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RONA Unveils New Store Prototype

By
Mario Toneguzzi
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Lowe’s Canada has launched its first new RONA store prototype in Longueil, Quebec as it embarks on a plan to roll out the new building centre model in 15 stores by the end of 2018.

Serge Éthier, Executive Vice-President of RONA Proximity, says the new RONA store concept was developed with three goals in mind: to better meet current needs and trends in renovation; to establish the store as its customers’ go-to destination for projects; and to enhance its offering for contractors and pros, who account for a larger portion of building centres’ client base than is the case for big box stores.

Lowe’s says its goal is to make RONA the No. 1 banner in the building centre market in the country – a segment of retail that accounts for close to half of Canada’s home improvement market.

Éthier says the stores that will be transformed are located across the country. They’re basically building centres ranging in size between 20,000 to 45,000 square feet. They usually include a drive-thru and a yard.

“So in the future, RONA is going to be dedicated to the building centre segment which accounts for more than 50 per cent of the overall renovation market in Canada,” says Éthier.

“We have a strategy for full remodel or minor remodel and we do have a strategy for greenfield. So new stores across the country . . . We already started this year with three new stores in Quebec and we’re in the market analysis throughout the country to where would be the best locations for us.”

RONA’s Longueuil store is located on Roland-Therrien Boulevard and the transformation to the new concept involves an investment of more than $2.6 million.

“Overall, the new RONA store model is designed to better reflect new trends in the residential housing market — open floor plans, brighter rooms, and outside spaces designed to become natural extensions of the interior. These trends are reflected both in the store layout and strategic placement of some departments, as well as in the product selection,” says the company. “

“The result is a brighter, less compartmentalized store, with racking entirely redesigned and not as tall, except on the perimeter of the store, which allows customers to have a 360-degree view of the store and thereby find the section they are looking for at a glance. In addition, seasonal products have been moved up near the entrance so the shopping experience is renewed on a regular basis, and household appliances now have a prime location near the kitchen project section.”

The company also says the new building centre model is designed to make RONA the go-to destination for turnkey renovation projects. Services will include design consulting, 3D renderings, as well as installation services.

For contractors and other home improvement professionals, there is a reserved parking area, a dedicated entrance and service counter, extended business hours to fit contractors’ schedules, a special fleet of trucks for construction-site deliveries, a minimum 15,000-square-foot drive-through lumberyard, and charge-account services to speed up and simplify purchasing.

“A big chunk of our overall spend from our customer is attached to projects. That’s why you go to a building centre because you have more associates, more knowledge inside the store. So we’re definitely trying to position ourselves more as a project destination in the future,” says Éthier.

“That remodel is also positioning us better to answer the pro in the future in that contractor segment.”

The RONA banner, created in 1939, falls under Lowe’s Canada with more than 430 stores across the country. Many of the big box RONA stores are being transformed in the country to the Lowe’s brand.

Lowe’s Companies Inc., based in the United States, serves more than 17 million customers a week in the United States, Canada and Mexico. It had $65 billion in sales in its fiscal year 2016.

Based in Boucherville, Quebec, Lowe’s Canadian business, together with its wholly-owned subsidiary, RONA inc., operates or services more than 600 corporate and independent affiliate dealer stores in a number of complementary formats under different banners. These include Lowe’s, RONA, Réno-Dépôt, Marcil, Dick’s Lumber and Ace. In Canada, the companies have more than 25,000 employees, in addition to nearly 5,000 employees in the stores of RONA’s independent affiliate dealers.

**Photos provided by RONA

The Grocerant: How Smart Grocery Stores are Becoming Hybrids

By
Retail Insider
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Sylvain Charlebois, Dalhousie University

Food trends are difficult to follow these days. Just like hip sectors like tech, the food industry is coming up with its own peculiar lingo when describing market shifts.

One of the latest examples is “grocerant,” a word combining “grocer” and “restaurant.” The term has been around for a few years, but it seems to have gone mainstream in recent months. Or at least it’s a term most of us will be hearing more often.

But as trendy as it is, the term “grocerant” is also in fact quite relevant and accurately captures what is happening in the food industry these days. In short, a grocerant is a grocery store that sells prepared meals, to either eat on site or take home.

The numbers are staggering. According to NPD Group, a research outfit in the U.S., grocerants generated 2.4 billion new visits and over US$10 billion in sales in 2016 — a massive shift.

Efforts to offer more convenience are resulting in numbers not seen since the drive-through phenomenon several decades ago.

In Canada, while the numbers are little more obscure, we are seeing similar trends. Many retailers are on the move.

Given that convenience seems to have more currency than ever before, two worlds are currently colliding in the ready-to-eat space at grocery stores, which caters to people seeking portable solutions to accommodate their hectic daily lives.

