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TNT || THE NEW TREND OPENING AT TORONTO’S BAYVIEW VILLAGE
Toronto-based TNT The New Trend will open its fifth store at Toronto’s Bayview Village Shopping Centre in September 2013. The store will be almost 5,500 square feet. TNT is an upscale larger-format clothing store with branches in Toronto and Montreal. Designer fashions are considered ‘cutting edge’ and the store includes about 350 designer labels, some with prices into the thousands.
TNT started in 1992 with a 1,200 square foot store on Toronto’s Eglington Avenue West. The current Eglington Avenue store is about 18,000 square feet and includes both women’s designer clothing, shoes and accessories. TNT has two stores at Toronto’s Hazelton Lanes Shopping Centre: a 14,000 square foot women’s store and a separate 4,000 square foot men’s store. TNT also has a 6,000 square foot women’s store location in Montreal.
Bayview Village Shopping Centre is an enclosed, upscale suburban Toronto mall lacking large ‘anchor’ stores. It includes more than 110 stores over about 440,000 square feet. It includes nine jewellery stores, an upscale grocery store called Pusateri’s, and many unique retailers found only in a few other Canadian shopping locations.
TNT website: http://tntfashion.ca
Bayview Village Shopping Centre website: www.bayviewvillageshops.com
HAPPY APRIL 1ST!
Happy April 1st! We were thinking of doing an April Fool’s Retail Insider post but given that we’re less than a year old, we’re not ready to potentially jeopardize our credibility.
Which brings us to our age… Retail Insider turns one year old on April 8th. Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for plenty more Canadian retail news!
HR2 || BY HOLT RENFREW OPENS FIRST STORE TODAY IN MONTREAL
Holt Renfrew‘s off-price store hr2 opens today at Quartier Dix30 in suburban Montreal. The store will be 24,500 square feet. In October 2012 we announced Holt Renfrew’s hr2 concept and revealed its second store will open early May at Toronto’s Vaughan Mills.
Holt Renfrew just released a list of some of hr2’s designers. These include: Alice + Olivia,
Diane von Furstenberg, Splendid, Michael Kors, Cole Haan, Kate Spade, Tory Burch, Ray-Ban, 7 for All Mankind, Nicole Miller, Elie Tahari, Ralph Lauren, House of Harlow, Anzie, John
Varvatos, Hunter and hr2 private label. The store will have about 150 brands in total.
We took special note that hr2 will include its own private label merchandise. We look forward to seeing it in-store and, hopefully, available online.
We also notice that some of the above designers are also carried at Hudson’s Bay. hr2 may therefore be considered, at the very least, a minor competitor to Hudson’s Bay by carrying labels like Diane von Furstenberg, Spendid, Elie Tahari and others.
We’ve been told that hr2’s atmosphere will be “casual but smart”. Stores will be bright, and merchandise will be updated/added weekly.
hr2 Vice President Heather Arts says: “We are pleased to welcome customers to this unique new
shopping experience. hr2 will offer fresh and distinct merchandise. Our vendors are thrilled to
partner with us to grow their business through this new premium off-price store.” Ms. Arts further goes on to say: “While some of the brands at hr2 will also be carried at Holt Renfrew, product assortment will not overlap“
LA MAISON SIMONS OPENING AT OTTAWA’S RIDEAU CENTRE || SPRING 2015
La Maison Simons will open a 105,000 square foot store at Ottawa’s Rideau Centre in the Spring of 2015. This will be Simons’ ninth store (after its Galeries d’Anjou store opens this August) and its second location outside of Quebec.
Today’s announcement is surprising. In November 2012 we reported Simons was shut-out of Rideau Centre by Nordstrom. Simons subsequently sought space in an Ottawa-area mall in Gatineau, Quebec. Despite the signed Rideau lease, Simons may still open a second Ottawa-area store, according to Simons President and CEO Peter Simons.
Negotiations between La Maison Simons and Rideau Centre landlord Cadillac Fairview commenced about five years ago. Negotiations stalled in November 2012. Renewed talks led to a signed lease agreement between Simons and Rideau Centre about two weeks ago.Â
Simons’ first non-Quebec store opened at West Edmonton Mall in October of 2012. That store recently won Chainstore Age’s International Store of the Year award. Peter Simons says they are actively seeking space in and/or around Vancouver and Toronto as well as in other Canadian cities.
Construction is underway for an expansion of Ottawa’s Rideau Centre. This week, unfortunately, part of the facade of the historical Ogilvy department store collapsed with preservation efforts. Its historical elements are to to be integrated into the mall expansion.
We will update readers with further La Maison Simons Rideau Centre store details, including store size, location, and Rideau Centre expansion renderings and floorplans.Â
Thank you to our source, Retail Insider Geoffrey Hall, for providing us with the link to this article source.Â
La Maison Simons website:Â www.simons.ca
Rideau Centre website:Â www.rideaucentre.net
NEW CANADIAN UNDERWEAR LABEL LAUNCHES AT HOLT RENFREW’S HR2 TOMORROW
Vancouver-based ‘Naked‘ underwear will launch its lower-priced ‘NKD’ line at tomorrow’s hr2 by Holt Renfrew grand opening in Montreal. The line includes t-shirts, tanks and underwear.Â
The NKD line will include ‘soft fabrics’ the Naked mainline is known for. It will be geared towards younger males, according to the company’s press release.Â
Last week we reported on hr2 by Holt Renfrew opening its first discount concept store tomorrow, March 28 2013, at Montreal’s Quartier Dix30.
