Casper Partners with Indigo to Expand Canadian Brick-and-Mortar Presence

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January 22, 2018

Indigo at CF Sherway Gardens in Toronto (Image: Casper)

New York City-based sleep brand Casper has partnered with Canada’s Indigo Books & Music to house shop-in-store ‘nap pods’, as part of Casper’s retail expansion into the Canadian market. Casper, which launched initially as an online-only memory foam mattress brand, is now partnering with physical retailers to showcase its wares, which have expanded beyond just mattresses to include pillows, bed sheets and even products for pets (Casper is a very well known company and a lot of review websites such as: https://www.trymattress.com/casper-mattress-reviews which does product testing for consumers).

Casper pillows are now available at 30 Indigo locations across Canada this month, as well as on the retailer’s website, indigo.ca. What’s getting the most attention, though, is cleverly-designed birdhouse-like ‘nap pods’ to be housed at seven Indigo locations across the country.

We first reported on Casper’s Canadian expansion in August of 2016, when the company unveiled temporary “snooze rooms” in selected cities, following a spring 2016 “Napmobile” tour that saw stops in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. Casper found that having a physical presence created consumer engagement and provided feedback not found online — not to mention, consumers enjoyed being able to test the popular memory foam mattresses prior to buying.

*Indigo at CF Sherway Gardens in Toronto* (Image: Casper)

It was an overwhelming success and in March of 2017, Casper launched its first retail presence in Canada through a partnership with Williams-Sonoma-owned retailer West Elm, in Toronto. Casper products had only been available online until then, and the West Elm partnership was the first time that Casper offered its products with a retailer on a cash-and-carry basis, anywhere.

The Indigo partnership further extends Casper’s reach into the Canadian market, though pillows are currently the only items being offered in a similar ‘cash-and-carry’ basis. The birdhouse-like ‘nap pods’ are more for show, though having these in stores will no doubt drive sales for Casper products online. Furthermore, it’s an added element of interest for Indigo, which continues to diversify its product offerings beyond just books and magazines.

One of the seven Indigo stores to house Casper ‘nap pods’ is at Toronto’s CF Sherway Gardens. That Indigo location, which opened in the spring of 2016, was the first in the company to feature Indigo’s updated ‘cultural department store’ concept which includes a variety of product categories ranging from books to gifts and homewares. This year will be a very significant year for Indigo’s operations — not only is it expanding into the United States for the first time, it’s also in the process of aggressively leasing space in former Sears Canada locations to further roll-out its new ‘cultural department store’ concept. Last week, Indigo announced that it would open a new store with the format in downtown Vancouver’s former Forever 21 location on Robson Street, and we’ll be hearing more location announcements in the coming months.

Backed by Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Adam Levine and Ashton Kutcher, Casper launched in 2014 as a direct-to-consumer online mattress retailer, with its product delivered in a “how did they do that?” sized box. Casper’s memory foam mattress comes in a variety of sizes, ranging in price between $725 and $1275 (Canadian), depending on size. The company has expanded its product assortment to include a “perfect pillow” pillow-in-a-pillow and soft, breathable sheets, and even dog beds. Casper keeps its prices reasonable by eliminating commission-driven wholesale channels and related costs, including retail space. The company’s phenomenal growth saw it being declared one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies in the World” and in 2015, Casper won the title of TIME Magazine’s “Best Inventions of 2015”, with sales in excess of US $100 million.

Stay tuned for more Casper announcements, as well, with landlords confirming that they’ve been in talks to further expand Casper in dedicated retail spaces.

*Photos were taken at Indigo at CF Sherway Gardens in Toronto, and were supplied by Casper.

Avenue Road Furniture Concept Expanding into Vancouver’s Gastown

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Mario Toneguzzi

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January 22, 2018

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Upscale furniture store Avenue Road is expanding from its Toronto base and is launching a new store in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood, anticipated to open in February or March of this year.

Stephan Weishaupt, president of Avenue Road, said Vancouver is a strong market for the company and there is a high design consciousness there.

“We have many exclusive brands to Canada and North America and this helps us expand their profile not only to Vancouver, but the whole of the West Coast,” he said.

“We’ll be launching e-commerce in the Spring. We’ll also continue to explore other retail concepts like our concept apartment 8A in New York and showhome in Miami as we think the future isn’t just one experience, it’s many.”

Avenue Road started as a small gallery space on Booth street in Toronto in 2007. In 2009, it moved into its flagship Toronto showroom at 415 Eastern Avenue with 15,000 square feet of space.

