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Retrospective: Sears Canada’s Painful death

Abandoned Sears store at Erin Mills Town Centre, Mississauga ON. 2019

Warning: The views expressed in this post are of the author. Please don’t hate if you don’t agree with my views.
Today's post will be a classic Retail Retrospective post. The subject of this entry is about Sears Canada’s long, infamous and painful death. Sears used to be a large chain of department stores with thousands of stores at one point and a myriad of services. Now Sears is long gone from the Canadian market after filling for creditor’s protection back in late 2017 and liquidating completely by January 2018 and now only has under 200 stores left in the USA and is a shell of its former self. This post will focus exclusively on the defunct Canadian Sears chain and how they fallen into bankruptcy.

Early history

It all started in the early 1950s as a 50-50 partnership between department store chain Simpsons and Sears to make a mail order and department store chain called Simpsons-Sears. Many Simpson-Sears stores opened in areas outside of core markets as per a agreement that lasted until 1972 when new stores opened under the Sears name. After Hudson's Bay Company brought Simpsons in 1978, the partnership was dissolved and Simpsons returned interest in the company to Sears and all stores were simply renamed the stores to Sears.

Growth

Sears started to grow massively after the partnership was dissolved growing to a chain stores coast to coast. Sears introduced Hometown stores in Canada in 1994 in small town unable to support a full line store. In 1995, Sears introduced a chain of off mall home stores.In 1999, Sears acquired assists of Eatons after that chain went under.This gave Sears prime locations in well established areas. Sears attempted to re-launch the chain in 2000 as a high end brand. This didn't go so well for them and these stores were re-branded to Sears in 2002. In March, 2005 Sears Holding gained majority control of the company of 73.1%, the most the company will own of Sears Canada. Sears Holdings will eventually scale back their shares to

Painful fall from grace

In the 2010s, Sears started to struggle significantly. Sears’ painful death really started in 2013 when Sears decided to close a whole bunch of high profile store locations in various malls across the country. When a retailer closes a lot of their high profile stores, then you know something must be wrong with the company. It didn’t get any better for the chain. More and more closures came over the years, but not as bad as the US Sears and by 2017, all remaining outlet stores were shut down.

What the Sears is Happening?

Sears logo
Sears Canada's new logo introduced in 2016

Sears is edging closer and closer to bankruptcy and they needed to reinvent its self before they die. In 2016, Sears did this by re branding itself with a new, unique logo, updating their private labels, and remodeling their stores to a modern look under the new “Sears 2.0” branding.  It was a bit too late for this to happen as in October 2017, Sears Canada filed for Creditor’s Protection, before deciding to liquidate and cease all operations in Canada in January of 2018. (BTW the title of this section is a reference to a slogan Sears used during the Sears 2.0 era).

Reflecting back...

Sears was a great store that sadly didn’t keep up with the times. Some say it’s death was due to poor management while others say Sears’ slow death is due to a changing retail landscape. I mostly think that Sears died due to not keeping up with the times because most of the stores felt dated and Sears did nothing to change how they looked until it was too late. Even with these changes, I don’t think that that Sears 2.0 campaign helped Sears’ struggles significantly.

I hope you enjoyed this retail retrospective on Sears. I had great memories of shopping at Sears growing up and was saddened to see Sears vanish from the Canadian market and into the Retail Graveyard and then watch the brand struggle even more in the US. I recommend you to go read this Wikipedia page if you want more information on Sears Canada.

Until next post, DZ. 
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Comments

  1. Retail RetellMay 20, 2020 at 11:40 AM

    Looking up that Sears 2.0 logo, concept, and store remodels, I really like the presentation. Everything looked sleek and much better/more modern than US Sears stores. I even think the "What the Sears?" slogan was creative. Too bad that all came too little, too late to save them in Canada.

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    Replies
    1. DomMay 20, 2020 at 3:47 PM

      I went into one of these store before and thought to my self "Wow! Sears looks amazing now. Where was this years ago?". I'm not surprised that It didn't work out for them though.

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