Canadian Retail Thread

[miketoronto]

Scarborough Town Centre in Toronto is celebrating 40 years.
This is a special mall for me, as I grew up 5 minutes from it.

Check out the videos. I remember the giant Orange. Sadly the last couple years have seen Scarborough Town Centre lost basically all mom and pop local restaurants. So now its all chains. But before that we had a number of unique dining establishments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0h91...Ims4agbXik7rKw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxUJb...Ims4agbXik7rKw

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by miketoronto

I don't think it is silly at all. Cities the size of Bath in Canada also for the most part have dismal downtown vibrancy. And regardless of age, a city the size of Calgary just for example, should not have less vibrancy downtown then a small city like Bath. Even taking into account tourism, age, etc.
Downtown Calgary and the downtowns of many Canadian cities used to be busier 50 years ago than they are now, even though their populations are larger now.
And it comes down to a large extent on where retail, restaurants, etc have been locating.

Canada is not as bad as the USA, although we have to watch that we don't end up like the USA. But Canada is also not as good as Australian cities. Australian cities of all sizes have much more healthy downtowns which contain more retail offerings then similar sized cities in Canada.
Downtown Adelaide, Perth, or Brisbane can easily blow away downtown Calgary, Edmonton, or Winnipeg.
And it should not be that way. Our cities should be vibrant as well.
But Australian cities were for the most part even in the smaller centres, able to keep the choice retail in the downtown core.
Tiffany's opened in downtown Brisbane. They are not opening in Brisbane's version of Chinook Mall (where Tiffany's is opening in Calgary).

The Australian cities you listed are more in the Vancouver class save for Adelaide. And it is pretty easy to find large malls in Adelaide. Marion Mall is bigger than Chinook (1.44 milion square feet of retail space), Tea Tree is close to Chinook's size before the recent expansion (1 million square feet of retail space). They both have around A$500 per square foot for sales which is high since it includes anchors at first glance.

And this is only one operating company, Westfield (http://corporate.westfield.com/prope...kes/?region=SA

[trebor204]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I think there is some kind of law that says that if a mall has those type of white arches it just has to die.

These pictures remind me of Greengate mall (another dead mall)


http://www.greengatemallrevisited.co...otoid=23053130

Yep white arches.

[MalcolmTucker]

Were the arches signature elements of an anchor tenant perhaps?

[SignalHillHiker]

A little good news for us.

Originally Posted by Trevor3

I'm in Fredericton for the weekend and spoke with an employee at H&M who mentioned that "we're coming your way soon" after I said I was from NL. Since everyone automatically assumes you're from St. John's when you say you're from Newfoundland, I believe they will actually be coming your way soon!

[vid]

It would be ironic if the location was in Corner Brook.

[yyzer]

We were at Square One mall in Mississauga tonight. On leaving the mall, noticed new outdoor signage at the Bay...



I dunno, definitely a change from the old yellow signage...I posted a survey question on my local blog asking thumbs up or down, and as this is a Canada-wide change, feel free to visit and vote!

http://randyselzer.wordpress.com/201...ay-rebranding/

[connect2source]

Hmmmm, gee I'd never guess there was the 'old' bay logo there before

A simple power-washing, to get the remnants of the old sign off would have made a far better impression, however, we'll always have a glimpse into the past on this one.

[SpongeG]

they need to change the signage at the door too

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by connect2source

Hmmmm, gee I'd never guess there was the 'old' bay logo there before

A simple power-washing, to get the remnants of the old sign off would have made a far better impression, however, we'll always have a glimpse into the past on this one.

Probably left the "shadow" of the old sign for recognition reasons. I'm sure it will be fixed up at some point. The former "The Bay" logo was derived from the former Morgan's which was a Montreal based department store that was purchased by HBC in the 1960s.

[MTLskyline]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Probably left the "shadow" of the old sign for recognition reasons. I'm sure it will be fixed up at some point. The former "The Bay" logo was derived from the former Morgan's which was a Montreal based department store that was purchased by HBC in the 1960s.

Interesting! I never knew that!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan%27s

[yaletown_fella]

Mark my words. The bunker on the north-east corner of Bay and Bloor will be torn down and redeveloped into a Saks store with a highrise component.

[LeftCoaster]

I'll mark em but that ain't going to happen.

The Bay store may get renovated into a Saks but they two 40 storey buildings on top aren't going anywhere.