“Today we have flagship showrooms in Toronto, New York and now Vancouver (Gastown). We also have residential concept spaces in New York and Miami,” said Weishaupt.

“We are always exploring interesting ways to connect with a design-minded audience.”

He said the company’s philosophy is not really a question of one concept or type of store. There is potential for many more but of different concepts that respond to the market.

“We have curated contexts that mix all our products together in true to life environments and don’t present things as a typical department or furniture store would as monobrand blocks,” said Weishaupt. “We are total concept that allows clients to fulfill the whole design story from architectural lighting to bespoke kitchens to accessories, rugs and textiles along with our core furniture collection.”

“Our industry tends to operate in much the same way for the last half century. We’ve invested heavily in behind the scenes systems and in our team so we deliver items made in the old world traditional craftsmanship but with service that people expect in 2018.”

While Avenue Road always aims to be elevated, people shouldn’t be intimidated to come visit, he added. The company loves to engage with design lovers or anyone who is just intrigued with what it does.

Canadian interior design company Abraham Chan Design Office (ACDO) designed Avenue Road’s Vancouver furniture store. ACDO is a boutique firm with global reach, specializing in architecting bespoke interiors for luxury hospitality, residential and retail brands across the world.

Abraham Chan, founder, owner and creative director of the Toronto-based firm, said he is very excited about working on the Vancouver Avenue Road store.

“Working with Stephan, we conceived that the shop can be part gallery and part residence and it involves the transformation of the 12,000-square-foot warehouse into something more curated to display Avenue Road’s collection,” said Chan. “The building itself is an interesting one. It’s a four-story heritage building which has been in Gastown for almost 100 years. It was originally a newspaper printing factory which is interesting because the Toronto store was also previously a newspaper printing factory.

“We converted the store into something that would be a little bit more personal, with spaces that would really encourage customers to explore and enjoy the process of discovery.”

The store takes up two floors of the building.

Chan said a goal was to create a store that would fit into Vancouver’s culture and character.

“It was important for us to design a store that would retain the ambiance that would be appropriate to display the international curated items that Avenue Road is known for,” he said. “When we were trying to think what it was that is so beautiful about Vancouver, we started thinking about a lot of its raw nature. That was really inspirational for us.

“We also collaborated with a lot of artists to make sure that the space would be unique to Vancouver.”

One of those artists is Moss & Lam, a boutique art studio led by founder and creative director Deborah Moss. The company – whose work appears in luxury environments around the world – designed and hand-produced a feature wall within the new Vancouver Avenue Road store, and the store also carries their line of award-winning W1 side tables.

In today’s competitive retail market, it has become increasingly more important to create spaces and experiences that are more tailored and personalized and enhanced for customers.

According to Chan, it’s all in the details. All the elements in the new Avenue Road Vancouver store celebrate the products in the store.

Company Aims to Level Playing Field for Independent Grocers in Canada

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Mario Toneguzzi

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January 22, 2018

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Small independent grocery stores now have a new tool at their disposal to battle the big chains in a very competitive marketplace.

Toronto-based Execulytics Consulting has launched new store services for these independent retailers which include fresh operational support and an extensive list of retail analytics products.

Mike Mauti, an industry veteran and senior vice-president of client services with Execulytics Consulting, says “the goal with this service is to provide independent retailers with the types of tools that large grocery companies have been using for years.”

Mike Mauti, SVP of Client Services – Execulytics Consulting

“With the help of Execulytics, our hope is that independent retailers can compete with chain stores,” he says.

Mauti, also managing partner of the consulting firm, has been operating for almost two years focusing primarily on the food industry particularly on produce suppliers and now he is branching out into grocery retail services.

“As a long-time veteran of the grocery industry I played many roles over the years developing processes and tools to help the stores manage their business better. That included processes to improve fresh foods operations, as well as retail analytics tools to improve pricing, assortment and labour expenditures,” he says.

“As I was working in those areas, it became my belief that this is what separated chain stores from independent retailers – the fact that they have strong central services to rely on, allowing them to focus solely on servicing their customer and selling groceries.”

If that was a huge strength of the chain store, then it stood to reason that there was a significant opportunity to offer those types of services and that type of support to an independent retailer.

His handful of analytics software pieces – Labourlytics, Assortalytics and Priceulytics – can really help bridge the gap or help independent retailers compete with chain stores, he says.

Labourlytics crunches sales data and labour requirements for managers, allowing them to build a schedule to suit the needs of the customer.

