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Sears Wish Book: The retail ghost of Christmas past

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The child runs home from school, her jacket unzipped and flapping in the November snow storm.

“What’s the matter?” mom asks.

“The Christmas Wish Book is out,” the breathless seven-year-old says, crashing through the front door.

“Where’s the mail?”

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“Take off your coat and settle down,” her mother says. “The mailman is late because of the snow.”

Ignoring her mom, the girl waits impatiently by the front door. If the mailman doesn’t arrive before her older siblings get home in about 25 minutes, she won’t get first dibs on the Wish Book. The clock is ticking.

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“The Christmas Wish Book is out. Where’s the mail?” the breathless seven-year-old says.
“The Christmas Wish Book is out. Where’s the mail?” the breathless seven-year-old says. Photo by Dave Whamond /Swerve

1975 Simpsons-Sears Christmas Wish Book: 388 pages
Toys, dolls and games: 61 pages
My favourite things: Barbie’s two-doll Sleep N’ Keep case, $7.95; 3-D View Master with talking reels, $3.75; Toes Hose socks (blue, red and yellow stripes), $2.97; sterling silver double-link charm bracelet, $10.99; starter Christmas charm, $3.49.

I was that little girl and it was the mid-’70s, a time when Sears Canada was still Simpsons-Sears and letter carriers were called mailmen. That was also a time when the store was doing a booming business. Given the demise of Sears Canada earlier this year (the slowest retail death in recent memory), it’s easy to forget that the company, which launched in Canada as Simpsons-Sears, a partnership between Sears Roebuck Co. of Chicago and the Robert Simpson Company of Toronto, was once entrenched in the national psyche.

The arrival of the Sears Wish Book was the start of Christmas. The youngest of three, I usually got the catalogue last, but when my turn finally came I didn’t let go. I would walk around hugging it close to my chest until Christmas morning. The catalogue—nearly 400 pages—was filled with the latest, greatest toys. For children, it was required reading before writing to Santa.

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The Sears Christmas Book, as it was known, was first published in the U.S. in 1933. It was 87 pages long and included Sears fruitcakes, the “Miss Pigtails” doll, a battery-powered toy car, a Mickey Mouse watch and Lionel electric trains. Twenty years later, the first Canadian edition of the Wish Book arrived. The run ended in 2011, when the final Wish Book was printed and distributed in the U.S. It made a comeback this year in a bid to revive sales with nostalgia, but it was a mere 120 pages and was sent only to the company’s very best American customers.

Rewind to the 1970s, when department stores had a certain grandeur and women got dressed up to go shopping. The iconic Simpsons department store, which was synonymous with Sears back then, was the grandest of them all. It was at the flagship Halifax store where I made my first trip through a revolving door and rode an escalator.

The mail-order business was equally impressive. From the comfort of home and by telephone, customers could order everything from kit houses to live chicks, insurance, and appliances. Sears sold it all.

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Memories came flooding back as I recently took a stroll through the vintage Sears Wish Books online (wishbookweb.com is a good place to start, although it’s heavy on the American editions). The cover of the 1974 edition was my Proustian madeleine. The little girl standing next to the Christmas tree is wearing the same long, red bib dress with ruffles and tulips that I’m wearing in one of my family’s Christmas cards from the time.

The pretty Christmas dress aside, Sears typically did convenience, not fashion, something that would haunt it to its bitter end. I hated getting my clothes from a Sears catalogue. While I clamoured for the Wish Book, I dreaded the arrival of the fall catalogue. But we spent summers at the cottage until Labour Day, so there was no other choice for back-to-school shopping. My mom loved the convenience of ordering by phone. She made a hobby of it, waiting for the truck to deliver the parcels, returning things we didn’t want or that didn’t fit, and then ordering all over again.


1985 Sears Canada Christmas Wish Book: 448 pages
Toys, dolls and games: 91 pages
Gifts under $15: ultra-light cassette player, $14.99.
My favourite things: three-piece vanity set, $19.99; three-tier makeup set with mirror, brushes, four blushes, four glosses and eight eye shadows, $7.99; all-leather figure skates, $69.99.

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In the summer of 1984, Sears had recently been renamed Sears Canada and it was in hiring mode. Given the store’s reputation—good pay, flexible hours and generous benefits—my mom and dad encouraged my older brother and me to apply. We both got an interview, even though I was only 15. It was my first job interview. My mom let me wear her grey leather slingbacks and matching purse. My brother and I practised asking and answering job-interview questions. My parents told us to be confident and to speak clearly.

I don’t remember much of the interview, but I do remember feeling elated immediately afterward. I knew it had gone well. A few days later, the phone rang. We were both hired. I was excited but nervous. I wasn’t legally able to start until after my 16th birthday in the fall, but I would be there for the busy Christmas season. My brother worked upstairs in catalogue returns, while I was a cashier in the Bargain Basement. And it was busy.

I had two main tasks: work fast enough to prevent a line from forming in my aisle and balance my till after each shift. I made it my mission to become the fastest cashier on the floor, and moved people like nobody’s business. And my cash always balanced. I learned math in that job and a lot about human behaviour.

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These were perfect part-time jobs for teenagers, and my brother and I worked them all through high school. The 1980s were the glory years of Sears. It was building out its national distribution network and investing heavily in technology. In 1986, long before anyone knew the significance of the wireless world that was coming, Sears installed one of the country’s most powerful IBM computers. Some say Sears was Canada’s original Amazon—it had the best technology, a nationwide distribution network and a mail-order business that sold everything, including the kitchen sink.

