By Armchair Mayor

Goodbye, Sears – mourning the end of the Wish Book era

Jun 24, 2017 | 5:00 AM

KAMLOOPS –– This thing with Sears marks the end of an era, and the ending of eras is almost always sad. 

Fifty-nine stores closing, 2,900 jobs lost. It’s called “re-structuring.” Did you know that when the Kamloops store opened in 1954, it was the second one in Canada?  It was Simpsons-Sears back then.

I’ve been with Simpsons-Sears and Sears for roughly 60 years.

If you lived in a small town, and there was no Sears or Eaton’s, you could go to the mail-order office on the main drag and pick up a two-inch thick catalogue. If a thing could be made, you could order it out of that catalogue.

You could get toys, sporting goods, garden equipment, Christmas presents, didn’t matter what. My mom used to order dress patterns, and the material to make the dresses, which she sewed at home on her pedal-powered sewing machine.

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Remember the Wish Book? The arrival of the 300-page Wish Book every September was practically cause for its own statutory holiday. There was usually a picture of a couple of kids and a Christmas tree on the cover and it was like the best Christmas present ever, four months early. Inside were pictures of Tonka trucks, doll houses, Cabbage Patch Kids, Care Bears, and those red Radio Flyer wagons — made out of metal and wood, not plastic.

There was stuff for grown-ups, too, like watches, slippers, push lawnmowers and, of course, those famous Craftsman tools. If so inclined, you could even order a Christmas fruitcake. (I’ve never known anybody who actually ate a Christmas fruitcake, but they say there are people who have done it and lived.)

If you’re of the Amazon or e-Bay generation you’ve probably never heard of the Wish book but the amazing thing is it’s still published, though long ago it became only a shadow of its former self. Nowadays nobody pays much attention to it, and I guess there won’t be one this year.

We did have a small department store in our little town in the ‘50s and ‘60s. It was called Collins Department Store and I bought most of my clothing there when I was in high school. (Short-sleeved button-up sweaters — short-sleeved, not sleeveless — were the rage for a while and Collins always had the latest styles. Drape-cut pants, skinny belts and white bucks were fashion necessities for the young guys.)

Collins burned down in 1974 and the property was empty until the town council bought it a year ago and turned the vacant lot into a “temporary” parking lot. They figure they’ll come up with a better idea later. I know what you’re thinking.

Anyway, I’m sad to see Sears ago. We bought a lot of stuff there, including fridges and stoves and some furniture; the garden-equipment section used to be pretty good, and the service was excellent. It was still a good place to do Christmas shopping, too.

The last time I bought something there was a few months ago, a fairly major purchase of a few hundred dollars, but I’ll admit Sears became less and less a place for us to shop.

Same with The Bay. Eaton’s as well, of course. Sadly, the all-in-one department store doesn’t seem to fit in with the Canadian lifestyle the way it used to. Now it’s all about the Walmart experience, where you grab a shopping cart and fight your way through the crowds to buy everything from electronics to underwear to frozen pizza.

It’s a department store of sorts, I guess, but it’s not the same. It’s a Big Box, and Big Box shopping may be an experience but not a particularly enjoyable one, at least for me. Sears was always relaxed and fun.

I’m sure a lot of smart people were paid good money to figure out what was wrong with Sears. I wonder why, through the various mergers, and as they watched the trials and tribulations of their competitors, those who failed and succeeded, why they couldn’t figure it out.

And it’s ironic that the new way of shopping, online, is really just a glorified electronic Wish Book and Sears Catalogue.

How come a store that made distance-shopping an integral part of its business model hasn’t been able to figure out how to stay relevant in a world that has returned to the mail-order days of old? I know they tried, but it obviously hasn’t worked.

It’s a shame.