Grocerants offer a one-stop-shopping solution for consumers driven by either curiosity or a lack of time. An increasing number of grocery stores now allow customers to buy and eat on the spot. Some stores in Canada and the U.S., including several independents such as Longo’s and even larger outfits like Loblaw, Sobeys and Metro, deftly merge both food retailing and food service under one roof.

Grocery stores challenging restaurants

Research suggests many consumers generally perceive grab-and-go food products to be healthier than meals you can get at a restaurant. This works well for grocers.

Price wars constitute the other driving issue for grocers. Over the last 15 months in Canada, food retail prices have barely moved. But the price of food purchased at restaurants has increased significantly, more than double the general inflation rate.

This would suggest that menu prices are much more immune to market cycles than retail food prices. Demand in food service is inherently more inelastic, so margins can be kept up and defended in most cases, no matter what the economy is doing.

But restaurants aren’t staying quiet in the face of this new trend. Restaurant operators are fighting back by using technology to their advantage. Many are responding by using UberEats and other food delivery services, even expanding their market by offering meal kits and developing new ways to reach consumers.

In other words, they are trying to go where the money is instead of just waiting for the consumers to come to them.

Some say it’s all about millennials. It is indeed about offering fresh, healthy, reasonably priced products for the largest generation that is slowly taking over the economy.

Aging baby boomers have an impact too

But the changes are more deep-rooted, beyond just millennials. Millennials certainly have the economic influence to trigger the changes we’re seeing, but many demographics are behaving differently around food.

Families with older children like the enhanced grocerant experience, while aging baby boomers need the convenience. The appeal is across the board. Millennials were the first generation not willing to settle for what was being offered to them by grocery stores. The rise of the grocerant represents the awakening of an industry that’s been complacent for quite some time.

In the realm of the convenience factor that’s a critical part of the grocerant movement, the ready-to-cook market is also emerging as an interesting opportunity, but not without some headaches.

In the U.S., Blue Apron, the largest and best-known meal-kit provider in the world, is waging an uphill battle. The company has just laid off six per cent of its staff and its stock has gone nowhere since going public in June.

On the other hand, we’re seeing evidence that grocers like what they see from meal-kit outlets. Plated, the five-year-old American meal-kit company, was acquired last month by the grocery giant Albertsons, for approximately US$200 million.

Grocers do have the capacity to cover a broader market with their product offerings, but have not yet made much of a play on meal delivery and quality.

Grocery chains, in fact, are often not hardwired to successfully meet new challenges. But that’s slowly changing. Metro made a significant move this year by acquiring Miss Fresh, and many expect other grocers to follow suit.

In processing as well, Campbell’s Soup, Unilever and many others are investing in meal kits to explore what could become a US$10 billion industry by the end of next year.

It’s all a growth opportunity that cannot be overlooked by grocers. They’ll need to hire the right people, with the right mindset, in order to capitalize on these new opportunities. And because of changing consumer expectations and behaviours, survival seems unlikely for stand-alone meal-kit outlets.

The ConversationSo the convenience food battle is alive and well. Grocers were losing for a while, but the emergence of grocerants across the country is a sign that the industry is listening to what the modern consumer is telling them.

Sylvain Charlebois, Professor in Food Distribution and Policy, Dalhousie University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Puzzling Probe into Canada’s Alleged Bread Cartel

By
Sylvain Charlebois
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Loaves of fresh-baked bread line the shelves at a bakery. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Douglas C. Pizac

A bread cartel is alive and well in Canada. Or is it?

Canada’s Competition Bureau is investigating major grocery chains for evidence of retail price fixing.

Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro, Wal-Mart and other companies have acknowledged the ongoing investigation. The outcome of the inquiry will likely not amount to much, but it does raise the question: Why is bread is being targeted by the bureau?

Demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that grocers are colluding to keep retail prices artificially high is almost impossible. Several attempts have been made in the past, with mixed results.

The average grocery store carries well over 30,000 different products, and prices can be affected by an array of factors: Commodity prices, energy and labour costs, new food safety and packaging regulations among them. These and others factors can all influence price points in many categories more or less simultaneously. An intentional collusion to falsely inflate profit margins would be hard to prove.

Historically, bread prices have been quite stable, with the exemption of 2008 and 2009, when prices jumped almost 50 per cent in a single year for all bakery products.

On the whole — unlike prices for fruits, vegetables and even meat products — bread has been immune to fluctuating prices for some time. In fact, Canadians have access to the most affordable food basket in the world.

Canadian food prices are relatively low

After the United States, Ireland and a few other countries like Singapore, Canadians spend less on food relative to their income than most countries in the world.

