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Neiman Marcus CEO addresses speculation that the company will open in Canada

By
Retail Insider
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[Image Source]

Neiman Marcus CEO Karen Katz has addressed speculation that her company will open stores in Canada. Readers may recall that Neiman Marcus was bought by The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Ares Management in September 2013.  Given the Canadian connection, some questioned if Neiman Marcus would open store locations in countries other than the United States. Until now, it was unclear what direction Neiman Marcus would take post-purchase.


Ms. Katz discussed her company’s expansion plans in Dallas during a speech given at the Weitzman Group‘s annual retail forecast on Wednesday, January 8th. During her speech, Ms. Katz revealed that her company plans to focus on its online business and “slow” domestic growth, and that it will bypass plans for Canada, at least for now.


Some may be disappointed to learn this, though Canada’s luxury retail market is about to become substantially more crowded with the introduction of upscale American retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom.


Dallas-based Neiman Marcus has over 40 full-sized American department stores, including several productive flagships of over 200,000 square feet. It also owns New York City’s 316,000 square foot Bergdorf Goodman store. Neiman Marcus stores are typically in the 100,000-150,000 square foot range and the company is considered to be a premier luxury store.


Regarding international expansion, Ms. Katz said: “My greatest dream would be to have a few stores across the world, but it would be very difficult to envision that over the short term. That would be the hardest thing that we could ever try to pull off.”


Neiman Marcus will instead focus on its $1-billion-a-year (and growing) e-commerce business, which now accounts for about 22% of its sales. Interestingly, Ms. Katz says that the customer who shops both online and in-store spends four times as much as a “single-channel shopper”, who only shops either online or in-store. Neiman Marcus will also concentrate on its ‘Last Call’ discount chain as well as its lower-priced ‘Cusp’ stores as part of its domestic growth strategy.


RELATED:


[Article source: Bizjournals (Dallas)]


[Neiman Marcus website]

Canada’s top malls by Facebook ‘Likes’

By
Retail Insider
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West Edmonton Mall Facebook

By Melissa R.

We’ve put together a list of Canada’s top 15 shopping malls according to their number of Facebook ‘likes’. Malls may be considered popular for various reasons, be it because of the stores contained, attractions featured, interaction on Facebook, and even the sheer size of the mall. 

Mall Facebook pages are an excellent source for information on what’s happening. We find ourselves referring to these mall Facebook pages for tips as well as images for articles. Some malls reveal new tenants on their Facebook page before this information is picked up by ‘mainstream’ media. 

The following is the number of likes for each of these malls as of the evening of January 7th, 2014:

1. West Edmonton Mall, Edmonton AB: 105,461 likes

2. Yorkdale Mall, Toronto ON: 60,924 likes

3. Toronto Eaton Centre, Toronto ON: 56,236 likes

4. Metropolis at Metrotown, Burnaby BC: 51,792 likes

5. Vaughan Mills, Vaughun ON: 41, 748 likes

6. Square One Shopping Centre, Mississauga ON: 31,312 likes

7. Mic Mac Mall, Dartmouth NS: 28,869 likes*

8. The Pen Centre, St. Catherines ON: 26,819 likes

9. Polo Park, Winnipeg MB: 25,707 likes

10. Galeries de la Capitale, Quebec City QC: 23,468 likes

11. Southcentre Mall, Calgary AB: 25,584 likes

12. Dixie Outlet Mall, Mississauga ON: 20,412 likes

13. Laurier Quebec, Quebec City QC: 19,967 likes

14. Carrefour Laval, Laval QC: 18,997 likes

15. Kildonan Place, Winnipeg MN: 18,651 (updated correction – February 4th 2014 – thank you ‘coreyq’ and Kildonan Place for this update.

16. Crossiron Mills, Calgary AB: 17,782 likes

We’ve included links to the Facebook pages for each of the 15 malls. Malls gain ‘likes’ at a substantially different rate from our observations. 

Several prominent Canadian malls are absent from this top 15 list. Toronto’s popular Sherway Gardens, for example, only has 15,431 ‘likes’. Vancouver’s Pacific Centre, with substantial sales, Canada’s top-performing Holt Renfrew store and the highest sales per-square-foot productivity in Canada, only has 6,120 Facebook ‘likes’. Vancouver’s Oakridge Centre, also one of Canada’s top malls, only has 5,504 ‘likes’. It should come as no surprise that West Edmonton Mall tops the list, as it is the biggest mall in Canada and offers many attractions unique to the mall such as an indoor waterpark, an aquarium, SET Nightclub, a West 49 indoor skateboard park and even an amusement park with a haunted house. The mall is also more active on their Facebook page than many of the other malls, with almost daily postings.

