Sometimes you just want to shop in person for certain items. For me, recently, it was for a down duvet for the Big Weed. I did recall seeing down duvets at Sears Canada, here in Toronto, Canada, so we made the trip to our local Sears at Scarborough Town Centre. Not only did they not have down duvets, but they did not even have any staff on the floor to help us out. Yes, there was much more help online at Sears.ca, but this is true for a lot of other bricks and mortar and online stores as well. I called around the local Sears, asking for duvets made of down, and there were none to even be displayed. Their solution: order online. What a total failure of a retail experience. Why set up and maintain a retail bricks and mortar chain, and then tell your customers to shop online? Overall I can see why Sears Canada has had trouble in the recent past, and why they will continue to struggle in the future. Will the chain still be around in 5 years, I am unsure.
The Big Weed is cold at night, so she needs a newer duvet. We had previously bought duvets as both Sears and Walmart. Two Walmarts yielded very inferior and thin duvets, so we passed. The local Ikea also had only thin but expensive for their offerings, down duvets. We also passed. Which other retailers are there around?
Down duvets are not rocket science, but there is a little bit to learn. There are terms such as “loft power”, duck or goose down, the difference between brown and white down, the density of the outer covering. I had expected to learn more about down duvets at my local Sears. This turned out to be completely incorrect.
On Saturday morning the Big Weed and I headed down to the local Sears at Scarborough Town Centre. We’ve shopped there a lot and knew where to find the duvet section. Much to our surprise there was not a sales assistant in sight for either bedding, furniture or housewares for over 30 minutes. The only sales staff around were in the Craftsman tools and appliances area, and I was not about to ask about duvets with a guy versed in stoves.
So it was self serve for us. This turned out to be the watch word for our shopping experience. We found the duvet section by ourselves. By ourselves we determined that Sears did not have any down duvets on the floor that we could find. We left and at home got on Sears Canada’s internet site. It turns out Sears Canada sells more down duvets than synthetic ones, but none were displayed at their store.
Ok, So Sears does sell down duvets. Maybe just the Scarborough Town Centre location was out of stock. I use the phone and call around and it turns out that all the Sears within 15 kms of me have no down duvets in stock. I finally get the manager of the bedding section at Scarborough Town and she confirms that she has no down duvets on the floor and none in the stockroom. She could also not t ell me when any would come in. Her recommendation was to order online and pick up at the store.
My whole reason for going to Sears in the first place was because I wanted to see the product before I bought it. The down duvets I was interested in cost between $200-$400CAD, and all I can see is a web page with tech specs?
This is not my first time researching on the Sears Canada site, so I expected inconsistent information about their products. This turned out to be true not only for the gas stoves I had researched in the past but for down duvets today. Sears lists loft power, size of the duvet, amount of down, type of down, but very inconsistently amongst their products. This makes it difficult to compare between models. In the end I gave up trying to learn from Sears and explored the internet on my own. We did find two products that could fit our needs, but there was no way to determine of any of the stores near us actually carried the product. Not good.
My shopping experience for down duvets at Sears was abysmal. I wanted a bricks and mortar experience and was willing to pay for it, but Sears simply pushed me to their internet site, which they do somewhat poorly and inconsistently. I might as well have gone to any of their competitors instead, because I still could not touch an actual product. If Sears does not want to offer products that customers can touch and feel, then why have a retail bricks and mortar store?
If you hear that Sears Canada’s retail sales and profits have nosedived, after reading this article you can see why. Why do Canadian retailers do their job so poorly?
