Tag: Vintage Department Stores

SEARS IN ITS HEYDAY — “THERE’S MORE FOR YOUR LIFE AT SEARS”

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Believe it or not, Sears has an early online-shopping story that deserves a report all by itself. I’m working on that one. But for now, let’s go back to Sears during its heyday.

If you were watching football on a Sunday, it seemed like you were guaranteed to see a Sears commercial somewhere along the way. And that memory actually has some history behind it — Sears was buying advertising around NFL broadcasts as far back as the 1970s, including ABC’s NFL coverage and CBS NFC games. By 1981, an NFL executive said the first 32 pages of the Sears Christmas catalog were NFL merchandise.

This commercial comes from 1983, and watch how much Sears manages to squeeze into 30 seconds. Cheryl Tiegs and fashion. Winnie-the-Pooh for the kids. A big stereo. Lamps and home furnishings. Craftsman tools. It’s not really a commercial for any one product — the product is Sears itself.

And then there’s that jingle:

“There’s more for your life at Sears.”

You heard those few notes and immediately knew what was coming.

Cheryl Tiegs was especially important to Sears in this era. She had launched a Sears clothing collection in 1980, and the company used her in its catalogs and television commercials to shake off some of its old-fashioned image. By 1984, TIME was writing about a revitalized Sears, with its catalog reaching roughly 12 million homes and the company operating more than 800 stores and thousands of catalog-sales locations.

And Sears was enormous. In 1984 it reported a record $38.83 billion in revenue and $1.45 billion in net income. This was still the retailer Americans measured everybody else against.

I think that’s what makes this commercial hit differently today. Sears wasn’t trying to convince America that it mattered.

Everybody already knew it did.

Do you remember shopping at Sears — and did Sunday football immediately make you think of that jingle?

Cathy Rigby Built Quite a Career After the Olympics

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This old Cathy Rigby Stayfree commercial brings back a completely different Cathy Rigby memory for me.

Back in the 1990s, I worked as a Communications Specialist at Caldor’s corporate headquarters in Norwalk. We were opening a new store in Pennsylvania and Cathy Rigby was there to meet customers and sign autographs. What I remember most about her personally was how soft-spoken and very polite she was. Nothing flashy at all, and that stuck with me.

Most of us remember Cathy first as the young American gymnast who became one of the faces of the sport. She competed in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics, but something I had forgotten is that her most historic medal didn’t come at the Olympics. In 1970, she won silver on the balance beam at the World Championships, becoming the first American gymnast ever to win a World Championships medal.

After retiring from competition, she did something a lot of famous athletes struggle to do — she kept finding ways to turn that recognition into a long career.

There were the Stayfree commercials, which became one of her best-known endorsement campaigns. She also spent 18 years covering gymnastics for ABC Sports, did other television and fitness work, and then built a whole second career on stage.

And that second career became huge. Rigby began playing Peter Pan in the 1970s and returned to the role for decades, eventually earning a Tony nomination in 1991. She and her husband also moved into producing through McCoy Rigby Entertainment.

Then there’s Caldor itself, another memory for a lot of us. The chain was founded in 1951 by Carl and Dorothy Bennett, and even the name came from them — CAL from Carl and DOR from Dorothy. By the time I worked there, it had grown into one of the Northeast’s best-known discount chains.

So for me, this commercial connects three different things: a familiar face from television, a remarkable post-Olympic career, and my own memory of meeting Cathy Rigby years later through Caldor.

Do you remember her most from gymnastics, the Stayfree commercials, Peter Pan, or somewhere else?

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