Sears Canada has filed a motion with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to seek, among other things, permission to suspend certain monthly payments to its pension plan and post-retirement health and life insurance benefits, the company announced today.
The entire Sears organization has been on a death watch for the past few years ever since it merged with K-Mart and put that chain’s boss in charge.
That’s quite a change from 20 years ago when Sears Canada stock was a “must have” for one’s investment portfolio. I owned a small block of shares and made a handsome profit when I sold them. Now, I wouldn’t touch the stuff with a barge pole.
That’s a real shame because, in bygone days, its in-house brands such as Kenmore and Craftsman were guarantees of quality. For example, if one couldn’t afford top-of-the-line tools like those made by Snap-On, Craftsman was an excellent second choice, being well-made and of good quality. Nowadays, I wouldn’t want what’s produced now in any of my toolboxes. Sears takes advantage of that line’s previous reputation by selling cheap junk with the Craftsman name stamped on it.
G’bye Sears, it was nice knowing you…..
I call on our beloved Liberal government to bail out Sears,as they do Bombardier every year,and CBC,and are about to do for the MSM.
Hell,it’s only taxpayer’s money. Maybe give Little Omar a gift certificate to Sears,just to help out. Maybe if they’ll carry a fetching line of burkhas business might pick up.
Justin and Omar can do an advert for them together.
Why would anyone merge with K-mart let alone put their boss on top?!?!
Oh well. Just have to be sure to take advantage of the clearance sales.
Excellent suggestions! I see that you have become just as cynical as I have. You can bet though that the newest Liberal hero will not be invited to the drawing rooms of our betters in the Laurentians.
As I recall, K-Mart was coming close to going belly up when Sears took it over a number of years. Putting Eddie Lampert in charge of the company that runs both chains was one of the terms of the deal. (Maybe my recollections weren’t entirely correct. I thought that he was in charge of K-Mart at one time.)
Lampert’s proven himself to be an absolute disaster. Yes, he closed a number of unprofitable stores, but he’s also engaged in some questionable financial tactics:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-eddie-lampert-set-sears-up-to-fail-2017-5
Sears isn’t the first company to run aground because of its management and, unfortunately, it probably won’t be the last.
Sears took it over a number of years.
That should have read:
Sears took it over a number of years ago.
The article comments on what’s going on in some of the stores. I live a few minutes walk from a Sears and I’ve noticed a similar decline in the past few years.
A sad day in Canadian history. We had a great store in Moose Jaw, Sk. Slowly however, they dropped or thinned out some of their well known products such as Craftsman power and hand tools, TVs and other electronics, certain lines of clothes, etc. etc. They revamped the store last year, but it was too late.
Few people realize that Sears was once the largest publisher in North America, thanks to their colorful catalogues. I remember when one of our neighbors, a religious fanatic, cut out the pages of the ladies underwear section of the Eatons and Sears catalogues. She didn’t want her boys to see ”boobies and panties” and other ”similar vice”.
I don’t think we should blame anyone but ourselves for Sears demise. We all fell for the cheaper Asian jeans and t-shirts, Made in Taiwan wrenches, Japanese radios and TVs, and other trash merchandise that we still buy to this day and only to send it to the landfill or the Salvation Army store in six or eight months.
Sears just happens to be the one that made the headlines this month. Everyday, great American, Canadian and European brand names are being traded off for cheap imports and counterfeits. Great products such as Redwing work boots and shoes, Buck knives, Carl Zeiss binoculars, Bosch spark plugs, Vice Grip pliers, Energizer batteries, Bulova watches, Michelin tires, CCM bikes and a million other items are now being replaced by Asian junk that’s sold through Walmart and other similar outlets. We just keep buying it all up. Yup, we’re an enterprising nation, us canadjuns.
PS: There is hope after all. I did see Vise Grip adjustable pliers at Home Hardware last week, and they are once again ”Made in USA.”
The real villain, as always, is the declining standard of living that results from government waste.
a million other items are now being replaced by Asian junk that’s sold through Walmart and other similar outlets
It’s bad enough that much of the stuff is shoddy (try buying a pair of men’s bedroom slippers that lasts more than a year!), but it’s marketed under license. The actual items are made in, say, Coleslawvania but they’ll bear a well-known brand name because the manufacturer acquired the rights to it from the original company.
I first noticed that in the early 1980s, just around when I first heard about the idea of globalization. Production goes to where the manufacturing costs are the lowest.