Assortalytics is an assortment optimizer to help select customer centric assortments. It provides custom metrics to rank products and maximize shelf space efficiency.

Priceulytics is a price analyzer and index generator. It indexes price competitiveness relative to a store’s general competition.

Execulytics also offers a Specialist-for-Hire option. It mimics what the large retailers would have used for years which is a team of real department experts that help a store maintain their standards, train their staff and essentially just merchandise in a way that will sell products to customers.

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“We have assembled a bonafide Dream Team of fresh specialists, including experts from across the country that have a combined 100 plus years of experience in fresh execution and retail management,” says Mauti.

These analytics are what allow big companies with deep pockets to manage their costs, manage their customer facing attributes such as their price and their assortment, and it allows them to do it simply “so they can get on the business of servicing customers and selling product whereas an independent retailer has to guess at a lot of those things. And a lot of time guesswork doesn’t yield the best results,” he says.

The services being offered by Execulytics will really help level the playing field between an independent retailer and their larger competitors, adds Mauti.

The services are available across Canada.

Comparing Luxury Retail in India to Canada

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Retail Insider

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January 21, 2018

Louis Vuitton on Bloor Street (Image: KEVRIC)

By Amish Dargan

Luxury is defined as a good for which the demand increases as does the income of a person. However, now the fathers of economics do nothing but turn uncomfortably in their graves as the defining factor for luxuries, for the most of us, is nothing but a method or a means to show off our wealth, regardless of what we have. It’s a guilty pleasure we’re not ashamed to accept.

The luxury market in India, as opposed to wide belief, has been in existence since the early 1800s. From material luxuries such as rich food and goods imported through silk routes, to famous chefs and butlers, to the early launches of horse wagons and ambassadors, to the first TV’s in the locality, to more emotional and reconnecting luxuries such as big parties, weddings, or ceremonies to show off wealth.

The Canadian scenario has been slightly different, having been the blessed younger brother of the Americas, and descendent of Europe. By the virtues of being the sibling, hence, any revolutionary product that is launched throughout the world, will reach Canada as soon as it reaches any other part of the world.

Needless to say, the luxury sector in both the countries has had a very interesting contrast. Let’s study it a bit further:

1. Economies

Where India is still a developing country where a whopping 30% of its population was still under the poverty line in 2013, the demand for luxury has been frankly unaffected by the financial status of the country. In fact, Confederation of Indian Industry stated that India is the world’s fastest growing luxury market, and reported that in 2015 in a span of 1 year, the luxury retail market grew from an approximate $14 billion dollars to a whopping $18 billion dollars — which is astounding because even though the GDP growth rate had fallen from an 8% to 7.1%, India had a strong 2% share in the global luxury market in terms of sales.

On the other hand, Canada, due to its sluggish economy, shows a possible lag in the luxury sector in the next few years. Millennials are looking for ways to economize their income, and only those with high end earnings, who are unaffected by the economy will continue to buy these goods. The boomers are retiring soon, and increasing financial debt and slow GDP is making millennials more than skeptical about their purchases. Although and increasing amount of showrooms are predicted to open in Canada, there is no surety of increase in purchases.

2. Consumer Behaviour

In a country which is known for its rich cultural background of extravagant food and material choices, Indians, surprisingly, majorly view the world of luxury as an investment or a means to show off/share experiences, such as investment in gold or lavish weddings. Indians have a tendency of acting in a manner where they are more likely to consider the future trends, the resale value and the utility with respect to how fast the product depreciates when buying the item, be it luxury or normal. However, all this research is expanded to international markets too, where those in India who can afford luxuries, realize that they can just go to the other country to purchase the item- and hence, save their taxes and importing costs too. Of course, this is only for the foreign luxury brands- Indians don’t really have to rely on other countries for their luxury purchases. Our Kerala gold, Sabyasachi and Nalli sarees satisfy both our thirst for luxury and return on investment.

The Canadian citizens, however, despite rising debt and increase in the cost of luxury condos and cars, are being loomed in to buy these at the ‘attractive’ interest rates and offers in the country are pulling the consumers into an unending loop of debt. A house in Toronto now costs $1 million dollars easily, and what’s a house without a fancy car parked in the garage?

The reason that the Canadians are increasingly investing in these ‘attractive’ interest rates, which they are okay with as long as they stay low, is the ‘wealth effect’, which makes a person believe that they have the liberty to spend more, as increases the value of their already owned assets. They feel as though they can take on this debt and that it is affordable, and that is perhaps, why, the average Canadian now holds an average of $22,081 in debt, a 3.6% increase from 2015.

