Retail Insider is streamlining its Canadian retail news from around the web to include a handful of top news stories that can be viewed quickly during the day. Here are the top stories from the past 24 hours.
How Zensurance Helps Canadian Retailers and Business Owners with Necessary Operational Insurance: Interview
Online insurance brokerage Zensurance is helping Canadian business owners save time and money by providing a convenient and affordable way to buy business insurance.
It has become increasingly important for businesses these days to have liability insurance to protect them from the costs associated with third-party liability lawsuits or claims on issues such as property damage or bodily injury.
Matt Jardine, a Zensurance broker and team lead for Property and Hospitality, said the risks a business owner is exposed to will vary based on the size of their operation, industry, or profession.
How Zensurance Helps Canadian Retailers and Business Owners with Necessary Operational Insurance: Interview
In general, business liability insurance provides coverage for another’s bodily injury, property damage, or financial loss (professional liability) due to a company’s operations. Regardless of fault, the liability insurance may cover the costs of legal defence, out-of-court settlements, and third-party medical expenses.
“When you’re a small business you often feel like ‘where’s the risk?’ Just because you’re small, you’re not invisible when you’re small, you’re still vulnerable and you’re still susceptible to the same losses anybody else is,” said Jardine.
Jardine said Zensurance is a brokerage that is focused on providing the easiest path to getting insurance for Canada’s small business owners.
“It’s not saying that we only exclusively work with small business owners but what we try to do is have the most precise and concise way of them accessing the insurance they need in a format that is user-friendly, purposeful, often able to provide a price the moment that they are going on to get a quote,” said Jardine.
“There’s savings because of the unique relationships we have on the dollars and cents side but there’s also savings in terms of the time it takes to acquire a quote and to get an insurance policy. We try to really reduce that usual wait window that exists in the marketplace from multiple days to over a week down to sometimes multiple hours, the same day, with some things that we have.”
Image: Zensurance
Jardine said Zensurance currently has more than 100,000 business clients.
“We focus on the people I find that are not usually focused on by the marketing and the advertising and the direction of brokerages. Everyone’s going on to the biggest fish in the sea where we’re trying to swim with the small guys to help them out and guide them,” said Jardine.
For many e-retailers expanding into customer facing events, they need to be aware of new risks they face and their general liability exposure. More and more small businesses are venturing out into the realm of pop up events, farmers’ markets and other in-person events.
“General liability covers property damage and bodily injury. Think about these in-person events, there’s little things that can happen, there’s big things that can happen. You might be putting on a presentation, have your computer plugged in and think nothing of it, and someone trips over your laptop cord and falls down. All of a sudden they’ve broken their wrist. What happens if the person that broke their wrist is a hair stylist and now they’re going to be out of work for a number of months,” said Jardine.
“These can become issues for small business people.”
By taking a business out from e-commerce or a home and into the market in physical places, small businesses now have the liability that goes with being in those premises as well.
Jardine said businesses also need to have coverage if they are operating out of their homes or online. For example, what if a customer has a severe allergic reaction to a product they have purchased. Liability insurance policies are there to respond to allegations as well as the potential loss that has been triggered. A policy will cover legal representation including a statement of claim made against a business.
“When you think of the value, that’s tremendous,” said Jardine. “We want to subtly remind people that we are there to safeguard yourself without getting in your way or taking time out of your day really.
“Our whole business is about helping people take risks, in making sure they don’t fall down if it goes south on them. I think for small businesses they often overlook the need and value in having an insurance policy.”
The backup support is also there for cyber liability when traditional retailers pivot to more aggressive online strategies with apps, delivery and online sales as well as those businesses who launch strictly an e-commerce business.
“When you’re selling online I think it’s really easy to make mistakes that can come back and hurt your business. If there was no human error, there would almost be no cyber events. So cyber events are seldom successful without human error,” said Jardine. “The majority of things that happen is people become susceptible to a phishing attack or a ransomware attack or a malware attack.