Most of these malls are in major cities and most of them are also in what could be considered tourist areas or close to tourist attractions. It seems the more interaction-and entertainment-focused a mall is on Facebook, the more ‘likes’ it may tend to receive. The age of a mall’s Facebook page is also a factor, though one sometimes has to scroll through a substantial number of posts in order to gauge how long the mall has had a Facebook page. 

Consider following these and other Canadian malls on Facebook for store updates as well as other useful information. 

*Thank you ‘ingress’ for providing us this correction

Kleinfeld Bridal opens its first Canadian location on May 1st

By
Retail Insider
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[Image Source]



Toronto’s Kleinfeld Bridal officially opens May 1st, 2014 according to Hudson’s Bay. The store will be located on the seventh floor of Hudson’s Bay’s Toronto flagship. It’s currently under construction and the photo above shows that it has a ways to go before completion.


We previously reported that Toronto’s Kleinfeld store will be the first of its kind in the world: an enormous (20,000 square foot) full-service bridal salon (including private rooms and alterations) located within a department store. The Toronto store will replace former office space and will feature a terrace and skylights. Staff will be trained by New York City store management, and there are expected to be as many as 70 staff working at the Toronto location alone. 


Readers may be familiar with Kleinfeld from the hit TLC television show  ‘Say Yes to the Dress‘. Kleinfeld has one store in Manhattan.  


Hudson’s Bay already has Canada’s most popular wedding registry. Kleinfeld will compliment that with an extensive wedding gown collection generally priced from $1500-upward.



[Kleinefeld Bridal website]

Photo: Vanessa Taylor

TUMI is on Canada-wide store expansion. Next stop: Calgary’s Chinook Centre

By
Retail Insider
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TUMI

Tumi is officially on a cross-Canada store expansion, and its third Canadian location will be at Calgary’s Chinook Centre. Mall management won’t confirm Tumi’s exact location but they do confirm it will open in early 2014. Tumi is already hiring for the store and you can find job postings at this link.

For those unfamiliar, Tumi is a New Jersey-based manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer of travel bags and accessories. It has more recently branched into the lucrative handbag retail market. Tumi has over 120 stores worldwide and over 200 shop-in-store locations.

Tumi’s first Canadian store opened in November at Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre. A second Canadian store will open next month at West Edmonton Mall. A Vancouver Tumi retail space opened in November as well though it’s not technically a Tumi boutique since it shares space with luggage retailer Rimowa within a store called ‘Artino‘. A Tumi shop-in-store also opened in December 2013 within a multi-brand luxury duty-free space at Toronto’s Pearson Airport

Thank you to two sources for this tip: Trevor Hanlan and a tipster from Calgary who prefers to remain anonymous. 

[West Edmonton Mall website]

[Tumi website]

Shoppers Drug Mart to open flagship beautyBOUTIQUE in Downtown Vancouver

By
Retail Insider
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Photo: Colin Arber



By: Miranda Sam, Founder and Editor of Style by Fire. 

Sources tell us that Shoppers Drug Mart will open a 4,100 square foot standalone flagship beautyBOUTIQUE in downtown Vancouver, next to the world’s second-largest Victoria’s Secret store. The street-level store will replace retailer ‘Off The Wall’ and will feature a Burrard Street frontage. It will compete with a new, massive Sephora store scheduled to open next winter on the 1000 block of Robson Street, only a couple hundred feet away.  

Shoppers first debuted its high-end enhanced beautyBOUTIQUE concept last year at Toronto’s Bayview Village Shopping Centre; the second opened in the Toronto EatonCentre this past summer.

Downtown Vancouver has several major cosmetic retail competitors, including Sephora. In addition to its current location at Pacific Centre, Sephora will
also be opening one of its largest Canadian locations on Robson Street in the winter of 2014. Other competitors have either been upping their game or preparing for their entry into the Vancouver market. Hudson’s Bay, for example, has
been putting much effort into the ongoing revitalization of its Downtown Vancouver flagship store. Its expanded cosmetics floor is close to an acre in size and is now the largest in Western North America. Holt Renfrew continues to show strong cosmetics sales, and future Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue stores will even further increase competition for Downtown Vancouver’s cosmetics dollar. 
With all of these different cosmetics retailers in Downtown Vancouver, it’s hard to say whether beautyBOUTIQUE will
create any extra excitement for Vancouver shoppers. Competition will be fierce. Shoppers Drug Mart already has an
existing higher-end concept, Murale, though it has shuttered two of eight locations
across Canada. Let’s take a look at the differences between Murale and the new
enhanced BeautyBoutiques, and how the new concept might prove successful.
[Image Source]

