We were recently strolling through Vancouver’s Holt Renfrew and noticed the small Tod’s accessories shop had a temporary sign reading ‘Salvator Ferragamo’. It’s only temporary, as Holt’s sold out of all its Tod’s bags.
This speaks to the success of the brand in Vancouver. And it leads us to ask the question: Is it time for Tod’s to open free-standing Canadian stores?
For those unfamiliar, Tod’s is a luxury Italian footwear and leathergoods designer/retailer with stores around the world. In Canada, it is carried at selected Holt Renfrew stores but has no free-standing Canadian locations. It has 10 American stores (New York City, Bal Harbour, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Costa Mesa, Dallas, Las Vegas and 3 in Honolulu) and is available at selected Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom stores.
Luxury retail will finally arrive at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport‘s Terminal 1. The airport’s duty free concession, Nuance Group Duty Free, will expand its offerings by about 4,000 square feet to include luxury labels Burberry, Coach, Michael Kors, Omega, Gucci, Mont Blanc and Salvatore Ferragamo, among others.
The luxury brand expansion will bring Nuance’s total square footage in Pearson to about 20,500 square feet. Nuance plans to include a greater variety of internationally renowned food and fashion brands for its Toronto airport location as well.
This expansion coincides with Nuance’s securing a new five-year contract to continue operating its Toronto duty-free concession. Duty free retailers typically bid on airport retail contracts for a fixed period of time.
Toronto’s Pearson International Airport is Canada’s busiest, having handled about 35 million passengers in 2012.
Toronto Pearson Airport Retail
Vancouver International Airport is Canada’s second busiest with about half as many passengers – 17.6 million in 2012. And yet, Vancouver’s airport has had considerable luxury retail for some time.
World Duty Free currently operates Vancouver’s duty-free concession and it includes a full-sized shop for luxury French label Hermès and smaller shops/selections for labels Burberry, Cartier, Bulgari, Alfred Dunhill, Mont Blanc, Folli Follie, Etro, Salvatore Ferragamo, Bally and MCM, among others. Â
Thank you to our Toronto Retail Insider ACT7 for providing us with this article, which we used as a source. Images above are from the same linked article.Â
Burnaby BC’s Metropolis at Metrotown is becoming more upscale with the inclusion of Canada’s second Weekend by MaxMara store, opening this September. Also opening this fall wil be Canada’s third Microsoft store which was announced earlier this week. A Tag Heuer boutique recently opened adjacent to the mall’s recently relocated Ann-Louise Jewellers. Gastown-based Oak + Fort has also opened its second Vancouver-area retail store at Metrotown.
Weekend by Max Mara location, marked by our source ‘Seb’ with a star
Weekend by Max Mara will be just over 2,000 square feet and will be located on the second level of the mall’s ‘Atrium Court’. Max Mara’s Weekend label is a less expensive, more casual version of the mainline Max Mara label that has three Vancouver locations (three locations for a city is very rare – most cities that have a Max Mara store only have one location). Canada’s first Weekend by Max Mara store opened in November 2012 at Vancouver’s Oakridge Shopping Centre.
The Tag Heuer boutique at Ann-Louise Jewellers (top image) is not a corporately owned store, but a small shop-in-store with a mall entrance. Nevertheless, its mall entrance gives it a presence that brings prestige to the mall. There are currently no free-standing Tag Heuer boutiques in Canada though we have word that franchised Tag stores could open in Toronto and Vancouver.
Oak+Fort in Metropolis at Metrotown
Vancouver-based Oak + Fort opened its second location at Metrotown last month. The retailer is known for its interesting and somewhat alternative fashions. Its other Vancouver location is on Water Street in Gastown, and it has a store on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton. We think it’s a bit unusual for a retailer with somewhat funky, historical locations like Gastown and Whyte Avenue to open in a suburban mall like Metrotown.
These retailers join other moderately upscale stores including Coach, Browns Shoes, Michael Kors, Kiehl’s and Sephora. Several years ago these retailers would have been unheard of at Metrotown, as the mall has long been considered mid-market and its location on the Skytrain line has made it popular with a younger, less fashionable group of shoppers from southeastern suburbs such as Surrey.
Thank you to our retail insider ‘Seb’ who provided us content and tips, as well as the photos of Oak + Fort, Microsoft Store hoardings and the floorplan with Weekend by Max Mara’s location.
Target has just announced that it will open 20 more Canadian stores this month, between July 16th and July 30th. Target opened 48 Canadian stores earlier this year. These 20 new stores push Target past the ‘halfway mark’ of its forecasted 124 Canadian store openings this year.
Locations opening this month include:
British Columbia (2)-Courtenay – Driftwood Mall-Kelowna – Orchard PlazaÂ
Alberta (2)-Calgary – Signal Hill Centre-Medicine Hat – Medicine Hat MallÂ
Saskatchewan (3)-Regina – Northgate Shopping Centre-Saskatoon – The Mall at Lawson Heights-Saskatoon – Centre at Circle & EighthÂ
Ontario (11)-Ancaster – Meadowlands Power Centre-Chatham – Thames Lea Plaza-Hamilton – South Hamilton Square-Hamilton – Queenston Place-Kitchener – Laurentian Power Centre-Niagara Falls – 7190 Morrison Street-North Bay – 1899 Algonquin Avenue-Oakville – South Oakville Centre-Oshawa, Ontario – Five Points Mall-Thunder Bay – Intercity Shopping Centre-Welland – Seaway Mall The Kingston Cataraqui Town Centre store will open on July 23, followed by the Brampton Bramalea City Centre store on July 30.Â
The 115,000 square foot d’Anjou Simons will be two floors and will include a similar openness and art installations as its award-winning West Edmonton Mall store. Artist Rachel Denny’s knit animal heads, for example, were a hit at the Edmonton store. Simons won’t say what other artists will be featured in the d’Anjou store but we can expect something unique and innovative. Simons insists that each of its store interiors be unique and it spends a fortune doing so.
