Sears in Golden may have changed hands recently, but don’t worry, it is here to stay.
“It’s been going really well. We’ve had a bit of re-organization, but it’s coming along. People are starting to know we’re here, and that it’s changed hands,” said Murray McLaren.
It was two months ago that McLaren decided to purchase the Golden Sears location, after the previous operator of the store had to step back due to illness.
“It’s a small town, so we heard about the opportunity by word of mouth,” said McLaren. “Just the name Sears. It’s been around for so long, and it’s so well-established. I thought that you can’t go too wrong with that.”
Sears Golden is a home store, carrying various brands in major appliances, mattresses, television and more. But on top of that, it is a way to bypass the pitfalls of online shopping.
“We’re also a doorway to thousands of other products because we can order in anything, and the prices are the same right across the country,” said McLaren.
Instead of shopping online, or driving to Calgary for some of their major purchases, customers can go into the store to order anything Sears has to offer, and still deal with a live customer representative. It also makes shipping and returns easier, as the store will take of it for you.
As an added bonus, ordering in store keeps the money in the community, instead of sending it to Calgary or other larger centres.
“Anything ordered through the catalogue or retail usually takes about a week to come in,” said McLaren.
Sears has been going through a bit of restructuring as of late, including the closure of several stores, but McLaren would like people to know that these changes are not a sign of trouble, but rather a realization that the business model needs to be altered.
“They’ve closed a lot of the larger, big department stores. They found that they just weren’t working, not to their advantage. They’re really reinforcing the smaller stores, and supporting them much better,” he said. Although they have closed a few of the bigger locations, they have reopened about 100 new home town stores.
“They’re trying to get back to the roots of what Sears used to be.”
Sears is still located beside the Golden Bottle Depot on 9th Street South. Go on in and check out what they’ve got, and if you place an order right away it should still make it here in time for Christmas.