Nonetheless, since we live so close to the United States, where food quality is generally questionable but amazingly cheap, we often believe our own food prices are unfairly high. Prices are indeed higher here than in the United States, but much lower than in many places around the world.

In the last month alone, food retail prices have dropped in Canada, including bakery products. So, to suggest that food prices are inflated in Canada is somewhat far-fetched. And if Canadian consumers are paying too much for bread due to price-fixing schemes, the evidence isn’t readily apparent.

At the centre of this investigation, however, is a much deeper problem that lies in the food supply chain.

For years now, grocers have engaged in an open war with food processors, with grocers trying to position themselves as protectors of the public interest by pushing vendors to lower prices in order to remain competitive.

For the past few years, tensions between grocers and vendors have been at an all-time high. Major grocers have demanded price cuts from suppliers, causing a domino effect on the entire industry.

Small grocers complain

So, it’s not surprising to learn that independent grocers, through an industry association, passed along their concerns to the Competition Bureau. Consumers have barely noticed the conflict. Until now, that is.

Almost by design, the Competition Bureau may be trying to communicate to the market that grocers are on watch for squeezing processors.

As a food staple, bread is an appealing target. The bureau could have selected any food product, but bread’s status as a staple makes it an obvious choice — a clear majority of Canadians eat bakery products almost daily and, as a result, its price is an ongoing concern.

Everyone loves bread. That’s why Canada’s Competition Bureau might have chosen it to make a point to big grocers about their treatment of food processors.
(Shutterstock)

It was chosen for a reason: To make an otherwise dreary, obscure, supply-side issue more imperative to the daily lives of consumers.

Publicly traded companies extorting each other is less of a political or PR concern than allegations that grocers are allegedly gouging consumers. The investigation will likely not yield material results, but bread is clearly the best medium through which the bureau can send its message.

It’s not likely any grocer will be accused or arrested any time soon, but the Competition Bureau investigation could potentially restore peace within the food industry family.

Probe could bolster the food sector

A vibrant food sector is not possible without a strong food-processing sector, and making sure all make a decent profit within the food industry is difficult.

Nonetheless, consumers can only benefit if all sectors, from farm to table, succeed over time: we end up with a greater variety of decently priced, high-quality, innovative food products. Ultimately, and without sending anyone to prison, this investigation could strengthen the food sector.

Grocers know better than to engage in a doomed strategy of quotas and illegal price-setting activities. The mere spectre of a grocery cartel would not only be bad business, it threatens to tear up the social contract with the Canadian public that they adhere to every single day.

Consumers can expect to see deals being made within the industry in the days ahead.

The ConversationFood shoppers will almost certainly experience rebates in the bakery section as grocers rush to reassure their customers that a bread cartel in Canada is nothing more than a myth.

Sylvain Charlebois, Professor in Food Distribution and Policy, Dalhousie University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Inside Yorkdale’s Impressive 70,000 Square Foot RH Restoration Hardware Gallery [Photos]

By
Craig Patterson
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Restoration Hardware Exterior at Yorkdale Shopping Centre

RH, aka Restoration Hardware, opened its massive four-level Toronto Yorkdale Shopping Centre flagship last week, and the space is impressive. The store looks like a spectacular mansion, with indoor and outdoor retail spaces, a courtyard café, Interactive design atelier, and rooftop conservatory/park. 

The flagship spans a total of almost 70,000 square feet of interior and exterior space, including entire floors dedicated to RH Interiors, RH Modern and RH Outdoor. This store also includes an interactive Design Atelier, offering professional interior design services in a studio environment.

“The vision for our new design galleries has been to blur the lines between residential and retail, and create spaces that are more home than store. The next logical step was to further blur the lines between home and hospitality, with an integrated restaurant, wine and coffee bar,” says RH Chairman & CEO Gary Friedman.”What we are doing goes far beyond attaching a restaurant onto a store – that’s been done before. What’s unique is we’ve created a completely integrated hospitality experience, led by famed Chicago restaurateur Brendan Sodikoff, that reflects our taste, style and point of view. We’re proud to bring this first-of-its-kind concept to Toronto, one of the most metropolitan cities in the world,” he said. 

Mr. Sodikoff is the founder, CEO and creative director of rapidly growing Chicago-based restaurant group Hogsalt Hospitality, which now boasts 14 concepts and 15 locations. 

RH Yorkdale’s initial design was by architect James Gillam of Backen, Gillam & Kroeger, and Toronto-based architectural firm Quadrangle completed the drawings, coordinated final design details, obtained city approvals, oversaw construction and ensured that the RH brand goals and design concept was faithfully executed in the final building.