“Those are all preventable. There are many coverages that are first-party coverage and that means that the insured, if they suffer let’s just say a malware attack and it happens to destroy their computer, there’s reimbursements for that. That’s why this policy is so valuable. Not only can it address the issue of the attack . . . but you’re vulnerable when you’re busy and you’re online. Small businesses don’t always have the financial resources to invest in the tools that pick up these threats. They have to rely on the people they have to identify, recognize and pick up these threats.
Having a policy to safeguard against these exposures and threats is recommended as one of the strategies a business can have to respond to the potential perils they face.
“The cyberspace impacts small businesses as much as it impacts large businesses because they’re far more vulnerable and it’s very easy to make a request for ransom. And some of those costs and damages are covered by the policy.”
Plant-based food company The Very Good Butchers is riding the wave of popularity these days as more and more consumers in the country look for alternatives to meat.
The company, which began with a small stand on Denman Island Farmers’ Market off the coast of Vancouver Island in 2016, has become one of the fastest growing, plant-based meat companies in North America after it was founded by James Davison and Mitchell Scott.
The company is based in Victoria, BC.
“We butcher beans and we create a range of plant-based meat alternatives out of real food. Beans, veggies, herbs and spices. We’ve got a retail butcher shop in Victoria where you can come in, dedicated to meat and cheese (alternatives). We sell a ton of product online and we also sell in grocery stores and restaurants,” said Scott, the CEO and Co-Founder.
The Very Good Butchers (Victoria, BC) The Very Good Butchers (Victoria, BC)
“It’s what you might find in a butcher shop. Not just burgers and sausages but we’ve got ribs, steaks, deli meats. A whole range of high quality plant-based meats.”
Davison, a classically trained chef from England, moved to Vancouver and started working at a plant-based restaurant, ended up going vegan, moved to the island and realized there was no work for him as there really weren’t any restaurants there. At the same time, he missed the taste of meat and wasn’t impressed by what was at the grocery store with everything processed.
“So he just went into the kitchen for a month or so and came out with two products, classic English breakfast sausage and a veggie burger. And then decided to take it to the farmers’ market. Sold out that first day in about 15 minutes,” said Scott.
Today, the brand is in just under 1,000 grocery stores across Canada and in about 400 to 500 in the US. It launched its retail presence in the US a few months ago.
Mitchell Scott and James Davison (Image: The Very Good Butchers)Image: The Very Good Butchers
“We kind of started in the independents channel and have been slowly moving a bit more into mainstream,” said Scott. “It’s starting to get great coverage in Canada and building up a business in the US and we’ve been selling online for three or four years now. A lot of people ordering directly as well.”
The company will be opening a butcher shop in Vancouver late spring or early summer.
“For the butcher shops it’s more of a flagship model. So we’re not looking to franchise these but have a few – 10 to 15 around the world in key markets in cities. It’s still something we’re developing,” added Scott.
“We’re looking to be a global leader in plant-based meats. Grocery stores the big focus now is the US retail market because it’s such a big market but looking to being in tens of thousands of stores around the world.”
The Very Good Butchers (Victoria, BC) The Very Good Butchers (Victoria, BC)
Scott said plant-based alternatives have been one of the top food trends in recent years.
“For us, as more and more people have good plant-based food and have a positive experience, they realize that plant-based food is good whereas five or six years ago it was hard to find. That perception is shifting and people are looking to reduce their meat intake for various reasons – health, environmental, ethical. More and more people are trying plant-based foods and they’re having a positive experience and then they’re open to trying more,” he said.
“We really see that as our niche and opportunity, the premium plant-based niche. Still being relatively affordable but not being mass market.”
Like thousands of retailers across the country, White-Balmer Shoes has faced a tough challenge over the past two years to deal with the lockdowns and public health restrictions put in place to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But entrepreneur Karina Bogle, owner of the Stratford, Ontario business, turned to ecommerce and the eBay platform to keep the store alive and thriving during the difficult time.
Bogle took over White-Balmer, which has been in business for 41 years, just before the pandemic began in March 2020. The store is located on the main street in the heart of Stratford.