3. Customer Make Up

An impressive 42% of the luxury goods in India are sold online- and previously no one would have cared. But with the sudden shock that demonetization has put most of its higher class families into, the number of people preferring to drop by their favourite Louis Vuitton store to get a ‘feel’ of their favourite bag before purchase, fell exponentially.

What has that done? Credit cards and convenient payment schemes online are giving even those from the middle class options to afford their favourite Gucci shoes without having to burn a hole in their pocket. The standard of living is constantly on the rise, and millennials through the cyber world are more informed. So yes, it isn’t unusual to see BMW’s and Audi’s in the streets of Delhi, and girls flaunting Juicy Couture– most of whom aren’t even from the richer few. Take the example of Apple. A luxury product, still, in many countries is now available to the middle, and even lower middle class!

The Canadian scenario, although is slightly different, where most of the purchasers of luxury goods have an income of at least $100,000. This can be attributed to the fact that the items that make up their luxury products are widely different and strictly western (German technology, French fashion) – whereas Indians are liberal (Indian sari brands, gold, big fat Indian weddings). Canadians strictly look for personalized experience and pampering- thank you cards when you get home, mineral water in the stores, and appointed professionals to help you choose the right thing. Indians, carry the importance of the experience forward to their friends and family. They too, love a good pampering- but they are very concerned and very particular about the utility and functionality that is exhibited post purchase.

Of course, the Indian and western mindset and make-up is becoming increasingly similar because of the shared global culture- but there are a few things that still remain interesting, yet baffling in the global scenario of luxury purchases. What do you feel about this?

Circle K Announces Canadian Expansion with 1st Franchise Opportunities

By

Craig Patterson

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January 19, 2018

(DOWNTOWN TORONTO. PHOTO: GOOGLE STREET VIEW)

Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. is welcoming applicants to operate the first new franchises under its Circle K banner, which recently launched in Canada as part of a name change. The expansion begins in the Ontario market, and the company has more information on its franchising website: http://franchise-circlek.com.

Circle K locations have been popping up all over the country in Couche-Tard locations formerly branded with names such as Mac’s — in September of 2015, the company announced that it would adopt the Circle K brand on all of its stores in English Canada, while retaining the Couche-Tard name for its locations in Quebec.

The announced Ontario franchise expansion begins immediately. “At Circle K, we are committed to growing our brand globally and look forward to providing business partners in Ontario with the full range of Circle K branded products and service,” said Matt McCure, Vice President, Circle K Worldwide Franchise. “We are excited that through this franchise offer, more retailers will be able to join us in our mission to become the world’s preferred destination for convenience and fuel.”

Franchisees gain access to Circle K’s private brands as well as comprehensive training and continued education of the brand, not to mention operational and marketing support. The new franchise stores will display the Circle K logo, which began in Texas in 1951.

Couche-Tard is one of the world’s largest convenience store retailers with almost 10,000 locations in North America, with more than 2,200 of them in Canada. It is the largest independent convenience store operator in terms of the number of company-operated stores in the United States, as well as a leader in Canada. In Europe, Couche-Tard operates convenience store and road transportation fuel retail in Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden and Denmark), in the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), as well as in Ireland and Poland.

In addition, under licensing agreements, Couche-Tard operates more than 1,800 stores under the Circle K banner in 14 countries and territories including China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Guam, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam, which brings the worldwide total network to more than 15,700 stores.

Mercatino Expands Food Hall Concept

By

Mario Toneguzzi

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January 18, 2018

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By Mario Toneguzzi

Mercatino, means Little Market in Italian, but the establishment has made a big splash with the opening of its first location at the One York Street tower in Toronto.

“One York is a flagship location for Mercatino, and fitting to make a real statement for our expansion to the Toronto market,” said Amit Vadan, CEO of Mercatino, a Calgary-based company.

“Each of Mercatino’s locations feature unique food stations that are enriched with an incredible variety of high quality, wholesome, and natural ingredients that are delivered fresh daily, which are then combined together by our chefs to produce an exceptional and very flavourful experience.”

Mercatino, which started in 2014, now has six locations in Canada – four in Calgary including the iconic Bow Tower and the Fifth Avenue Place tower in the downtown – as well as one at the 201 Portage office building in downtown Winnipeg. Its first location was in the Bow.