The following is a brief description of the store, floor-by-floor:

Ground Floor: Glass-and-steel French doors open onto a streetscape with Boston ivy, geometric topiaries and towering trees rising out of a continuous boxwood hedge. The gallery’s eastern entrance, accessed from within the mall, features a terraced façade of Venetian plaster and a lush interior courtyard flanked by open-air loggias that act as the central location for the gallery’s Courtyard Café. The restaurant includes banquette seating layered with green velvet boxwood hedging, cascading English ivy, trickling fountains, glimmering lanterns and 19th C. Rococo crystal chandeliers. 

The store’s central hall, with impressive 14-foot ceilings, leads to the RH Barista Bar – a focal point that features a Tuscan colonnade and facet-edged limestone slabs. Fresh house-made doughnuts and pastries are among the offerings. 

Barrel-vaulted passageways lead customers to a classical arrangement of rooms featuring RH Interiors collections from internationally renowned artisans and designers — it’s like walking from room-to-room in an impeccably decorated residence. 

Second Floor: The RH Design Atelier is a 5,000-square-foot studio anchored by four, 15-foot custom tables that offer a fully integrated workspace for customers, designers and architects to design spaces both  inside and out. A trained team of staff has access to RH’s vast library of fabrics, leathers and furniture and lighting finishes. The Design Atelier also includes a Ben Soleimani rug showroom displaying the designer’s hand-knotted and hand-woven rugs, as well as various other specialized galleries for window treatments. Bed and bath linens and bath hardware can also be found on the second floor. 

Third Floor: A 12,000-square-foot exhibition space, called RH Modern, is one of the world’s largest curated and fully integrated assortments of modern furnishings, lighting and décor under one brand. The aesthetic is minimalist, with glass and steel French doors paired with Juliet balconies that line the perimeter of the floor.

Fourth Floor: At the top of the grand stairway is the ‘Conservatory and Rooftop Park’ — an impressive 12,000-square-foot garden space with towering banana palms, heritage olive trees, exotic succulents, and 20-foot ceilings. The indoor space opens onto a rooftop patio featuring mature Himalayan birch trees set within colossal steel planters accented with cascading English ivy. Open-air pavilions, chandeliers and trickling fountains can be found among vignettes of RH Outdoor collections, and there’s even a view of the CN Tower and Toronto skyline when looking southward on a clear day. 

(FOURTH FLOOR) 
(FOURTH FLOOR EXTERIOR TERRACE, WITH VIEWS OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO) 

Overall, the space is very impressive and Yorkdale’s RH Gallery is worth a visit for anyone living or visiting the Toronto area. There’s nothing quite like it, and Yorkdale’s new Sporting Life store, which also opened a couple of weeks ago, is another beautiful new retail space in Canada’s most productive shopping centre. 

Innovative Grocery Chain Freson Bros. Discusses Growth Plans

By
Mario Toneguzzi
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Freson Bros.

Freson Bros. isn’t just a normal grocery store chain in Alberta.

“We actually don’t want to call ourselves a grocery store,” says Doug Lovsin, president of Freson Bros., which is based in Stony Plain, Alberta.

“Our promise is to deliver a unique Alberta food experience. That’s our promise . . . . We’re a food market. We’re actually trying to create a space that we feel fits what it is that we do.”

“The most successful businesses solve people’s problems and we’re trying to solve time-starved families’ problems by delivering high-quality Alberta meals as quickly and as efficiently as possible,” adds Lovsin.

The company has 15 stores – all in Alberta – and is currently building its 16th in Fort Saskatchewan. It has identified its 17th store which will be its first one in Edmonton.

The Fort Saskatchewan store is expected to open in the spring of 2018 and the Edmonton store will open in the spring of 2020.

“The plan is to grow to 20 stores by 2026. We feel if we can continue to meet the needs of the consumer we will grow and expand in Alberta into larger markets outside of Edmonton metro and of course we will keep an eye on expansion even beyond major Edmonton markets,” says Lovsin.

Perhaps even outside the province.

Lovsin’s brother Mike is the chairman of the company and his other brother Ken is the vice-president of IT.

Freson Market Ltd. began on October 20, 1955 when Frank Lovsin opened a butcher shop with his two partners, Frank Resek and Frank’s father, Leo Resek from Edson, Alberta.

The company says the name Freson was derived from a combination of the letters in the respective partner’s names. The letter “F” in Frank, the letters “RES” in Resek and the “IN” in Lovsin were put together to form the name “FRESIN”.

“The bank manager at the time however, misspelled the name on the company documents, nobody argued the proper spelling, hence the name Freson Market Ltd. was born,” says the company’s website.

“The first butcher shop was in Hinton, Alberta and the cost of the building was $2700. The original building was built on skids and was on a thirty day ground rent policy. It was 24 feet wide and 30 feet long with a power plant in the back.”

Lovsin says Freson Bros. was born in 2008 and over the years it’s re-branded and re-modelled of all its stores.

