B.C. losing an ‘institution’ in Sears

1,200 jobs in province will be lost with retailer on path to liquidation

Shoppers at Sears Canada’s Brentwood Town Centre location early Wednesday greeted news of the retailer’s imminent liquidation with a mix of disappointment and resignation.

There was sadness over the impending loss of the historic chain — one of Canada’s last mid-market full-service department store chains, a cornerstone merchant in many suburban and small-town markets — at the cost of about 1,200 jobs in B.C.

Customers, however, also understood that Sears hadn’t kept up with market trends toward e-commerce and the sharp divide between the high-end and bargain segments that have developed in retail.

“I thought it was pretty sad because (Sears) was an institution in Canada for a long time,” Burnaby retiree Dave Gall said.

“But it reflects the fact that they didn’t adapt to the new way of marketing.”

The already insolvent Sears announced on Tuesday that it would go to an Ontario court Friday seeking approval to liquidate its remaining stores after a long

struggle under court protection from creditors and failure to find a buyer to take over the chain.

That was less than two weeks after announcing another round of store closures across the country, which included the Brentwood Town Centre location as well as Nanaimo and Kelowna department stores and a Sears Home store in Kelowna.

B.C. will lose 11 full department stores — six in Metro Vancouver — seven Sears Home stores and a network of 29 retail pickup locations around rural B.C., a holdover of the retail giant’s once-thriving catalogue business.

“I was very disappointed,” Burnaby resident Viva Young said. “All those people losing their jobs, (and) it’s been here for years. It’s a shame and it’s too bad they can’t find anybody to take over.”

Young said she appreciated that Sears was a Canadian company and that she shopped at Sears a couple of times a month.

However, she said that besides its regular sales, Sears’ prices were too high to compete with bargain retailers like Walmart.

Retail analyst David Gray said the impending Sears liquidation will likely have a bigger impact on smaller markets in B.C. where retail choices are more limited, such as Prince George or Nanaimo.

While Sears had already divested itself of its more prominent urban retail leases — it pulled out of its flagship downtown Vancouver location in Pacific Centre Mall in 2012 — Gray said it still did decent sales in outlying areas.

“Sears was really the most Canadian of footprints of all Canadian department stores,” Gray said.

Gray’s firm, Dig360, working with the market-research company Leger, conducted a survey of Canadian department store shoppers that found 28 per cent of Canadians shopped at Sears for clothing in the last year, second only to Hudson Bay Co. among department stores at 31 per cent.

Gray said Sears missed an opportunity to use its unique network of pickup locations, the cornerstone of its legendary catalogue business, to reinvent itself in the online shopping world.

“They should have had all the ingredients, if they were disruptive in their culture, to really rethink what their ( business) model was,” Gray said.

A liquidation will pull the rug out from under 12,000 employees Canada-wide.

“They’re probably pretty stressed out having gone through several years of doom and gloom,” Gray said.

While Sears’ difficulties were well-known, Tuesday’s news was still a shock, said Jerry Greenslade, a B.C. representative with the Sears Canada Retiree Association.

Greenslade, a 36-year employee who retired as a store manager, said retirees have concerns about their pension, which is only 81 per cent funded.

If the liquidation is approved Friday, final sales could start as early as Oct. 19 and stretch 10 to 14 weeks.