(The beautiful space was designed by GH+A and built-out by BUILD IT. Scroll for images)

“It’s like a market style restaurant. We have lots of different offerings from coffee to grab-and-go sandwiches and salads to our famous sort of chef’s table and daily features that rotate Monday to Friday. So lots of different varieties of food in one convenient market style retail location,” said Vadan.

Harbour Eats by Mercatino is operating an impressive food hall in One York Street with an expansive terrace overlooking a new city park and Lake Ontario.

“We essentially are a food hall. We’re gravitating towards kind of our entire food court and re-branding the whole food hall phenomena and having lots of different stations and offerings within a larger atmosphere,” said Vadan. “So for example in One York we have 350 seats that’s all common area and then we’ve got the six vendors there we control and operate it and we have different offerings within those parameters.”

The entire food hall is about 15,000 square feet and Mercatino has about 2,700 square feet of that space, designed by GH+A, which has worked with some of the country’s leading retailers and landlords.

Vadan said Mercatino’s goal is to provide fresh, healthy meals that are affordable and it wants to bring that to professional buildings across Canada.

“Our focus is in the downtown cores of all the major cities. We’d love to see us continue to expand in Toronto and look at other potential development sites like Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver,” he said. “We’ve got some prospects in Edmonton and in Toronto at this point. I think comfortably we could probably do another three or four here in the next 12 to 18 months.”

Simon Shahin, President and CEO of BUILD IT which oversaw the construction of Mercatino, said One York is a brand-new building with everything state-of-the-art in it.

“It’s a beautiful space that Menkes is providing the main general area and Mercatino just matched the style and overall space with their design and it just flows so well together with what Menkes has designed as the main food court area and what Mercatino’s designers came up with for the food service area,” said Shahin.

“As a contractor on that project there was a lot of higher end finishes that were involved in there.”

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Sears Canada Employees Face Options After Retailer Collapse

By

Mario Toneguzzi

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January 18, 2018

Thousands of people across the country now find themselves out of work after Sears Canada shut down all its stores.

But a retail employment specialist says the prospect of future work for them really depends on what type of roles they had with the former Canadian retail giant.

Suzanne Sears, of Toronto-based Best Retail Careers International Inc., which is retained primarily by retailers to do private searches to fill vacancies or key replacements from the CEO to sales clerk level, said most of the store level staff will be absorbed fairly easily with the only obstacle being the higher salaries of the long-timers.

“There’s a huge market for what we would call street level retailers. There’s a big shortage of them and Sears people are relatively well respected at that level. So I would assume that they would be absorbed rather quickly,” said Sears.

SEARS AT CAPILANO MALL IN NORTH VANCOUVER, BC, ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2017. PHOTO: LEE RIVETT

“The only caveat for them is since so many of them have been in those roles for so long and had the commensurate wage increases over the years they might not find the same levels of compensation available to them on a job for job basis. Many will get a sticker shock but they will find work. There’s no question.”

She said senior store managers making pretty close to six figure salaries will have a tougher time replacing those jobs at that compensation level. There are also quite a few district sales managers and home field district managers, who oversaw various home renovations, who will also take a little bit longer to find new employment.

“Where it really becomes challenging is to all the head office staff. Those who were in accounting, finance, IT, there’s still a significant demand for that talent. So they should find new positions probably pretty close to the compensation levels,” said Sears.

“What no longer exists are merchandising, inventory and buying jobs. All of the people in those categories are really going to be stressed to find comparable work. The reason for that is most of the growth in Canadian retail has been foreign be it China, USA or European brands and they pretty well manage their own buying, marketing, inventory, supply chain from outside of the country. So when you take that entire segment of supply chain management out of the market these are the people that are going to have a very difficult time because that category of jobs no longer exists at least not in retail.”

SEARS METROTOWN: FORMER SEARS CANADA CEO RON BOIRE VISITED THE BURNABY STORE IN 2015 AS PART OF HIS B.C. TOUR. BOIRE STOPPED TO VISIT WITH METROTOWN EMPLOYEES JOYCE CHIEN, VICKY HERNANDEZ AND BIANCA LEUNG. PHOTO: LARRY WRIGHT/BURNABY NOW

If they were to find those types of jobs, most of them would be in Montreal or Vancouver and not so much in Toronto, she said, adding that most people would not be prepared to move.

“The other sad piece is how many are being turfed very near but not quite at the ends of their careers and sadly ageism exists,” added Sears.