Freson Bros

“My dad started in the meat business. He saw right away in the first year if he didn’t get into the grocery world he was vulnerable. Within two years he started selling groceries and he partnered with IGA. The growth of our company has been with IGA up until really we opened our first Freson Bros. store in 2009. We recognized that the future of our company depended on us creating some distinction in the market and being different. So we really embarked on looking at what people are looking for. What problems can we solve?,” says Lovsin.

“And people today are time starved. We knew that bringing high-quality, restaurant quality food into our store was what was going to solve a lot of problems. We’ve been working on this for a number of years.”

With that in mind, the company opened its first Freson Bros. Fresh Market store in Stony Plain in March 2013.

The concept has several unique features:

  • A root cellar where root vegetables are kept in a refrigerated room;

  • Banj’s Smokehouse makes a variety of products right in the meat department. Butchers cut all the meat in-house and the store only sells Alberta beef, pork and chicken;

  • Fresh fish is available Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday;

  • The bakery is what is called a “scratch bakery” anchored by a cold fermentation program – the old way of baking. It uses only Alberta flour;

  • The deli and the hot food area serves restaurant quality food cooked in the kitchen. Nothing is ever frozen and just heated up. All the meat is slow cooked;

  • The deli area has a hot buffet with the menu changing daily;

  • Every Friday is all you can eat fish and chips. Every Wednesday there is all you can eat pasta. There’s a 20-foot salad bar with a 75-seat restaurant with a fireplace.

“That makes us different. That’s our brand new Freson Bros. store in Stony Plain and that is to address the changing needs of today’s consumers,” says Lovsin.

The next store in Fort Saskatchewan will be a sister store to the Fresh Market concept.

“We call it version 1.5. Actually our Rabbit Hill (Road) location in Edmonton will be 2.5. It will be advanced from Stony Plain and Fort Saskatchewan,” says Lovsin.

Brief: Miu Miu at Holts, McArthurGlen Outlets to Expand, Structube Building Massive Warehouse

By
Craig Patterson
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Miu Miu Installs Gigantic Handbag at Yorkdale’s Holts

Luxury brand Miu Miu (under Prada ownership) has just unveiled a playful installation in front of Holt Renfrew at Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre. It’s part of a promotion for the Miu Lady Bag, which is carried in the recently relocated Miu Miu shop-in-store concession at Holt’s. 

The ‘handbag’ is so large that you can walk right through it — inside are video screens playing a series of short films to promote the story of the Miu Lady bag. More photos can be found here on Yorkdale’s website, and the installation runs until November 15th. 

Miu Miu recently unveiled a new boutique on the ground floor of Holt Renfrew at Yorkdale, sporting a blue interior similar to the Miu Miu boutique at Nordstrom at CF Toronto Eaton Centre that opened last year. Holt Renfrew continues to renovate parts of its Yorkdale store and is adding new boutiques and expanding others, with some big announcements to be made in the the coming weeks. 

Innovative Downtown Oakville Pop-Up Initiative Secures 1st Pop-up

Downtown Oakville has 8 dedicated retail spaces that are being animated with temporary tenants, in an effort to build further buzz in the community’s beautiful downtown core. The partnership between landlord Bentall Kennedy and innovative facilitator pop-up go (spelled lowercase) has announced that two fashion designers will be doing a month-long pop-up. 

Designers Angela Huntington (of brand HUNTINGTON) and Andrew Majtenyi (of brand By Andrew) are known for their Canadian-made brands with British flair. British-born designer, Angela Huntington, aims to create bold yet sophisticated wardrobe essentials in her HUNTINGTON collection. Andrew Majtenyi, as seen in British Vogue, and his collection By Andrew, bring a runway quality to the retail scene of Downtown Oakville. 

With the help of pop-up go, both designers have launched their pop-up to strategically access one of the most affluent locations in the Greater Toronto Area — an impressive 47% of households earning an annual income of over $100,000. The four-week-long activation will help both designers test consumer demand and expand into a new market.

“Brands are turning to pop-ups to create a unique experience for their consumers – and the right location is vital to their success,” said Linda Farha, pop-up go’s Founder and Chief Connector. “We look at the brand holistically, and match our clients with a space that will help achieve their business goals.”

MINISO Opens at Park Royal

Value-priced Chinese retailer MINISO, which positions itself as a Japanese lifestyle brand, has opened its newest Canadian store at West Vancouver’s Park Royal. MINISO is already a hit with consumers in the Vancouver area, after having opened several locations this year. The company has also just opened its first Ontario store at Pickering Town Centre, and MINISO has said that it plans to eventually operate as many as 500 stores across Canada. 