For those unfamiliar with Murale, it is an
offshoot brand launched in 2008 by Shoppers Drug Mart to move into the high-end
cosmetics category. Murale’s brands include Bobbi Brown, Anna Sui, Cargo,
Caudalie, Nars and more. These brands make a distinct differentiation between
drug store brands such as Maybelline and L’Oréal, but share some crossover
brands like Clinique and Stila. The store design is clean and minimal, with a
lot of white space, and merchandising isn’t structured in aisles as in the drug
store BeautyBoutiques.

Introduced in 2003, the in-store Shoppers Drug Mart beautyBOUTIQUE occupy prominent real estate, many of which have separate entrances to create a
different experience for cosmetics lovers. The South Granville location in
Vancouver, in particular, takes up the majority of the second floor of the neighbourhood Shoppers Drug Mart. 
[Image Source]

The new “enhanced” beautyBOUTIQUE takes the in-store
concept one step further by bringing in higher end brands (Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent, for example) and
stepping up the store design, which was inspired by a gift box, and the unravelling
of a ribbon to reveal a gift. According to Shoppers, “The ribbon concept can be seen in the elements
of the store design including the digital signage wrapped around the boutique
and the finishing elements extending over the fixtures to the ceiling.” In a nutshell, it’s a Sephora-like experience.

If one high-end Shoppers beauty concept (Murale) didn’t
work out, why would the company repeat similar efforts? One reason could be
because a new store like Murale might have required stronger branding support
for customers to understand its relationship to Shoppers Drug Mart. On the other hand,
the new high-end beauty concept is also located separately from Shoppers, and it
was a great idea to leverage off the existing beautyBOUTIQUE name instead of
creating a whole new brand like Murale, even though the beautyBOUTIQUE brand
seems strong enough on its own. According to Sandra Sanderson, Senior Vice President of Marketing
at Shoppers, in a Chain Drug Review article, when consumers heard about beautyBOUTIQUE they already had the impression it was a separate store. We
don’t know whether they had done similar research with Murale.
[Image Source]

There’s also a direct correlation between
Shoppers’ beautyBOUTIQUEs and its popular Shoppers Optimum rewards program. This may be a key difference between it and Murale. If consumers didn’t know Murale was a Shoppers concept, for example, there would
have been less incentive to shop there. This is especially the case since Sephora
has a strong Beauty Insiders loyalty program. Lastly, we’ll have to see whether
the new enhanced beautyBOUTIQUE will help drive online sales, as Amazon,
Walmart, and Sephora’s e-commerce platforms are highly competitive whereas cosmetics sold at Shoppers Drug Mart concepts rely heavily on foot traffic. 

If the enhanced concept proves successful, it
might be in Shoppers’ best interest to shutter the Murale chain and concentrate
on what’s working. Either way, it will be interesting to see another beauty
giant enter Downtown Vancouver’s retail landscape.


**********
Miranda Sam is the founder and editor of Style by Fire, the source for Vancouver fashion events and retail news. She is also a marketing professional who has more than 5 years of experience working in fashion marketing, retail management, social media and fashion blogging.


She holds a Bachelors of Commerce from UBC with a focus on marketing and a Sustainable Business Leadership certificate from BCIT. 

Connect with Miranda on Twitter via @stylebyfire 



[Shoppers Drug Mart beautyBOUTIQUE website]

Avenue K: Interview with the website’s founders on its Canadian sales growth

By
Retail Insider
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Avenue K Website

Online retail website Avenue K launched in October 2013, focussing on the Canadian market. We interviewed its co-founders to learn more about its recent success, as the retailer is already enjoying substantial growth.

For those unfamiliar, Avenue K is a website that retails unique, upscale designer products for women including ready-to-wear clothing, shoes and handbags. Collections are curated and products carried on the website are from individual sellers chosen by Avenue K. The website’s concept is based on Buyma, a Tokyo-based social fashion e-commerce website. The company has partnered with Hearst Corporation as well as social shopping leader Kaboodle, hence the “K” in Avenue K. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, though spokesperson Susie Wall lives in Vancouver, BC. The website, which launched in October 2013, was co-founded by Alex Amin and Rafi Gordon.

