Rothenburger — Should we be more worried about Target?

COLUMN — A lot of people like shopping. I’m not one of them.

I rather enjoy a good hardware store, or browsing the auto section of Canadian Tire, but you’ll seldom see me on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon at a big box retailer tossing pizzas and underwear and bric-a-brac into a groaning shopping cart.

This is why I have no way of judging whether the demise of Target is a bad thing for Canadian shoppers. I listen intently as the media play interviews with department-store faithful who all say much the same thing: “Naw, I’m not surprised. They didn’t know what Canadians want.”

What I’m wondering is, what do Canadians want from a store? What does that mean, “what Canadians want”?

It seems to me that people who shop want a deal, but what do they shop for? Look at any department store and the merchandise is pretty much the same. There’s a clothing section, a potato-chip and pizza section, an electronics section, a cheap-furniture section, pots and pans, and exercise videos.

I think target might have been missing potato chips and pizza, but it has a pretty good coffee bar. It is not a particularly warm store, decor-wise, but it looks to me as though it has pretty much the same stuff as any other big-box store. I shopped there maybe four times in a year and a half, and almost bought a shredder there once.

Big boxes come and go. What seems different this time is that nobody is in mourning over Target. People are sorry for the employees who will be out of work, but there’s no panic over the loss of a shopping option.

Big boxes come and go. Big box openings seem to cause more anxiety than big box closings, though when Zeller’s shut down its North Shore store several years ago and moved to Sahali Centre Mall, it was a big deal.

A rezoning for the Real Canadian Super Store made the headlines for weeks, forced one of the longest public hearings in the history of Kamloops, had City councillors going at each other hammer and tongs, and likely had a major impact on the next civic election.

Target’s decision not to keep the old Zeller’s sandwich shop was the cause for more grieving than the closure of the entire Target store. Walmart’s move to get serious about selling groceries generated more letters to the editor than the closing of 133 Target stores and the loss of 117,000 jobs.

Sometimes, it’s a tradeoff. Home Hardware closed its Aberdeen store and settled in one on Halston. Rona couldn’t make a go of it in Aberdeen but seems to be doing okay in Mount Paul.

So, no, I don’t really know what Canadians want. Maybe the ambivalence over closing Target comes from the fact big box stores are now common place. When they first started coming in, it seemed like the end of the world to those who feared the days of the shopping mall were numbered, and the arrival of shopping paradise for those with “sale” and “special” in their eyes.

Now, they all have their own piece of the pie. Walmart, Cosco, Sears, the Bay, Canadian Tire, Home Sense co-exist with the shops downtown and there’s something for everybody. You can brave the bumper benders in the big-box parking lots or swear at the kiosks on Victoria Street, take your pick. You can buy a stereo or a smart phone in a big box or in an electronics specialty store.

We’ve pretty much got it all. One less or more won’t change our lives much. If you do your shopping with a shopping cart, there’s still plenty of space to do it in. I don’t think it’s as much about what Canadians want, but what they’ve already got.

Still, losing a retail option is never a positive thing. Maybe Canadians won’t know what they’ve had till it’s gone.

If only Tim’s were still Canadian…

Mel Rothenburger can be contacted at armchairmayor@gmail.com. He’s on Twitter @MelRothenburger, and Facebook at facebook.com/melrothenburger.7.