If the more senior Sears people can adapt and adjust to the changing retail environment like taking a one-year consulting gig or filling in for a maternity leave, they will find opportunity in the marketplace.

“Their expertise is beyond doubt. They have those skills. But they may have to sell them somewhere to a market more in short-term contract work than ever-finding an entity like Sears to hitch their star to,” said Sears.

Some will also take the opportunity now to be self-employed.

Penguin Pick-Up Expands Click-and-Collect with Retailer Partnerships

By

Mario Toneguzzi

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January 18, 2018

Grocery shopping is getting faster and easier across the country with the expansion of the unique services being offered by Toronto-based Penguin Pick-Up – a network of 76 free, convenient pick-up locations for online purchases.

Just recently the company announced the grand opening of two new Penguin Pick-Up/Walmart locations at Yonge and Eglinton and Queen’s Quay.

Egil Moller Nielsen, senior vice-president and head of Penguin Pick-Up & Penguin Fresh, said the company began three years ago.

“Penguin Pick-Up is a network of locations which you can ship your online orders to on your behalf and at the same time the retailers can use our network to distribute online orders,” said Nielsen.

SCREEN SHOT FROM THE WALMART CANADA/PENGUIN PICK-UP WEBSITE

“The benefit for retailers is that they save a lot of money shipping many orders to one location instead of many orders to many locations. The benefit for you as a consumer is that you don’t need to worry about being home when delivery takes place. We’re trying to take the cost aspect out of the last mile. So we call it the other solution for the last mile. But we’re also taking all the frustrations away from the last mile.”

In Toronto, customers, with just a few clicks, can place their grocery order online at walmart.ca/grocery, select a convenient time and location and enjoy free pickup.

“The new co-branded Penguin Pick-Up/Walmart locations allow us to better serve more Toronto households, especially those that don’t have a Walmart Supercentre nearby,” said Daryl Porter, Vice President of omni-channel operations and online grocery at Walmart Canada, in a statement. “We continue to invest in services to make every day easier for busy Canadians and that includes offering greater flexibility and convenience to shop for groceries.

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“Right now, this format is still new for us. The Pick-Up locations are an important part of our urban/city strategy and they could definitely work in other markets. However, we don’t have anything to announce at this time.”

Penguin Pick-Up has 37 locations in the Greater Toronto Area. The company’s physical locations are branded with signage. Customers can ship anything to Penguin Pick-Up from any online retailer in the world.

Nielsen said the company’s growth has been at “a pretty good pace” since its inception. When asked how many locations he foresees eventually, he replied: “Hundreds.”

“But we really want to follow where retailers and consumers are having the biggest challenges to meet,” he said. “Over time, we found that in particular urban areas, and in particular in areas where there’s high density . . . that’s where the biggest challenge comes in to the last mile. It’s not our only focus but that’s where we see that we are solving an immediate problem for retailers and consumers.”

Nielsen said the Penguin Pick-Up locations are equipped with freezers and coolers to store food. The locations, which are open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends, can store fresh and frozen food as well as hard goods such as electronics and apparel.

Since its launch in 2014, Penguin Pick-Up has received packages from over 5,000 retailers in 11 countries.

The company also operates Penguin Fresh which sells farm fresh food – a farmers’ market online. Consumers can choose food from local suppliers and farmers.

Recently, Metro Supply Chain Group Inc. (Metro) announced that it had finalized an agreement with Penguin Pick-Up to add that company’s convenient online purchase pick-up locations to its expanding direct-to-consumer delivery choices.

“Regardless of which provider actually fulfills the last mile to the consumer, it’s the retailer who takes the reputation hit for any inconvenience that can arise during that part of the transaction,” said Metro’s Head of Ecommerce Development, Tony Jasinski, in a statement. “From ‘sorry we missed you’ slips through stolen packages, the process is fraught with variables. Offering options like Penguin Pick-Up that replace the potential for human error with a consistent, predictable last mile experience helps our retailers go from online shopping cart to repeat customer that much faster.”

Sears Canada Real Estate Presents Challenges and Opportunities

By

Mario Toneguzzi

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January 17, 2018

Now the fun begins for the retail and real estate industry across the country.

With the closure of all Sears Canada stores as of Sunday, a vast wasteland of empty space is now open in shopping centres across the country and in standalone structures.

But for the retail sector, like in life, when one door closes, a window of opportunity opens. And that’s how the industry is looking at the closure of what was a formerly iconic retail brand across Canada.

