Norm Potoski, dealer/owner of Campbell River Sears, still gets calls all the time asking where they are, even after being where they are for almost a year now.
July 1 will be the one-year anniversary of the move to their new location on 12th Avenue, but he totally understands why many people don’t know that.
Sears isn’t exactly the kind of store you need all the time, after all.
It’s completely understandable that people wouldn’t have needed anything from Sears in the last year, and therefore wouldn’t have needed to look for them.
“We don’t sell stuff that you need every day,” Potoski says.
“When you need groceries, you go there all the time. If you need a dishwasher, well, you don’t need a dishwasher every week. You don’t need a fridge every week. You don’t need a bed every week. You’re not driving around town thinking, ‘I wonder where Sears is,’” he says.
“You go looking for Sears when you need something we sell, and then you find out we’re not where we used to be, and then you come looking for us.”
And look for them they do, Potoski says, because they know they’re going to get excellent service when they show up, and they’re going to get products they can count on for a long time.
Potoski says one of their major strengths in that department is in their bed section.
“We have the best guarantee out there,” he says, pointing at the 365-Day Comfort Guarantee on the wall.
“Nobody else is going to give you that kind of guarantee. You buy a bed, you take it home, and you get a 365-day sleep guarantee. So you take the bed home, and sure, it’s gonna feel great today, and it’s gonna feel great two weeks from now, but is it gonna feel great in nine months? Maybe not. You’d hope so, but if it doesn’t, well, you just bring it back.”
Okay, but what’s keeping people from just coming back in and getting a new bed every 11 months saying it’s not comfortable anymore, even if it is, just so they can constantly have a new one?
“If your bed is comfortable, are you gonna want to return it just because Sears says you can?” he asks, rhetorically.
“No, if you’re comfortable in that bed, you’re gonna keep it.”
Not only that, but they guarantee all their beds for 10 years from manufacturer defect, Potoski says, recounting the story of losing a big sale.
“This guy comes in wanting to buy a new bed to replace his old one, and I said ‘how old is it?’ and he says, ‘Nine years and two months.’”
The man had purchased it on his daughter’s birthday, so he remembered the day.
Potoski told the man to phone the manufacturer, gave him the number, and the manufacturer sent someone out to look at the bed. They determined it had a defect, and he was directed to go back into Sears and pick out a new one.
“He was in here ready to spend $3,000 on a new bed,” Potoski says, smiling about the lost sale, “but he didn’t need to,” because Potoski reminded him about their guarantees instead of just selling him a new one because he could.
That’s the kind of thing that keeps people coming back, he says.
“We want to help you get what you need,” Potoski says.
“It’s not about us, it’s about you.”
And of course, they are still where people come to pick up their catalogue or online orders, which is what many people know Sears for.
“Our catalogue sales are still strong,” he admits, and while they don’t get a lot of direct revenue from orders through the catalogue or website, it does create traffic in the store, and reminds people when they come to pick up their order where to come the next time they need a fridge, or a barbecue, or a lawnmower.
But they’re not going to route you through the beds and fridges in the store to get to where you pick up the shirt you ordered online, and ask you while you’re in there anyway if you know about their warrantees and products – because that’s not what you came in for.
It’s enough for them that you know where they are when you need them to be.
Which, by the way, is on 12th Avenue downtown.