MINISO could potentially take market share away from homegrown retailers like Dollarama and others. There’s an excellent article in Maclean’s discussing MINISO and how it could impact Canadian retail, where Retail Insider’s Craig Patterson is also quoted. 

(Photos below are of the newly opened Park Royal store) 

Bayview Village to Host November Pop-Ups

Toronto’s Bayview Village centre will see the Detox Market and MoRoCo Chocolat open individual pop-up locations in early November. Both will open in the mall’s ‘East Lobby’ adjacent to Pusateri’s Fine Foods, and be open for several months. 

The Detox Market is a Toronto-based retailer that specializes in eco-friendly brands in beauty, wellness and health. MoRoCo Chocolat is a popular Toronto-based artisan chocolate maker, known for its unique designs (its chocolate stilettos have been a hit with shoppers). 

Toronto’s Bayview Village is one of Canada’s most productive malls in terms of sales per square foot, which shouldn’t be a surprise — it’s also located in one of the wealthiest areas in the country, and benefits from convenient highway and transit access. 

NYC designer SAM. Launches TNT Shop-in-Store

Last week, Suzanne Schwartz, Head Designer and Chief Creative Director of SAM. was in Toronto to showcase her line of fashion-forward outerwear for men, women and children. Innovative multi-brand retailer TNT The New Trend has provided SAM. NYC with a dedicated retail space in its Yorkville Village store, with visibility from the centre’s ‘Oval’. 

The SAM brand launched in 2011 by the original creators of the Andrew Marc Brand, Andrew and Suzanne Schwartz, and its name is derived from the initials of two, Suzanne and Andrew Marc.

Jackets in a variety of colours feature multi-functionality, as well as ample use of fur in some styles. 

Galerie de Bellefeuille Opens at Yorkville Village

On Wednesday night, there was a grand opening for the stunning new Galerie de Bellefeuille at Toronto’s Yorkville Village. It’s the first Toronto location for the Montreal-based gallery, and a fourth for founders Helen and Jacques Bellefeuille, who have over 40 years of experience in the art industry. 

The owners strive to highlight internationally acclaimed artists and the Toronto gallery offers works by artists like Damien Hirst, David Drebin, Jonathan Siliger and more in the 5,000-square foot space. 

Jeff Berkowitz of Aurora Realty Consultants negotiated the deal on behalf of Galerie de Bellefeuille. 

The gallery is sure to be a hit — Yorkville is a high density, affluent area and Yorkville Village and the adjacent area continues to add luxury boutiques. Next week we’ll be announcing a 6,500 square foot flagship location for a luxury brand opening on Yorkville Avenue. 

Structube to Build Massive Warehouse

Montreal-based value-priced furniture retailer Structube is going to be building a massive 650,000 square foot warehouse in Laval, near Montreal, at a cost of $80 million, according to a report in La Presse. When completed, it will be the largest warehouse in all of Laval. 

The La Presse article notes that the building will include a 40,000 square foot retail space as well as offices for administrative employees. The company is growing and ran out of room at its current headquarters. 

Structube is planning to enter the United States in 2018 and as well, it recently launched a new store format that will be 50,000 square feet — considerably larger than its current stores. 

Nespresso gets with the times and installs wi-fi

Some patrons of Canadian Nespresso locations have complained that they lack in-store wi-fi — that’s about to change, with a partnership with Orange Business Services, which will be providing Nespresso with internet and wi-fi in more than 35 countries. 

Nespresso has launched an app that can be downloaded as well, providing immediate connection to Nespresso retail location wi-fi. 

This will provide patrons of Nespresso cafes convenient wi-fi — staff in the massive Toronto  Nespresso flagship on Cumberland Street had said that the cafe’s lack of wi-fi was intentional and ‘European’, though it appears opinions have since changed. 

McArthurGlen Vancouver Outlets to Expand

Vancouver’s McArthurGlen Designer Outlets is going to be growing in size — the popular 243,000 square foot outlet shopping centre opened in the summer of 2015, and it’s planning to add a second phase with 78,000 square feet of retail space that is expected to open in the spring of 2019. 

The centre features a range of upscale retailers, including first-to-market retailer Lipault Paris, which opened its first Canadian location at McArthurGlen in July of 2017. 

The landlord is working with Teresa Spataro of brokerage RKF to fill the space. 

Retail Insider will now be regularly including these briefs as part of our expanding reporting mandate. For more information, contact Editor-in-Chief Craig Patterson at: craig@retail-insider.com. 

For more of today’s retail news, visit: Canadian Retail News From Around The Web: November 3, 2017

Leger to Release WOW Customer Experience Index Results at Toronto and Montreal Events

By
Retail Insider
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Leger invites you to attend the annual WOW Customer Experience Index. Be the first to see who the top retailers are in customer experience in Ontario and in Quebec by attending one of Leger’s events.