Peter Morris, CEO of Greenstead Consulting Group based in Victoria, said at one point in time Sears had 190 stores (of varying sizes) and well over 15,000 employees. The last store closures will result in millions of square feet becoming available on the market.

“There’s a tremendous opportunity depending upon where the space is located on one end of the scale,” said Morris. “The other end of the scale there’s going to be long-term pain in certain locations and for certain communities.”

Morris said he knows of some Sears locations where they were paying 50 cents per square foot because they were very old leases. But landlords of those spaces are now in a prime position to be able to re-purpose that space.

“Keep it retail. Make it service. Make it institutional such as libraries. And get an uplift on the rent and actually re-position the property,” said Morris. “A lot of people considered Sears to be an anchor and that was very, very true while Sears was in its heyday but frankly Sears stopped drawing traffic many years ago as witnessed by its demise. Those well-located Sears stores will be very quickly re-purposed.”

But there are also many former Sears stores that were standalone buildings. Morris said those are also ripe for redevelopment opportunities into mixed-use or condo use by either being torn down or re-purposed from the inside out.

AT THE RENOVATED ‘WTS’ SEARS CONCEPT LOCATION AT PROMENADE MALL IN THORNHILL, ON. PHOTO: CHRISTINA AVILA FOR STYLE DEMOCRACY

“The ones that are going to be hurt however is unfortunately where Sears was strongest at the end of its life,” explained Morris. “That is in rural communities. Because in rural communities Sears was the general store of old. We saw the demise of department stores coming back in the 1970s, 1980s with the rise of the specialty store chains. Prior that, department stores ruled the roost and it was specialty stores, mom and pop, independent stores, that you found downtown and on main street. The department stores had the branding, the advertising power and the purchasing power to fill their stores with a selection.”

“But once those specialty stores came along we started to see sales in department stores peter out. After that came the big box stores – the Best Buys of the world and stores like that – and that started to cause the demise of a lot of specialty stores too. Where Sears did well in rural markets was because the specialty stores couldn’t operate efficiently in those markets. They were too small to meet the needs that they had for their bottom line for their investors . . . And the big box stores obviously can’t operate in a small rural catchment area for the same reason because they need to get those economies of scale.”

So it’s going to be hard to backfill those former Sears spaces in smaller communities.

“It’s a tale of two geographies. Urban versus rural,” said Morris.

“It’s a little early. There’s going to be a lot of planning. It’s safe to say there aren’t any 150,000-square-foot users to take up so many stores. They’re going to have to re-demise that space. But shopping centres themselves are going through a transition. If Sears was in a prominent shopping centre, they have no problems chopping that space up into smaller spaces, commanding very high dollar value and the owners of those properties are going to be very, very satisfied.”

Secondary properties, though, will have to be more creative with that space, he said, and generally in shopping centres a revolution is taking place anyway with more food, more entertainment and more uses that were primarily in the past standalone locations such as gyms and offices.

“So anything that requires physical interaction which is what we’re now seeing in shopping centres,” said Morris.

Michael Kehoe, an Alberta-based retail specialist with Fairfield Commercial Real Estate Inc., in Calgary, said the departure of the Sears department stores may trigger co-tenancy provisions in major tenant leases across the country.

“A co-tenancy provision in a lease may be granted to an anchor or significant shopping centre tenant whereby should an important tenant leave the shopping centre the tenant with the co-tenancy provision in their lease may be entitled to close or have a reduced rent should the anchor or significant tenant space not be re-leased/replaced within a specific time period and in a certain manner such as replaced with retail use,” said Kehoe.

“The uncertainty caused by an anchor store closure can be amplified when the other major tenants in a shopping centre may have an opportunity to depart or reduce their rent thereby further weakening the image and appeal of the property.

It is essential that shopping centre landlords re-lease or redevelop vacant department store space is a timely and effective manner.”

Morris said co-tenancy is not in every lease and it’s not widespread but it is definitely a concept that is negotiated in by some strong tenants.

“It is a protective measure that strong tenants put into their leases,” said Morris.

“The problem for some landlords will be, and they’re evaluating this now I am sure, a cascading effect whereby you have a tenant that can leave because the anchor has left and they exercise that option to leave and then another tenant has their co-tenancy tied to the tenant that’s about to leave because Sears left and another tenant has their co-tenancy based upon the total amount of space occupied in the property and now that’s been triggered and they leave. And then there’s another co-tenancy and it just goes on and on. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Quebec’s Largest Mall Sees Gains as it Continues Overhaul into 2018

By

Craig Patterson

-

January 17, 2018

Renovations to Quebec City’s Les Galeries de la Capitale shopping centre have been ongoing for the past couple of years. The centre saw a 7.75% increase in traffic in 2017 as it added new stores and others were renovated. This year will be an important one, as well — renovations to the mall’s common areas will be completed, its Méga Parc amusement park will reopen, and La Maison Simons unveil its first net-zero department store.