The following details a few points from a very interesting conversation with Avenue K co-CEO’s Mr. Amin and Mr. Gordon:

Why shop at Avenue K instead of other retailers and websites?
Avenue K focusses on upscale merchandise, and differentiates itself from other retailers with unique products and exceptional customer service. Suppliers for the website are hand-picked for their distinctively curated products: the collections are considered more diverse than those carried in department stores and boutiques. Suppliers are recruited, trained, and monitored to ship products to Canada at competitive prices.

The website also has an in-house concierge whose role is to help locate items not on the Avenue K website. The concierge, for example, was able to locate the last of a particular Céline bag for a customer in Vancouver. Once again, it appears that selection, uniqueness, and customer service are the three defining characteristics that differentiate Avenue K from its competition.

Why Canada?
The website’s co-founders decided that Canada lacked the depth and uniqueness of products offered on Avenue K. In general, Canada lacks the proliferation of local online shopping available in the United States and some other countries. At the same time, online retailing in Canada is growing rapidly and Avenue K stands to make substantial sales gains as Canadians continue to embrace online shopping. Only about 5.7% of all Canadian retail sales transactions are online, and that number is expected to grow substantially over the next couple of years.

What about returns? And product authenticity?
We asked Avenue K’s founders about returns and product authenticity, concerns that some shoppers may have when making online purchases of pricy designer items. Avenue K’s answer is that it accepts all returns on items purchased and it guarantees product authenticity, even if individual suppliers on the site do not.

[Image Source]

What types of designers are carried on the site? A variety of designers are carried including Saint Laurent Paris, Alexander Wang, Givenchy, Valentino, Lanvin and many others. Designer labels can vary depending what vendors are carrying, and what sells out.

Who is Avenue K’s biggest competition?
Competition comes from both both bricks-and-mortar stores such as Holt Renfrew, as well as websites such as Net-a-Porter, for example. Further competition will arise as Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue open Canadian stores. Hudson’s Bay also plans to launch a comprehensive e-commerce website in the next 11 to 14 months. The company also will continue to compete based on its curated exclusivity, selection and customer service. Avenue K goes above and beyond other retail websites by offering a concierge service that sources hard-to-find items, potentially differentiating it from these and other competitors.

What kind of sales growth has Avenue K seen so far?
The co-founders declined to give numbers but say that they are impressed with the website’s sales growth. It is growing by leaps and bounds and in the three months it has been operational, the company has seen sales grow by multiples. Impressively, Avenue K has over 217,000 Twitter followers.

After interviewing the company’s co-founders and examining the website, we think it has a future as a successful e-retalier to Canadians. Though competition in upscale Canadian retail will grow substantially in the next 24 months, we think Avenue K’s uniqueness and exclusivity will differentiate it from the competition.

[Avenue K website]

COMBINED OGILVY/HOLT RENFREW TO BE ONE OF NORTH AMERICA’S LARGEST LUXURY DEPARTMENT STORES

By
Retail Insider
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Ogilvy in Montreal

At 220,000 square feet, Montreal’s combined Ogilvy/Holt Renfrew store will be one of the largest luxury department stores in North America when completed. From our calculations, it will be the 7th-largest luxury store in North America, surpassed only by stores in New York City, San Francisco, Beverly Hills and Houston. Toronto’s flagship Saks Fifth Avenue is expected to be larger than Ogilvy/Holt’s as well, though we are currently unaware of its exact size. 

In our analysis, we only included American retailers Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman and Barney’s New York. We’ve excluded retailers such as Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, since both sell a considerable amount of mid-range merchandise that likely won’t be carried in the new, upscaled Ogilvy.

The following American luxury department stores are larger than the new Ogilvy/Holt Renfrew’s 220,000 square feet:

New York City:
Saks Fifth Avenue: 646,000 square feet
Bergdorf Goodman (both men’s and women’s stores): 316,000 square feet
Barney’s New York: ~230,000 square feet

San Francisco:
Neiman Marcus, Union Square: 252,000 square feet

Beverly Hills, California:
Saks Fifth Avenue (combined men’s and women’s stores): ~275,000 square feet

Houston Texas:
Neiman Marcus, Houston Galleria: 224,000 square feet

Toronto’s flagship Saks Fifth Avenue store is expected to be in the 300,000 square foot range. If so, it could become North America’s second- or third-largest luxury store. We’ll report more when we get details on the size of Saks’ proposed Bloor Street store.