[Airboy]

Heard from a Very Reliable sourse there will only be 3 SACs in Canada. TO, Vancouver and Calgary. All else will probably get the discount stores.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Airboy

Heard from a Very Reliable sourse there will only be 3 SACs in Canada. TO, Vancouver and Calgary. All else will probably get the discount stores.

That sounds about right, although I have wondered whether there won't eventually be a 4th one in a GTA mall, if the first three succeed? Time will tell.

[vanatox]

Originally Posted by Airboy

Heard from a Very Reliable sourse there will only be 3 SACs in Canada. TO, Vancouver and Calgary. All else will probably get the discount stores.

According to a spokesperson with The Hudson's Bay Company, one will open in Montreal as well.

http://www.retail-insider.com/2013/0...-montreal.html

[miketoronto]

Seriously this is getting a little out of control. There is no reason we need Saks in Canada.

The continued carbon copy culture will soon turn all our cities into little copies of each other, with nothing unique anymore.

Not that I buy high end all that much. But I will continue to spend my high end dollars at Holt Renfrew and unique one of a kind shops. Not at American transplants, which I have to say just do not have the class of Holt Renfrew (save for the the "real" Saks in Manhattan).

Canadian retail is probably not going to remain strong if we keep this over expansion of carbon copy retail going. We are probably going to see sales per sq foot decline and much more lackluster profits in our stores.
It seems the American stores and now Canadian stores don't seem to learn from the mess the US is in, that over expansion just does not produce the sales. It just eats away business from existing locations.

Why do we need Saks, when almost all of the items in Saks can be found in existing stores in Canada? It is not like it is this different shopping experience.

As I said before. There is only one Saks that offers a different experience, and that is the Manhattan flagship, and maybe the downtown San Francisco store. All the others including the ones in Canada will probably be small suburban mall size stores, that just fail to offer anything you can't get somewhere else in Canada's high end shopping districts.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by miketoronto

Seriously this is getting a little out of control. There is no reason we need Saks in Canada.

The continued carbon copy culture will soon turn all our cities into little copies of each other, with nothing unique anymore.

Not that I buy high end all that much. But I will continue to spend my high end dollars at Holt Renfrew and unique one of a kind shops. Not at American transplants, which I have to say just do not have the class of Holt Renfrew (save for the the "real" Saks in Manhattan).

Canadian retail is probably not going to remain strong if we keep this over expansion of carbon copy retail going. We are probably going to see sales per sq foot decline and much more lackluster profits in our stores.
It seems the American stores and now Canadian stores don't seem to learn from the mess the US is in, that over expansion just does not produce the sales. It just eats away business from existing locations.

Why do we need Saks, when almost all of the items in Saks can be found in existing stores in Canada? It is not like it is this different shopping experience.

As I said before. There is only one Saks that offers a different experience, and that is the Manhattan flagship, and maybe the downtown San Francisco store. All the others including the ones in Canada will probably be small suburban mall size stores, that just fail to offer anything you can't get somewhere else in Canada's high end shopping districts.

"Need"? This is about contemporary retailing - need has very little to do with it. They all sell overwhelmingly foreign crap (and often the same crap as their lines overlap considerably) to feed the consumption culture. What does it matter what the logo on the door is?

[eternallyme]

http://www.retail-insider.com/2013/0...llo-macys.html

Don't know about that. Agreed that Sears is on its way out though.

I think higher-end chains will want the prime real estate - i.e. the major downtown stores (which Sears has very few of anyway - only the Eaton Centre remains I believe, and surely Nordstrom and others will desire that first) and the most successful suburban malls. That leaves them with the less successful malls which are likely bound to struggle in the years to come, and using that as a starting point is probably not a smart strategy.

Honestly, I see dead malls coming to Canada in the near future...mainly in the less affluent suburbs, where they are too large for any community-level use, but severely overshadowed by super-regionals.

[neilson]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

http://www.retail-insider.com/2013/0...llo-macys.html

Don't know about that. Agreed that Sears is on its way out though.

I think higher-end chains will want the prime real estate - i.e. the major downtown stores (which Sears has very few of anyway - only the Eaton Centre remains I believe, and surely Nordstrom and others will desire that first) and the most successful suburban malls. That leaves them with the less successful malls which are likely bound to struggle in the years to come, and using that as a starting point is probably not a smart strategy.

Honestly, I see dead malls coming to Canada in the near future...mainly in the less affluent suburbs, where they are too large for any community-level use, but severely overshadowed by super-regionals.

Folks thought 15 years ago when Eaton's died, there would be Dead Malls too. Canada did not suffer that impact.