It’s all part of a plan for landlord Oxford Properties to attract more shoppers to the centre, explained the mall’s General Manager Stephan Landry. It’s already been a success — the centre’s renovated food court (called ‘Espace Gourmet’) is now one of the most productive in the country, and new stores are being added as retail space is reconfigured.

The modernization strategy commenced about three years ago, with more than $200 million in investments having been announced for the centre’s retail and entertainment components.

Les Galeries de la Capitale (Image: Oxford Properties)

Last year was an important one for Les Galeries de la Capitale. Twelve tenants renovated their stores at the centre, including a full renovation to its 163,000 square foot Hudson’s Bay anchor — Mr. Landry says that it is now the most attractive looking Hudson’s Bay store in the company. As well, 13 new stores opened at the mall last year, including Sephora, Urban Planet, Bijouterie Monaco, Clarks, Rinascimento, Soft Moc, MEC, BonLook and L’Occitane en Provence, among others. As well, Telus opened its first “Connected Experience store” in the province at Les Galeries de la Capitale last year.

Expanded food and beverage offerings at the centre include the newly opened restaurant-pub Le Balthazar — known for its expansive selection of beer, it’s the first location in Quebec City for the Montreal-based chain. Oxford Properties is dedicating more space to food and beverage establishments than ever before, recognizing that it helps attract visitors and retain them for longer.

One of the mall’s most unique features, its Méga Parc amusement park, which closed temporarily in September as part of a $52 million overhaul that will see the 30-year old Méga Parc transformed into a Steampunk themed “entertainment zone inspired by the Industrial Era”. Construction is expected to be completed towards the end of this year and in the meantime, some of Méga Parc’s attractions can be found temporarily placed throughout the centre.

(THE MALL’S FOOD COURT, NAMED ‘ESPACE GOURMET’, SAW A RENOVATION IN 2015 THAT RESULTED IN ITS BECOMING ONE OF THE MOST PRODUCTIVE FOOD COURTS IN THE COUNTRY. PHOTO: OXFORD PROPERTIES)

(THE MALL’S MÉGA PARC AMUSEMENT PARK WILL REOPEN TOWARDS THE END OF THIS YEAR, WITH A ‘STEAMPUNK’ THEME)

Further driving traffic to Les Galeries de la Capitale is its popular IMAX theatre, which is the largest in Canada, and the only one in the area.

Les Galeries de la Capitale will continue to see construction into 2018 and beyond, necessitated partly because of the relocation of one anchor, as well as the closure of another. La Maison Simons is relocating its 45,000 square foot store to a new $50 million, 80,000 square foot space that will open in March of this year. The replacement store will be the first in the company to be zero-carbon, in a space vacated by Target in 2015. The remainder of the former Target space will be occupied by nine smaller retailers, with one of them confirmed to be a 2,200 square foot Jean-Paul Fortin shoe store, expected to open in April.

The mall’s former Sears space, which was vacated this month (along with the rest of Sears Canada’s stores) will also need to be repurposed. Plans have yet to be revealed for the 185,000 square feet that Sears occupied in the centre.

An impressive 14 new stores are confirmed to be opening in the centre over the next several months. Coffee retailer Nespresso will open in the mall in February of this year, and footwear brand Sketchers will open its first store in the Quebec City region in March. Michael Kors will open a store in May, and beauty brand MAC Cosmetics is confirmed to be opening a store there in September.

As well, Quebec City’s first location for the Montreal-based Mahée fragrance/fashion brand will be unveiled in August of this year. This will be only the second standalone Mahée location — its other location is at Oxford Properties’ Quartier DIX30 project in suburban Montreal (a downtown Montreal Mahée location, which opened in early 2016, closed several months ago, and currently houses a Swarovski pop-up store).

We’ll update this article as things progress at Quebec’s largest shopping centre. With more than 10 million annual visitors, the 1.5 million square foot mall with 280 stores is a regional leader, and could grab even more market share as visitor numbers and spending continues to grow.

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Quebec’s Largest Mall Sees Gains as it Continues Overhaul into 2018

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