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Retail cathedrals
Winnipeg - Sunday, December 30, 2012
by:Timothy W. Shire

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The shopping events of the year are over, Black Friday, Christmas shopping and Boxing Day. Consumerism is oddly enough concentrated into the last month and half of the calendar year, at least that is when most retailers do most of their business. The whole process used to involve the arrival of Mr. Eaton’s catalogue or perhaps the Sears Wish Book. With these wonders we carefully went page by page doing our shopping then writing out the order with all the catalogue numbers and pages carefully filling in the boxes and in a couple of weeks the merchandise would arrive at the post office with the post master taking care as to who picked up the mail to make sure that no secrets were divulged ahead of the great day.

Then with cars and a few highways Christmas shopping might involve visiting a department store or two to augment the local shops and stores. In the 1970s we began to see malls with a variety of stores and the crowds of shoppers herded about with Christmas music.

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The top picture on this page is of Winnipeg’s largest mall, the St. Vital affair and that picture was taken in the food court where the fast food equals the cost of visiting a nice restaurant and people kept moving the chairs around. The mall experience is what it is and without the department store anchors a person would find it pretty hard to complete a shopping list.

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Shopping malls appear to be losing the struggle with the “big box” shopping outlets, “the cathedrals” or the retail experience. Winnipeg has just witnessed the opening of an IKEA store (above) with its massive food facility where meatballs and fries cost less than $4.00. The place simply scrambles a person’s sense of space as its showroom area stretches on for a stroll of perhaps two hours or more. The like the days of the catalogue with the numbers of your selection scribbled down on a nice little sharpened pencil you to the vast warehouse area to load up your purchase and head to check out. The IKEA experience does work but the size is extraordinary but then consider the mall, it too is just way to big.

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For many consumers the ultimate shopping experience is at a store where you have to pay money just to shop. The idea that you have to buy a membership at Costco (above) really stretches the whole consumerism envelop. The dedicated Costco shopper has a few things to attract them. The prices seem to offer good value although this may be debated, the huge stores are spacious and very well lit and perhaps most pleasant is that they have samples. I think the samples are the only reason to go to Costco but I do not intend to put out money to allow me to enter a store.

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The master big box outlet is “Wally’s” good ole Walmart (left) the new super versions of this chain are much bigger than big but there are no samples, while the quality of the goods is suspect. The reason to go to Walmart is the people you see there. These two ladies comparing their receipts both have brilliantly colour hair and in a Walmart they fit right in.

More and more shoppers in 2012 did their shopping the old fashion way, only now instead of scribbling numbers into little boxes on the order form for the catalogue they sit before their computer, iPad or iPhone and do their shopping from home. The only deterrent for this form of shopping is the really high cost of shipping the goods. Any and all price advantages of shopping on line are gobbled up with shipping charges.

To end the year and this story I have a completely unrelated picture taken in Russell Manitoba kind of a nice way to put shopping out of one’s mind for another season. Maybe next year we can just give poker chips and lottery tickets.

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