[miketoronto]

Eatons made some bad choices which helped lead to it's falling as a retail empire.

EATONS expanded way to much. And sadly one of their moves that helped their downfall was their pride in downtowns.
EATONS opened department stores in downtowns of many small cities, that just could not support department stores anymore. Ontop of that they built mini Eaton Centres in these small cities. And that lead to massive loss of money as these malls just could not compete.

Eaton Centre worked in Toronto. But it did not work in Brantford, Kitchener, Peterborough, and other cities they built these malls in.

The EATONS family just did not care anymore, when it comes down to it.

The Downtown Toronto EATONS was "the grand lady" of them all. SEARS while maintaining a nice store, really did not use the downtown store to their advantage. Yonge Dundas is a huge money making spot. But SEARS just does not care.

The SEARS store in downtown Toronto is still in many ways an EATONS, as regular SEARS stores don't have the selection the downtown SEARS has or $200 shirts. But SEARS really could have done even more if they wanted to.

SIMONS is our next major Canadian store I think. SIMONS seems to be expanding slow and making money. I hope they don't expand everywhere as they are a special treat when you go to Quebec. But I think they may be the next famous family run retail store in Canada. But thats because the family cares about running a good store.

The EATONS thing though is just a disgrace to Canada if you ask me. How we let a national icon like that go down, is just sad.
My mom remembers when she was dating my dad and she would come to Toronto to visit him. The main thing you had to go was go to EATONS downtown.
That place was a special place, and a legend. Even the newer store that was built when EATON CENTRE was built, still had memories to it, and I remember special trips to that store at Christmas time.

But man EATONS before the family let it go down, knew how to do things. If you ever see the COLLEGE PARK store in Toronto and see the CARLU floor. Man, EATONS was amazing.