[Article source press release]
Naked underwear website:Â www.thenakedshop.com
hr2 website:Â holtrenfrew.com/hr2
KLEINFELD BRIDAL OPENING CANADIAN STORES || FIRST STOP: TORONTO’S HUDSON’S BAY
NYC-based Kleinfeld Bridal is opening a 20,000 square foot flagship salon on the seventh-floor of Toronto’s flagship Hudson’s Bay (aka “Queen Street store”). Readers may be familiar with Kleinfeld as featured on the TLC television show ‘Say Yes to the Dress‘. The store opens early 2014.
Hudson’s Bay President Bonnie Brooks first alluded to the Kleinfeld deal in July 2012 when The Toronto Star reported that a 20,000 square foot franchise was ‘close to signing a deal’ for seventh-floor space.Â
Kleinfeld Bridal salons will subsequently open at Downtown Hudson’s Bay stores in Montreal and Vancouver.Â
Kleinfeld’s partnering with Hudson’s Bay is a brilliant move ahead of Nordstrom’s Canadian entry. In late 2010, Nordstrom introduced ‘The Wedding Suite’, an upscale bridal salon at selected stores. We’ve been told we can expect more than one Nordstrom Wedding Suite in Canada when Nordstrom opens next year.
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.
Kleinfeld reportedly earns about $1000 per square foot per year, according to an article in The Globe & Mail. If Toronto’s salon does similar sales, it will mean $20million/year. This could become the ‘most productive’ retail space in the Queen Street flagship Hudson’s Bay store, surpassing per-square-foot sales of cosmetics, handbags, shoes and its luxury women’s salon ‘The Room‘.Â
We will keep you updated on Kleinfeld’s Canadian expansion, including details of upcoming Montreal and Vancouver salons.Â
Article Sources: [Press Release] and [Globe&Mail]
Kleinfeld Bridal website:Â kleinfeldbridal.com
Hudson’s Bay website:Â www.TheBay.com
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We encourage you to follow us on both Facebook and Twitter. We consistently update both with comprehensive Canadian retail news content not found on this website. Following our Facebook and Twitter pages will create a ‘richer’ and more comprehensive Retail Insider experience.Â
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–The Retail Insider Team.
Do Readers Remember Toronto’s Creeds?
Hello Readers! We want to do a retrospective on Toronto’s former luxury retailer, Creeds. If you have any stories, memories or photos, please feel free to submit them to us at insider@retail-insider.com.
To those unfamiliar, Creeds was a Toronto-based women’s mini-department store that was last located at 45 Bloor Street West in the Manulife Centre. Creeds’ former space is now partially occupied by William Ashley china. Creeds was approximately 35,000 square feet over two floors and featured several exclusive shop-in-store boutiques. It introduced Canada to Chanel with an elegant in-store Chanel Boutique. Creeds also included shops for Christian Dior, Emanuel Ungaro, Sonia Rykiel, Michael Kors and Krizia. Also included were a world-class fur salon, some gourmet food brands, cosmetics and jewellery The store unfortunately filed for bankruptcy in 1990.
In the past and especially in the 1980’s, Toronto was a fashion destination where wealthy women would fly in to shop at high-end places like Hazelton Lanes, Creeds and the then-slightly less-upscale Holt Renfrew store across the street from Creeds. We will do a separate article on the history of the Toronto Holt Renfrew flagship store in the near future.
We will also be doing a series of articles on the history of some well-known Canadian stores such as Holt Renfrew, Simpson’s, Woodward’s, Bretton’s and others. We love retail history and hope readers will enjoy our upcoming articles.Â
Retail Insider will announce a few new projects next week. We’ll be sending out ‘secret shoppers’ across the country to evaluate stores and their customer service. And we won’t be playing favourites. We’ll cover a variety of retailers and be evaluating them on a scale of ‘one–to–Nordstrom’. We’re only half-joking about that evaluation scale.
We’ve decided to make Retail Insider more fun and potentially interactive. Keep reading and have an excellent weekend, everyone!
p.s. We’re sending a big shout-out and thank you to Toronto Life Magazine. In the early 90’s in small-town Alberta, this author started loving retail after a neighbourhood mom gave us a Toronto Life Magazine providing insight into a fashionable world we had previously never experienced.
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TopShop Opening This October at Mississauga’s Square One
TopShop/TopMan will open a store inside of Hudson’s Bay‘s Square One Shopping Centre store in October. This will coincide with a renovation of the Square One Hudson’s Bay store, now underway. TopShop will be located on the main-floor of the 190,000 sq ft Bay store.Â
Hudson’s Bay is in the process of renovating some of its more productive suburban stores in an effort to modernize the chain. So far we are impressed with what we’ve seen, store-renovation-wise.Â
Mississauga’s Square One Shopping Centre is in the process of being expanded and renovated. The mall will soon get a renovated Target store anchor, replacing a former Zellers location.Â
This week we reported on the possibility that Holt Renfrew could open a store at Mississauga’s Square One. We’re not sure if negotiations are serious or if the negotiations are a tactic for Holts to get favourable lease terms for a possible Sherway Gardens Holt Renfrew store expansion.Â
We’ve got more Canadian TopShop store locations to announce. Thank you for reading Retail Insider.
TopShop/TopMan website:Â www.topshop.com
Hudson’s Bay website:Â www.TheBay.com
