Shoppers saddened as last Sears store closes
Some shoppers at historic closing came for the nostalgia rather than the savings
Scattered among the bargain shoppers who flocked to Burnaby Sunday for the historic final day of business for its last remaining Sears department store were those who had come more for nostalgia than for savings.
Sears Canada, a longtime staple of the country’s retail landscape, declared bankruptcy last year and announced in the fall that it would liquidate its remaining stores and lay off thousands of employees. Sunday was to be the company’s final day of sales.
The discounts began in October, and only a fraction of the retailer’s locations across Canada remained open to the bitter end, including its Metrotown location.
Burnaby resident Clive Bollerup said he’d come to the shop for purely sentimental reasons.
“It’s just heartbreaking,” said Bollerup, adding that he’d been coming to the store since it first opened in the mid-1950s.
Sears’s closure had given Bollerup cause to ponder on the way things were back when it was first built, and how much had changed since.
Around the time the store went in, Bollerup’s family had bought their first freezer, he recalled. Up to that point they had relied on a root cellar and ice box at their Vancouver home.
Later in life, Bollerup sold locally-made neckties to Sears. That was before the clothing accessories started to fall out of everyday fashion.
“I’ve seen such dramatic changes and it’s happened so quickly,” he said, his hand resting on the door of the department store. Posters on the windows advertised discounts of 80-90 per cent off everything.
“This is a moment,” he said. “For the company and the community.”
Inside the store was a smattering of remaining goods. There were vases for $2 and pens for 10 cents, framed paintings, wax vegetables and mannequins with or without their heads or arms, all plastered with sales stickers.
Shelving, lockers and office supplies were on sale, clothing racks had price tags on them and even the fixtures were up for grabs.
Among the items priced to go was a stack of Arctic Ice Rink kits, one of which a salesman was trying to sell to Aldergrove resident Jim Marsen.
But as Marsen told the salesman, who failed to make his sale, he had bought half a truckload of goods already, including a bagger kit, bumper and other components for his riding lawn tractor.
“Mine is not Craftsman, but for the price I can make it fit,” he said.
“I’ve been coming in to this store, on and off, since I was a little kid hanging on the end of my parents’ fingers in the early ’60s,” Marsen recalled.
Sears Canada’s closure has sparked a number of controversies.
The company planned to dole out millions of dollars in retention bonuses to head office staff while grappling with a more than $260-million shortfall in its pension plan.
The company originally wanted to pay a total $7.6 million to 43 top employees, but revised that to a total of $6.5 million to 36 employees after a public backlash.
An Ontario judge approved the reduction, but some employees argued it was still too much money given the company was also facing a 19 per cent pension plan funding shortfall, meaning employees would likely see a similar cut to their benefits.
And a plan by executive chairman
I’ve been coming in to this store, on and off, since I was a little kid hanging on the end of my parents’ fingers in the early ’60s.
Brandon Stranzl that would see the company continue to operate was rebuffed in favour of liquidation, prompting further questions about whose interests were being prioritized.
Sears Canada’s closure follows in the footsteps of other big-box retailers including Target and Zellers.