RELATED:

[Ogilvy website]


[Holt Renfrew website]

TUMI TO OPEN 2ND CANADIAN STORE AT WEST EDMONTON MALL

By
Retail Insider
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Tumi Photo: Darrell Bateman (darrellinyvr, Flickr)

Tumi will soon open its second free-standing Canadian store at West Edmonton Mall. It will be located on the mall’s second level between MAC Cosmetics and Jacob, close to the mall’s ‘World Waterpark‘ (see map below).

For those unfamiliar, Tumi is a New Jersey-based manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer of travel bags and accessories. It has more recently branched into the lucrative handbag retail market. Tumi has over 120 stores worldwide and over 200 shop-in-store locations.

Tumi’s first Canadian store opened in November at Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre. A Vancouver Tumi retail space opened in November as well though it’s not technically a Tumi boutique since it shares space with luggage retailer Rimowa within a store called ‘Artino‘. A Tumi shop-in-store also opened in December 2013 within a multi-brand luxury duty-free space at Toronto’s Pearson Airport (put link). 

Tumi products are also available at various Canadian retailers including Harry Rosen, Holt Renfrew and Taschen! stores.  

Thank you to Darrell Bateman for both being the source of this article, as well as providing us with the above photo. 

GUCCI, BULGARI, FERRAGAMO SHOPS OPEN AT TORONTO’S PEARSON AIRPORT

By
Retail Insider
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GUCCI Pearson

Toronto’s Pearson International Airport has opened a collection of luxury designer boutiques, located in Terminal 1, International (Non-US) Departures near Gate E76. The shops are operated by Nuance Group. Some of these are either the first in Canada or one of very few in the country. Shops include the following:

  • Burberry
  • Coach
  • Longchamp
  • Victoria’s Secret
  • Swarovski
  • Salvatore Ferragamo
  • Bugari
  • Montblanc
  • Gucci
  • Omega
  • Longines
  • Tissot
  • Rado
  • Tumi

The airport’s Bulgari shop is currently the only store location in Canada. Bulgari once had a 700 square foot store at Toronto’s Royal des Versailles Jewellers at 101 Bloor Street West. The shop closed several years ago, and the space is now occupied by a small Rolex shop.

BULGARI Pearson

Salvatore Ferragamo has two other Canadian store locations: one in Vancouver (which has been open for decades) and second location, recently opened, at Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre.

The company is also said to be scouting retail space in Toronto’s Bloor Street/Yorkville area. Omega‘s only free-standing Canadian store is currently located within the Hotel Vancouver.

A free-standing Toronto store is rumoured to be opening in 2014, and we’ll report more when we can confirm its location.

Photo by Bernadette Morra, Editor-in-Chief, Fashion Magazine [Image Source, Twitter]

Photos in this article were provided by Pearson International Airport except for the above photo by Ms. Morra. 

Thank you to ACT7 of Urban Toronto for being our source for this article. 

Pearson International Airport website

#1 CANADIAN RETAIL NEWS REPORTER FOR 2013: GLOBE & MAIL’S MARINA STRAUSS

By
Retail Insider
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Marina Strauss [Image Source]

We want to give recognition to the news reporter who wrote our favourite Canadian retail article of 2013. The Globe & Mail‘s Marina Srauss composed a lengthy piece on the Hudson’s Bay Company CEO Richard Baker’s purchase of Saks Fifth Avenue. The article was published in the November 27th Report on Business Magazine. The writing, research and content is exemplary and worthy of recognition.


Needless to say, we think the article deserves a look and we encourage you to click here to see it. For those interested in the future of Saks Fifth Avenue in Canada and how the deal came about, the article is captivating. Ms. Strauss starts by revealing that Richard Baker intends on opening the world’s second-largest Saks Fifth Avenue store at Toronto’s Yonge and Bloor Street intersection, replacing a current Hudson’s Bay store.


[Image Source]


Ms. Strauss went above and beyond, travelling with Mr. Baker on his private jet to New York to learn more about the deal as well as Baker’s work and family life. Details of a failed Bloomingdale’s deal are provided before it is revealed that Baker really wanted to buy Saks Fifth Avenue all along.


Ms. Strauss further interviewed the ‘competition’ including Holt Renfrew President Mark Derbyshire. She also interviewed various suppliers and retail experts. She then provided excellent analysis of her research, outlining increased competition in Canadian luxury retail now that Saks and Nordstrom will open here. 


Thank you, Marina Strauss, for this and other excellent retail reporting over the past year. We look forward to more outstanding journalism in 2014.


[Marina Strauss on Twitter]


[Meet the man trying to shake up luxury retail in Canada: Globe & Mail Report on Business Magazine, November 27th 2013, by Marina Strauss]

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