We all saw it coming sooner or later amidst a changing panorama of retail market conditions. Sears will close 59 stores across Canada after seeking court protection from its creditors in a move to restructure itself, but will this be enough?

For over a decade Sears has been suffering the test of time in the retail sector, having entered the 21st century without a solid plan to fight the competition, and the new online platform for retail distribution.

I remember the shopping experience even before Sears acquired Eaton in Canada in 1999, back when the Toronto flagship store downtown at Yonge and Dundas represented an important landmark for the pre-eCommerce era.

Today Sears is folding after a series of bad decisions made in their American HQ by the top management team, which failed to understand the modern market model of the new century. They blame it on Amazon but the mistakes started to happen twenty years ago, before the online shopping giant became a sensation.

How does  such big brand name miss the target?- some may ask in a bit of confusion. One part of the answer can be found in the lack of vision of the company in understanding the market, the absence of storytelling, but most importantly the customer and its needs.

Here’s a list of mistakes Sears collected through the  years:

• lack of multimedia strategy and innovation
• no significant digital platform to sell their products online
  
• old design store which provided a look and feel of early 90s
  
• same old brands and lack of new ones (aka stale style)
  
• weak new logo and branding strategy
  
• worn out management
  

All in all we cannot only blame business disruptors like Amazon for Sears’ failure to understand the market, but surely the archaic methodology of interfacing towards customers has contributed to its demise. Blame the old school marketing department that prefers relying on numbers rather than listening the true needs of the shoppers out there.

That’s the very same marketing department that constantly believed paper and flier ads were still a thing. Boy, they were wrong. Mailboxes constantly stuffed with pamphlets and seasonal catalogs failed to engage the Millennial generation (and became a nuisance for homeowners), but rather appealed to the same old crowd of customers for the past decades.

However shopping habits evolved with the competition selling different products to different crowds. Sears failed to understand their marketing strategy had a foot stuck in the 20th century. They dismissed storytelling to engage buyers and kept selling the very same products the competition had at cheaper prices.

It’s sad to see such iconic brand slowly fading to black, but new commerce platforms are emerging willing to listen customer first and most importantly willing to adapt to changing times.

the men at work will call me anything but my name

Today I was shelving reserves and I noticed that what a customer has on hold can say a lot about them.

The Gilmores are planning a trip to Italy. They’ve got about 6 books on hold, all travel guides for southern Italy and Venice.

Mr Fitzgerald must have just discovered Game of Thrones because he’s got the entire first and second seasons waiting for him.

Miss Patel is one of our younger customers who has just started reading the Harry Potter series. For the past few months she’s had the series on hold. She’s almost finished because today I saw Deathly Hallows on hold for her.

Mrs Robinson might be teaching one of her kids to speak French because there are a bunch of learning French books and DVDs for children on the shelf for her. And she might be learning it herself because I saw a French grammar workbook.

There’s a separate shelf for reserves for staff members, and I love looking at it to see who’s reading and seeing what.

_{(Names of customers have, of course, been changed.)}

If we close at 6:00, there’s always that one customer (and sometimes it’s the same person every week!) who comes in at 5:58 wanting to resolve the issues with their account. And it’s never a 40 cent fine, it’s something complicated like a lost item and there’s replacement fees to negotiate.

Typically I’m more than willing to work my library magic and negotiate account issues, but I need a little more time than 2 minutes to do this.

librarianproblems:

UGH THIS YES. This post perfectly sums up the past 3 weeks.

I don’t know if I’m going to laugh or cry.

This doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, it’s great. It’s like we’re part of a little club.

blairamok:

aaaaaaa kirk is here!! he made it!! sitting side by side to another made by @deepspacequeer

I love seeing people grow little collections of my stuff!! thank you so much!!

thylaforever:

So THRILLED with my set of Spirk coasters from @deepspacequeer! They are sparkly and sturdy, and I found a cute black wire basket to hold them safe. Silas is a sweetheart to work with, so I hope everyone can visit their tumblr and etsy and give them some love!

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Think about it: would you rather have 100 customers paying $50 each, or 200 customers paying $10 each? 

The answer is the former. 

The reason is that company growth doesn’t come from the number of customers, but…

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How to improve the user experience? Here are some practical actions. When reading the pillars of user experiences, surely, some actions and strategies that allow promoting it come to mind. Precisely, here we will delve into those key practices that drive the User Experience and guarantee the achievement of great results. You should consider a usability testing framework.

Photo: Unsplash

1.…

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It’s time to start getting customers to connect and engage. But with so many other companies doing the same thing, what does it take to promote your Facebook business on this massive social media platform? 

Create a Facebook Ad

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