Reid and Campbell to close its doors
[attach]4222[/attach]On a Thursday morning in April, Reid and Campbell Inc. is a scene of organized chaos, with boxes and marked-down electronics everywhere.
The “retirement” sale has been going on since January. Cleanup has started and the store is almost bare. Co-owner Keith Maitland jokes about feeling like a lawyer because of all the papers on the floor of his office.
After 77 years of serving the community, Reid and Campbell Inc. will be closing its doors. The electronics store, established amid the Great Depression, operated at 2013 Yonge St. since 1933.
Despite their beginning in an unstable economy, the business was able to flourish.
“The reward of this business has always been the customers,” Maitland said in an interview in his cluttered office at the back of the store. “Our relationship with them and their trust and confidence in us.”
Serving families of customers that go down three to four generations, a lot of the business came from referrals and recommendations.
It is no surprise that longtime customers will hate to see them go.
“We can spend a long time on the telephone just sorting out messes people get in just by pushing the wrong button on their remote control,” Maitland said, noting that Reid and Campbell was one of few companies that provided no-charge service to their customers.
The business not only sold electronics but also provided in-house service for its products.
“It’s more than fix-it service,” Maitland said. “It’s a service service.”
Despite thriving for seven decades, it was the constantly evolving retail landscape that brought Maitland and co-owner Peter Campbell to decide “it’s time” to close the doors.
“Over the years technology has changed (and) demographics have changed,” Maitland said. “People are buying products now that are disposable, so the service business gradually went down.”
The co-owners realized their business was faced with two choices: to start over at this age and stage to revitalize, or simply to stop. No longer able to compete with big box electronic companies, they chose the latter.
“The heart of Canadian progress has been small businesses,” Maitland said. “They drive the economy, but they are being phased out by these enormous operations.”
The family business was started by brothers-in-law Howard Reid and Matt Campbell. It was passed down in 1972 to Maitland, who is Reid’s son-in-law, and Peter, Campbell’s son.
They are now getting ready to call it a day, but the owners and employees still have a long way to go before they say goodbye to the Leaside neighbourhood. An impressive upstairs museum of antique electronics (dating back to the 1800s), piles of paperwork and documents, and 77 years worth of stuff will need to be cleaned out of the store.
Although Maitland says he is sad to see the business go, at age 68, he is glad to now have more time to himself and his six grandchildren.
“Things change and we just have to adapt,” he said. “That’s the way things are: time marches on.”