See who is winning in the changing retail landscape.  Join them to learn how over 15,000 consumers rated their in-store experiences. Learn who is winning the customer’s vote! Learn how your organization ranks vs. key competitors.

Presentations will include:

  • 2017 WOW Index highlights
  • Rank order of retailers by sector
  • Digital profiles of customers

Simply click on the link to be our guest.

Toronto: November 14th at 7:30 a.m. for breakfast at the St. James Cathedral. https://goo.gl/8EnV8R

Montreal: November 22nd at 5:00 p.m. for cocktails at Leger’s head office. https://goo.gl/ABV84t

Job Vacancies a Serious Threat to Canadian Retail Industry

By
Mario Toneguzzi
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Image: Yorkville Village

There is a talent crisis in the retail industry and retailers have to start thinking very differently about how they are going to fill their growing vacancies.

Suzanne Sears

“Retailers have lost touch with the job market in the sense of who wants to work in retail, what they need to pay, and what the ground level is asking in terms of career,” says 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.

“It’s rare to see a retailer that doesn’t have a 20 to 50 per cent vacancy rate in their stores. It’s very rare to see a retailer that doesn’t have 20 to 50 per cent annual turnover. It’s rare to see a job that gets filled even at the lowest level. The lowest level is actually harder to fill in anything under three months.”

Last year, Canadian Press reported on a Conference Board of Canada study saying employment in Canada’s retail sector would hit a 12-year low in 2016 as companies adopt technology and trim costs in response to weak growth in consumer spending. That didn’t happen, however, Sears noted – instead, new retailers continue to open stores with her mentioning recent openings in Toronto’s Bloor-Yorkville such as Eleventy, Belstaff, Moncler and, soon, Hermes, among many others.

(LOUIS VUITTON IS AN EXAMPLE OF A SUCCESSFUL RETAILER THAT IS EXPANDING — IN DECEMBER, IT WILL UNVEIL ITS FIRST DEDICATED MEN’S STORE AT HOLT RENFREW IN VANCOUVER. IMAGE IS OF YORKVILLE IN TORONTO, VIA: INSIDERCONDOS.COM)

The Conference Board of Canada said the total number of jobs in grocery, clothing, department, home improvement, furniture and appliance stores was expected to drop to 1.26 million last year, a decrease of 2.6 per cent from the previous year and the lowest it has been since 2004. Again, that didn’t happen, she said.

Sears says retail staffing woes impact sales and productivity and add extra costs for a retailer. But the faster they fill roles the more profitable they become.

“In fact, what companies in retail seem to miss is that the quickest way to improve your sales is to fill your roles faster,” she says, adding that the competitive edge is people and retailers have to invest in retail being a legitimate career and creating an environment where young people want to work.

“It’s all about the people.”

Sears explains that there’s a massive disconnect between what retailers need, what they are getting and how long it’s taking.

Yorkville Village ((IMAGE: KASIAN.COM)

Years ago, retail shifted responsibility for hiring to human resources which was never its function. That department for many stores inherited the position of gatekeeper of who can work for the company. But in most cases they have no financial accountability. They don’t have a seat at the table for results.

Sears says there are 2.5 retail jobs available for every one person that might want one.

“The market is screaming for people,” she says.

“So the net result of having HR running retail hiring for the last 20 or 30 years – even though retail is one of the largest economic engines as a source of employment in all of Canada – we don’t have anyone that wants to join it . . . They’re killing retail from the inside out. The crisis in retail terms of staffing is massive.”

Older people made careers out of retail. But that is no longer the case. Sears says it’s not an attractive career option for younger people. They’ve seen retail strip away pensions. Strip away tenure and longevity.

(ON THE GROW: BELSTAFF LAUNCHED ITS CANADIAN STORE EXPANSION THIS FALL WITH ITS FIRST FREESTANDING STORE AT TORONTO’S YORKVILLE VILLAGE, RUN IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE ZAPPACOSTA FAMILY. PHOTO: LOUISE YU)

Young people see what is happening in the landscape and they don’t see retail as a career. Rather, they see it as a temporary thing to do until they get a “real” job.

“Young people don’t want the work that the old people have been shoved out of,” says Sears.

“Retail has to change if it wants any of these younger workers. Retail has to create a real career path. My biggest competition for retail workers is the banks. And why? Because they offer stability and they offer great wages to young people and they really do offer a long-term career path. And retail isn’t doing anything. None of it.”

Connect with Suzanne Sears on LinkedIn. 

*Top Photo: Toronto’s Yorkville Village continued to add new first-to-market retailers, as it nears the completion of a multi-year overhaul. Photo: First Capital Realty. 