Amazon math is hard. The kind of math that used to be called “monopoly” … until the monopolistic entity swore allegiance to leftist politics. Then … it became just another part of the totalitarian political apparatus.
If beloved Omar is to get a reward, I’m with Don on this one, pay him in Sears gift cards. They now sell nothing useful for making IED’s, and long ago stopped selling firearms.
Everything the left wants or offers has one goal; ending capitalism and happiness. Pensions are particularly good for this purpose, because they sound like a good idea. And people willingly sign their own slavery papers.
10.5 million in Sears gift cards…
clearly the first time I’ve smiled regarding the Khadr affair, though the sting isn’t fading yet. Not even close.
+ thanks Dmorris
When there is no money, there is no money. Just how one funds things without money is something only the government gets to do.
Why don’t we ask why Sears did not become Amazon? Sears had shipped packages from their catalogue for decades prior to Bezos.
Sear’s assets have been sold off for years now so the bankruptcy should not be a surprise to employees, shareholders, patrons or property managers.
I am amused that nearly 100% of the comments on the globalnews site claim they will never shop at Sears again, in some sort of sympathy with the laid-off employees. That will accelerate the downfall of Sears leaving hundreds more unemployed. Some sympathy!
I abandoned Sears several years ago when they attempted to slap a surcharge on my credit card balance, calling it a Consumer Protection Plan, or CCP for short. No one I could reach by phone seemed to have the authority to cancel the fee, so I guess they still want 62 cents from me. I have never bought anything there again.
Thank god for toilet paper! The ‘catalogue’ is history I’m afraid………
Reasons why Sears never turned into Amazon:
I could order something from Sears, pay shipping charges, and have to go pick it up from a Sears pick-up location OR I could order from Wal-mart or Amazon and as long as I hit the $25, I could have it shipped to my house for free.
Sears made it a pain, whereas Walmart and Amazon incentivize customers to put in bigger orders.
Also, the Sears pick-up locations only received $ for merchandise that was kept, but received nothing for merchandise if it was also returned through their location. Sears offloaded costs on people providing them service.
Sears lost me as a customer when the dishwasher I had bought there started leaking.
Whirlpool brand, simple fix needed a $4.00 seal which they would only sell me in a “kit” with a new diverter valve for nearly 175 bucks.
Telling the english challenged person on the phone that all I needed was the seal did not matter.
They wanted to send out “technician” $100. to start with then the “kit” possible 2.5 hour job so would have been about 400 to 500 bucks for a $4.00 fix
So long story short I went to a commercial parts shop in Victoria and they sold me the $4.00 seal.
Installed same, no more grief.
I made sure that Sears realized I would never buy anything from them again.
Cue flurry of “concerned e-mails”
This company will not “rebrand” itself, it is part of a dying mall industry. The shareholders will lose all their money, and share in the risk of compensation.
Give the employees their money or give them the company and see what they can do with it.
Wild idea? Why should irresponsibly providing credit be rewarded with employee dough?
it is part of a dying mall industry.
Yup. I live right beside one of the biggest shopping centres in Edmonton and I’ve been how it’s changed over the years. It opened in the early 1970s and it was a “something for everyone” place.
Now it caters largely to the “cool kids”, fast food and the rag trade. How long it’s going to stay in business is anyone’s guess. All the glitziness in the world isn’t going to bring in clientele who are trying to make ends meet.
West Edmonton Mall is even worse.
Speaking of dying malls, here’s a website you might find interesting:
http://deadmalls.com/
Two places in Edmonton (Centennial Mall and Heritage Mall) are mentioned.
When you read about some of those places and how they were disasters in the making from the very start, you have to wonder what the owners and investors were thinking.
“I don’t think we should blame anyone but ourselves for Sears demise. We all fell for the cheaper Asian jeans and t-shirts, Made in Taiwan wrenches, Japanese radios and TVs, and other trash merchandise that we still buy to this day and only to send it to the landfill or the Salvation Army store in six or eight months.”
No, it is not the consumer’s fault that 1) Sears has terrible management and 2) it’s entire industry is dying.
And I’ll be damned if I have seen a shred of evidence that Asian products are worse in quality in any way compared to domestic. My Samsung TV is awesome, and so are my various Asian electronics. My Honda beats the hell out of North American cars.
It doesn’t even make sense: Sears could easily sell that stuff.
Of all the wrong turns a company can take Sears has taken most of them including getting stuck in their halcyon days of the 1950s and 60s. About the time they should have been revamping their catalogue sales into internet sales they were opening big box stores that were trying to sell products most people weren’t interested in.