Sears also understood currency, specifically that plastic was the new cash. I had a front-row seat as the world discovered credit cards because Sears was an early adopter. Even at 16, I had to have a Sears credit card in order to get my employee discount. It was a powerful lesson that has guided my financial decisions throughout my life.

My customers were shopping in the Bargain Basement for a reason. Seeing poverty week after week was eye-opening and it bothered me to watch so many purchase their bargains on credit. I found myself playing a mental game and keeping track of transactions during my shift; for every person who paid in cash, about 10 used credit cards. It shocked me. I shared this observation with my parents, and they gave me perhaps the most important financial advice I’ve ever received: never carry debt—if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.

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2017 Sears Wish Book: 110 pages. U.S. distribution only.
My favourite things: Joe Boxer one-piece hooded pajamas in a reindeer print, $16.99; diamond earrings, $199; floral embroidered ankle boots, $29.99 (all prices US).

This Christmas, Sears is still encouraging Canadian customers to order from the catalogue, but there’s one hitch. “Shop at home and pick up in the U.S.,” reads the website. The page goes on to explain that items can be shipped to friends and family in the U.S. or to American hotels. It’s not exactly the height of convenience.

So, what happened? Long before e-commerce or the internet, there was the Sears catalogue telling us, “Buy it the easy way—order by phone.” This was its market to lose, and it did. Sears was a retail visionary for much of its history, putting the customer at the centre of its business model and conceiving new ways of making shopping easier and more convenient.

Just four months after filing for bankruptcy protection in June, the company declared the business in Canada was finished. It announced it was closing all 130 stores and putting another 12,000 employees out of work, with no severance pay and an underfunded pension plan. Watching Sears go down, frittering away its name, reputation, customer loyalty and deep roots in Canada, has been a bit like picking at an old wound. It hurts because the consensus, by all accounts, is that this didn’t have to happen. Former executives, employees and the public are furious with how the Canadian operations were treated by its U.S. parent company, in particular the board of directors and the majority shareholder, Sears Holdings.

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Money that came from the Canadian operations as part of its so-called reinvention was never reinvested in the company’s growth, as promised. Rather, it was sucked out and paid as a massive $1.5 billion special dividend to the U.S.-based majority shareholders. Most of the proceeds from store closures and layoffs flowed south of the border, even while the Canadian pension fund was racking up a deficit of $270 million.

It’s going to be a terrible Christmas for displaced Sears employees, many of whom were lifers and had spent their whole career loyal to a company that, in the end, cut them loose after mismanaging the money and failing in its attempts to modernize or reinvent itself.

Six weeks before Christmas 2016 my dishwasher broke down, barely a year after I’d bought it. I called Sears—I was a die-hard customer, largely because of the company’s customer care—and in due course a repairman arrived at my door. It took him all of six minutes to diagnose the problem, tell me it would cost $400 to fix and that I would be better off buying a new dishwasher. He charged me $100 for the pleasure of his visit.

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Needless to say, I was not happy about this kind of expense right before Christmas. Plus, I couldn’t get over the fact that a dishwasher barely 12 months old needed to be replaced. How was that possible?

Still, my spouse and I took a quick jaunt up the hill to the Sears Mall, a.k.a. North Hill Centre. In the appliance section, we recognized a face. It was the same grey-haired, blue-eyed gentleman who had sold us the dishwasher. He remembered us, too, and was more than happy to help again. He was a good talker, so good he almost talked us into buying another dishwasher that night. We were ready to sign, until he tried to get us to buy the extended warranty.

I had no complaints about the warranty. In fact, it seemed way too good to be true. It covered the dishwasher for four years, and if, after that time, we hadn’t used it, we would get a full refund in the form of a store credit. Under normal circumstances, that was a customer-first warranty. But we looked around us, noted the barren aisles, lack of customers and the dated look and couldn’t imagine Sears would be around in four years. Even so, we didn’t realize how bad things were.

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Back home, I decided to get a second opinion. I found an independent repairman, who fixed the appliance in 20 minutes and only charged me for the service call, a flat $120.

Furious at Sears for having tried to sell me another dishwasher, I called to complain. After pushing a few buttons and speaking with a receptionist, I was, to my horror, connected to head office in Toronto, specifically the vice-president responsible for customer service. Embarrassed, I left a brief message, apologizing for bothering with my little complaint, and hung up.

The next day, I got a call from a local Sears manager who offered to reimburse me for the service charge. More than that, she wanted to hear all about my experience and to make things right. She told me this was a learning experience for the team and the technician, who reported directly to her. I was once again a happy Sears customer, in awe of a business that in this day and age still cared about people and customers.

Of course, this day and age is not a happy one for Sears Canada. That makes clicking through years of Wish Books online doubly nostalgic. It takes me back in time, in particular to Christmas 1990, my first trip home from university. The memories come flooding back. I can feel the warmth of the house as we brought in the Christmas tree from the bitter cold and struggled to get it up the stairs. I can still smell the gingerbread and cinnamon from my mom’s Christmas baking. I can hear laughter and glasses clinking as my siblings and I decorated the tree.

Back at the front door, the mailman finally arrives carrying a big book wrapped in plastic and brown paper. The little girl practically knocks him over as she grabs it from his hands. Her mother shoots her a dirty look and the girl holds her breath in fear, hoping this doesn’t turn into a teaching moment. It doesn’t. Her mom simply touches her shoulders and pushes her off into the other room. The girl throws herself on the floor in a corner and starts poring over each and every glorious page.

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