One of the items on Calvin McDonald's Christmas list was to visit his store in Prince George.
The president and CEO of Sears Canada came close to a personal tour during the summer but hit a routing problem on the road. He made Prince George a personal mission after that missed attempt and Wednesday he got his wish.
McDonald and other senior managers from Sears headquarters paid a visit to the Pine Centre Mall location just as they finished putting the ribbons and bows on their seasonal look.
There was a theme to the room, and it strongly references the company's Christmas Wish Book, an iconic Canadian catalogue now celebrating its 60th anniversary.
"My first job was delivering the Sears catalogue as a kid in my hometown, London, Ontario," said McDonald. "This year, I actually went back and delivered some again on my old route, in some cases to the same families who got them back then. The wish book has such equity, I think."
Focusing their retail efforts on strengths like the Wish Book, certain departments within the store they have particular success with, and product lines recognized for their quality, is part of the new stamp McDonald is trying to put on the national retail chain. He is also putting a corporate emphasis on the frontline customer experience with store clerks.
These sound like retail fundamentals, but McDonald admits that Sears had "lost its way" and veered off those objectives. He has been hearing about it from staff imploring him, since he became national boss in 2011, to return to those fundamentals.
If the staff weren't getting through, the corporate numbers were. Share earnings were down, profits had turned into losses, and many individual stores were losing market share. McDonald said that in the four years prior to his arrival, Sears bled a billion dollars in losses.
"I sum it up that we lost our retail rhythm," he said. "Merchants stopped focusing on great quality, innovation, inspiring the customer. We changed our customer policies too far and took us away from treating the customer the way each customer wanted."
Yet, he said, in some sales categories the store remained strong, even the best in Canada. The store network was there - 30,000 employees from coast to coast - so winning the basic battles became their collective goal.
"Eighty-five per cent of Canadians live within a 10 minute drive of a Sears pickup agent," he said, either near one of their 195 department stores, 269 hometown dealer stores, and about 1,500 catalogue/online pickup posts. "I am humbled by the history of Sears. We started out as a catalogue company, very small and rural-Canada focused, then grew and made our way into major centres through some acquisitions, and we have to get back to the core of what we are, fix that first.
"A big part of our performance is what we've done to ourselves, or more importantly what we haven't done," McDonald said. "If we change our behaviour and focus on product and customer, we can grow. You can't trade on your past, you have to trade on your present and future. We need to reconnect with Canadian families and fight for relevance. It is a competitive landscape but we know we have some advantages."
Part of the competitive landscape is under construction in the same mall Sears lives in in Prince George. Target is setting up to open as the other anchor retailer at Pine Centre. Within a 10 minute drive is The Bay, within a 15 minute drive is Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Wal-Mart. All have an element of competition against Sears.
"What I love about retail is, it is a battle," said McDonald. "I don't think you'd have a stomach for retail if you don't have the stomach for getting in the ring and fight for the privilege of the consumer's wallet. Others coming into the market just adds to that. The customer wins and for us the fight is just made more interesting."
Some of the battles had to be conceded. Since McDonald became Sears boss, three major-city stores have closed, but four others received major renovations. The bottom line is improving, with the third quarter bleeding less than half what it was in the 2011 third quarter. There were some high-profile layoffs, but an informal poll of employees at the Prince George store gave glowing reports about wearing the Sears uniform especially lately.
The employees spoke highly of changes in the product lines, and in the level of internal communication. McDonald said he was holding an annual face-to-face conference with store managers, a quarterly town hall, and a weekly personal blog, all aimed at getting the staff's ideas and concerns into his ears and letting them know what his expectations were of them.
McDonald said he had expected faster results on some of the changes, but many positive signs were also emerging from the transformation program.
One of McDonald's favourite signs is a grassroots high five from the Canadian public over their latest commercial. Sears commissioned a 60-second jingle entitled The Gift, but his young son
instantly wondered where he could download it, and couldn't understand why it was only one minute long. Sears returned to the artist - media company Grayson Matthews - and asked for a full version to go with the ad. The whole song is called Best Year and is available for free on the Sears website (the video clips were provided from the home movies of actual Sears employees) and has been getting tens of thousands of downloads. The song has a cheery, accessible, catchy pop personality, which McDonald is now trying to apply to the corporate personality as a whole.