I had a really really infuriating experience with that store many moons ago. got a gift certificate for xmas. tried to buy a much needed pr of galoshes. told I would NOT be given about half the value of the certificate in change, had to spend the whole certificate. or go to the department that handled certificates and get it converted to smaller denominations. the department was conveniently closed on a Saturday. well tsk tsk was the clerk’s attitude. not wishing to lose the remaining value of the certificate I left without the much needed galoshes. the cold and wet on my running shoes feet going home is what welded this episode in my memory.
I hated them for it. &#$^#&@#$& ‘marketing’ schemes.
If Sears had played their card right, they would now be Amazon. Sears was already a mail order catalog company. If they had the foresight they would have become an internet retailer. It’s exactly the same business except the catalog would be on line.
I’ve got a feeling that the alligator-shoe boys in corporate will do fine, while the clerks, stockers, mechanics, porters, store managers, cleaners, secretaries, and all the other good folks who made Sears work will be thrown under the metaphorical bus. I hope that whatever government court or office overseas this will protect the real workers.
The ‘real workers’ aren’t what make things work. They’re just cogs. The upper echelons are what bring the capital and expertise, or lack thereof in this case. Why would a court protect the workers? It’s on them to seek new employment.
Sears lost sight of who it’s customers actually were. They didn’t know what to do about the encroaching internet retail power … until it was too late, if they have even yet figured it out.. The stayed with an obsolete model that is now on life support, but will not make it.
I do feel badly for the many women who need this income to support themselves and their families and who have been loyal employees for a long time.
I have never trusted any employer to be true to the workers and that drove me self employment …. not everyone has that option, so they remain potential victims of bad and stupid management.
It is tempting to say that this should not be allowed, but in a free market system one must make better choices and always be prepared for betrayal.. you cannot make and enforce enough laws to protect everyone and to not destroy the will of the entrepreneur to create businesses and jobs. Worker must simply smarten up and understand what they are doing and what they are what they are getting into.
Sears lost sight of who it’s customers actually were.
Sears isn’t the only retail chain to do that. Many of us in B. C. and Alberta remember the old Woodward’s. It lasted just barely more than 100 years before going belly up.
Woodward’s also lost sight of the customer base that not only built the company but sustained it. During the late 1970s and early ’80s, it changed its focus towards the upscale yuppie market and tailored its stores accordingly. But then the early ’80s recession hit and Woodward’s wasn’t unscathed.
I don’t think it ever recovered from that. By the early 1990s, the management was busy running the company into the ground. I recall how it celebrated its centennial with fireworks and then, a few weeks later, it declared bankruptcy.
The main department stores promptly closed and, in some cases, it severely affected the shopping centres they were located in–in one case here in Edmonton, it was an anchor store. The grocery division, though, stayed open for a few years until Safeway took it over.
The same thing happened to Eaton’s a few years later.
” We just keep buying it all up.”
While that is true, it’s also somewhat unfair to Canadian consumers. The other day, I tried to by some flatware/silverware made in Canada or the US in a local store. None in the big stores, none in the small stores, none anywhere. In the end, I found something online. With many things, big or small, the same problem exists- if you want made in USA or made in Canada, it just plain cannot be purchased locally.
So while part of the problem is that Canadians aren’t buying local/semi-local products, the other part is no one is selling it (unless you’re willing to take the time to search online). I think more Canadians would do so if given the option (and really, the price differential isn’t as great as it might initially seem).
Woodward’s and Eaton’s also suffered from being family-owned. There were two issues: the first was that family member(s) were expected to run the organization, whether or not they were suited to the job (think “Chunky” Woodward who was always much more interested in his ranch than the stores); the second was that the share structure of both companies meant there were increasing numbers of family members who were entitled to dividends, which created cash-flow issues and acrimony when the dividends weren’t forthcoming. Both companies tried to solve this latter issue by selling off their real estate and renting back their premises; when the money from the sale was gone, the end was in sight.
I know the feeling. The worst I experienced was a pair of made in China ”Caterpillar” winter boots I bought at a mall store. When I looked at the boots, I visualized the almighty Cat D-9 (built in Peoria, Illinois) bulldozing rock in a quarry, black smoke belching into the blue sky. The soles of the boots turned rock hard on minus 10° or colder days. Like wearing wooden shoes. I chucked them after a year. I did however find a winter boot at Mark’s Work Warehouse that was made in Vietnam and they seem OK.