have a chance to visit one I used it for comparison shopping with The Bay (since they were frequently at opposite ends of whichever mall contained one or the other). In those cases, I usually ended up buying from The Bay because I liked their offerings more.

There was a Sears mattress and appliance store in town from which you could pick up catalogue or online orders, but it just seem to have disappeared one day.

Some general thoughts:

• Outlet malls and high-end malls that have tightly-focused, branded offerings seem to be doing well.
• Online shopping isn't the only part of online that's to blame. Direct marketing by brands is also a factor - many people no longer go to a store looking to be sold something in a particular category. They go looking for the exact thing they've already been sold online and just need a place to buy it.
• The vast number of products sold under even a single brand produces cross-brand permutations of products that are now too large for a single department store to hope to satisfy and carry.
• This makes outlet malls and high-end malls the new department stores. It also makes a lot of sense why The Bay is both present at outlet malls and has subdivided many of their stores into brand-focused departments within category-focused departments. It also makes Sears' selling off of their high-priced real estate (in high-end malls) look especially counter-productive.
• Small towns are said to be affected. But the writing must have been on the wall in small towns more than anywhere else because they are just as reachable by online shopping as are major centres. If the Sears catalogue combined with local pickup drops was of particular benefit to small towns then I don't understand why online shopping where the products are delivered to your door isn't many degrees better.

I respect the challenge that they faced. Running a large, legacy business is hard during times of change, but they did not make the same effort as The Bay to stay current. The Bay is also not doing that well financially, but they at least seem to have identified what their modern market looks like.

Like many other people, I lament the passing of Sears as it's a part of my past, but it won't affect my present very much at all.