An interesting addition to the d’Anjou store will be a restaurant concept called Soupesoup. The concept was developed by Caroline Dumas, who has six Montreal restaurants and is the author of a cookbook. Her food is known for being fresh, simple, and inspired by home cooking.
The highest selling mall in the United States is South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California. It has sales of about $1.5 billion and has no plans for any expansion as far as we know. If things go as forecasted, Yorkdale’s revenues could surpass South Coast Plaza’s within three years.
Yorkdale’s $1 billion sales are measured based on revenues from June 2012 to May 2013. It is the first Canadian mall to achieve sales in excess of $1 billion. Other Canadian malls that could surpass $1 billion in the next few years include Calgary’s Chinook Centre and Vancouver’s Pacific Centre. Both of these Canadian malls will also incorporate Nordstrom as anchors.
Yorkdale is also one of Canada’s most productive malls with sales in excess of $1,300 per square foot. Competing Canadian malls include Vancouver’s Pacific Centre and Oakridge Shopping Centre as well as the Toronto’s Eaton Centre. If sales forecasts are accurate, Yorkdale could become Canada’s most productive mall in addition to being its top selling mall.
North America’s most productive mall is the Bal Harbour Shops north of Miami, with sales of about $2,800 per square foot.
We are posting a retraction of today’s article about Suitsupply’s securing retail space in Toronto. We were asked to post this retraction as it appears that a deal has not yet been reached. We’ll update you if we hear more on the possibility of Suitsupply opening in Canada.
Below is a modified version of our previous article:
Popular Dutch men’s suit retailer Suitsupply could open its first Canadian location in Toronto’s Yorkville area.
For those unfamiliar, Suitsupply is a vertically integrated men’s suit retailer that was started in 2000 in Amsterdam. It has received many awards including being voted #1 men’s suit retailer by The Wall Street Journal. Prices start around $400 and quality and style are considered to be exceptional.
Suitsupply is known for choosing ‘unconventional’ retail locations. Its Chicago store, which opened a year ago last week, is located on the top floor of a former Barney’s New York store and includes a penthouse roof garden.
The Toronto Zara Home store will be 3,265 square feet. The Laval store will be even larger at almost 4,200 square feet. No word yet on the Ottawa location.Â
Zara Home is an offshoot of Zara, a moderately-priced, modern fashion and accessories retailer with multiple Canadian stores.
Canadian shoppers can expect interesting, modern, well-priced housewares from the Zara Home collection. The concept is expected to expand Canada-wide with possible future locations in Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary. Zara Home has no American locations currently, but its products can be purchased online: ZaraHome.com/usa. Canada is thus getting Zara Home before America, at least brick-and-mortar-wise.
Zara is owned by Inditex Group, the world’s largest fashion retail conglomerate with almost 100 different companies under its umbrella.Â
Thank you to two sources for this article: Retail Insider Pat Campione and “K.W.”, both of whom sent us these tips on the same day.Â
Hudson’s Bay‘s outlet stores will only carry its stores’ clearance merchandise. This is different from both hr2 by Holt Renfrew and Nordstrom Rack. Both of these retailers include merchandise purchased specifically for them as well as clearance merchandise from their full-priced stores.
Hudson’s Bay made the decision to carry purely clearance merchandise in its outlets after a successful run of its clearance outlets at sister store Lord & Taylor in the United States.
hr2 by Holt Renfrew and Nordstrom Rack have found it in their best interest to include budget-priced merchandise purchased specifically for their outlets. Some mono-brand outlets also do this, including Burberry outlets. A Burberry outlet, by the way, will open its first Canadian store at the Toronto Premium Outlets in December .
Imagine walking into your local Shoppers Drug Mart, having received an email with an online coupon saying you’d get 20 times the Shoppers Optimum Points if you spend more than $50 in-store. Owning a smart phone and figuring Shoppers Drug Mart would have supporting technology, you select a substantial amount of products and purchase them at the till. You mention the 20 times the points offer to the cashier and show them the coupon on your phone. They tell you you won’t get the 20 times the points because you didn’t print the coupon onto a piece of paper.
Imaging the surprise and disappointment of some shoppers when they find that the coupon MUST be printed. On paper. Because Shoppers Drug Mart doesn’t accept emailed coupons otherwise.
Retailers offering such promotions must realize that they risk alienating their customers when promotions like this fall short. This specific promotion brings shoppers into the store, often specifically to purchase a substantial quantity of items with the expectation of the money-saving points. A disappointing promotion can turn customers away sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently.
We’d like to see Shoppers Drug Mart succeed, but we’re also in an age where customer convenience is paramount. Online shopping is on the rise and Nordstrom is on the way. If Shoppers Drug Mart wants to compete in an age where American retailers like Walgreens are sniffing north of the border, it had better ensure its promotions succeed.
If you’d like to suggest to Shoppers Drug Mart that they reconsider forcing customers to print coupons onto paper, you can call them at 1-800-SHOPPERS (Minus the S) or email them at this link.