Retail Bricks and Mortar Breakfast Forum, November 21 at Downtown Toronto Google Headquarters

By
Retail Insider
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On Tuesday, November 21, Retail Council of Canada is hosting its Bricks and Mortar Forum. It’s part of the Leaders in Retail Breakfast Series, and it’s the only session all year that’s open to all retail, media, and industry partners. 

The morning kicks off with a breakfast and networking, followed by three sessions. The first session discusses Canadian shopping centres, referencing the soon-to-be-released 2017 Retail Council of Canada Canadian Shopping Centre Study. The conversation will revolve around what Canada’s top malls are doing to remain relevant, and Kevin Graff, President of Graff Retail, will host the panel. Panelists will include a handful of retailers and landlords, and Retail Insider’s Craig Patterson will also be speaking about the study’s results. 

The second discussion will revolved around how retailers can leverage their digital influence for bricks & mortar purchases. Google Canada will be joined by Reitmans Canada Ltd. to review an example of how cutting edge location based technologies are enabling retailers to measure the impact of online investments to store traffic and sales, and how retailers can make digital spending decisions to increase store traffic. 

The third session, titled “Why Now? Bricks & Mortar Expansion in the Retail ‘Apocalypse’” will discuss the fact that physical retail is still very much alive and well, with a discussion with innovative retailers that are opening new stores across Canada, and why they have confidence in bricks & mortar retail.

There’s room to sponsor both events, even together — the Retail Council of Canada Shopping Centre Study is used as a tool for many in the industry, and the Forum will be well attended. For sponsorship information, contact Mary Markou at: mmarkou@retailcouncil.org. 

To attend the Bricks & Mortar Forum, REGISTER HERE

Study Identifies 4 Target Segments for Flyer Distribution

By
Craig Patterson
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Canadians love their flyers. This isn’t new news. In fact, 9 in 10 Canadians check some form of flyer or coupon before they hit the stores. But I think it’s easy to assume that everyone who checks those flyers are driven by the same simple desire: to save money. Some new research that our team at Metroland has just completed in collaboration with BrandSpark International shows that it’s a bit more complicated than that.  

Sure, saving money is important. But many Canadians consider flyers a source of inspiration as much as they are a source of information. In fact according to our research, 21% of all flyer and coupon users are “Inspired” shoppers who often look through flyers for new products, ideas and information and often read flyers for sheer enjoyment.

Inspired [21%]: “Inspired” shoppers are one of the four unique consumer segments identified in our research.  As with most Canadians, saving money is important is important to this type of shopper, but they are willing to pay more for better quality products that are more suited to their needs. Other segments include:

Engaged [34%]: Engaged shoppers are “shopaholics” – utilizing all sources of information to save money and find the newest products. These are savvy shoppers that are comfortable using both printed flyers as well as the latest technology and apps to get an “edge” while shopping, and have no problem visiting multiple stores and spending extra time to get the best value wherever they can find it.

Deal-Seeking [19%]: Driven by their need to save money, Deal Seekers target stores and products that will help them stay within a predetermined budget – whether the need comes from lower discretionary income, or a desire to be a “smart shopper.” Flyers and coupons are the means by which they find deals and create a shopping list to prevent impulse buying.

Utilitarian [26%]: Utilitarians are shoppers with little time and attention, and who view shopping largely as a task. While deals and saving money are valued, they are secondary priorities to making shopping trips as fast and simple as possible. They use flyers as a tool to build their shopping list as they search for nearby stores that carry the products they need. 

Our study also revealed that “Engaged” shoppers were more frequent shoppers than any other psychographic segment in the categories studied, except for Home Improvement in which Inspired shoppers came out on top.

This suggests that while flyers and coupons are often targeted to meet the needs of the “Deal- Seeking” shopper, there is a real opportunity for brands and retailers to integrate more inspirational content into their flyer to serve and appeal to the attractive “Engaged” and “Inspired segments. 

On the other hand, brands should also continue to consider how these needs, and the value they can provide, still hinge on the format in which it is offered. Our research revealed that when seeking inspiration, printed flyers are typically at the top of the media hit-list. But when shoppers are looking to compare prices, flyer apps and aggregated sites (such as Save.ca) viewed on mobile devices are often the format of choice.

The key takeaway from these few examples is that it’s not enough to target your customers by medium; instead, brands and CPG retailers should customize the content of their flyers both for the customer they’re targeting, and the format through which they’re receiving it. Leveraging a variety of flyer and coupon formats with content targeted to these different shoppers based on their unique needs – whether they are deal-hunting or seeking inspiration – will set you up for success!     

To access the full report, A Consumer’s Path to Savings: The Role of Flyers in Today’s Digital World, go to: metroland.com/path-to-savings

Lisa Orpen is Vice President, National & Multi-Market Sales for Metroland Media Group. 

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