“The first wave of the pandemic hit about seven months after I owned the store. I was just learning still how effectively to run a shoe store when I was forced to temporarily close. So I really had to pivot quickly and find new ways to generate sales and move inventory. Like most retailers I started offering curbside pickup and doing local home deliveries but I also knew at the start of the pandemic that was the time I needed to expedite my ecommerce plans,” she said.
“The pandemic really created the opportunity for me to build and launch whitebalmershoes.com and after that was up and running I linked that inventory to eBay’s global marketplace which has been really successful and now I can embrace both instore and online shopping which allows me to reach many more new customers and even the website for local business it’s been really great because customers are able to pre-shop and see what we have instore and if we stock in what they’re after so that they can come in and zero in on what they’re after and work with our knowledgeable staff.”
The website was launched in April 2020 and she started using eBay in December 2020.
“I had experience selling personal items on eBay. So I was already familiar with the platform. I was just trying to find new ways to reach more people and it turned out to be a really great way to extend my audience and reach people globally,” said Bogle.
“Through my website it’s just North America but on eBay I’ve been selling to people in Australia and all over the world which has been exciting.”
Image: Karina Bogle Image: White-Balmer Shoes
The retailer sells footwear for men, women and children, handbags and accessories, gloves, scarfs, hats, umbrellas, socks and shoe care products.
“I’m planning to increase my sales team and introduce new products, expand further on to the existing products. Definitely continue to grow ecommerce, find ways to make my website stronger, and actually get to work with some eBay experts who are going to work with me and advise how to best grow sales and be more visible to their audience. So I definitely plan to continue on with that,” said Bogle.
In Ontario currently, retailers are allowed 50 per cent capacity in their stores due to the latest COVID lockdown restrictions.
“I don’t think that has been what’s caused such negative impact on retail stores especially in destination shopping areas like what Stratford is. I think the major issue is that the restaurants have to be closed so it’s not as desirable for people to go downtown shopping when there’s nowhere they can go inside to eat and the uncertainty of being able to find a public washroom,” explained Bogle.
Retail Insider is streamlining its Canadian retail news from around the web to include a handful of top news stories that can be viewed quickly during the day. Here are the top stories from the past 24 hours.
Podcast [Interview] The Importance of Insurance for Retailers in Canada
Craig and Danish Yusuf of Zensurance discuss the implications for retailers not having proper insurance and how the pandemic has changed things.
The Interview Series podcast by Retail Insider Canada is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Also check out our The Weekly podcast where Craig and Lee discuss popular content published on Retail Insider which is part of the The Retail Insider Podcast Network.
Drop us a line at Craig@Retail-Insider.com. You can also rate us in Apple Podcasts or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show!
Background Music Credit: Hard Boiled Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
The Sporting Life retail store in Collingwood, Ontario has literally risen from the ashes after a devastating fire that gutted the building on January 27, 2020.
“It was a complete loss,” said Andy Hotson, General Manager of the Collingwood store. “It was thoroughly investigated and it was undetermined (the cause).
“Immediately the next day there was a meeting with all of our staff and I remember going to the building and cars pulling up beside me and honking and rolling down their windows and walking down the street. I’ve been there since 2002 so I know a lot of these people in the community, they know me – expressing their condolences and everybody being super supportive.
Andy Hotson, Store Manager of Sporting Life in Collingwood (Image: Sporting Life)
“For me with the community being super supportive, our head office, everybody within our company being super supportive, it was just kind of thinking where do we go from here. We will grieve obviously but we’re going to come back better than ever – thinking Sporting Life 2.0 at the time.”
The store originally opened in December 2002 and was the fourth retail location under the Sporting Life banner.
After the fire, a temporary smaller store was established nearby in December 2020 until the new store was rebuilt from the ground up. Construction started for the new store on the original site in the spring of 2021. The new store opened November 20.
“It’s obviously a brand new building. Better layout. More modern. I think more customer and staff friendly in the sense of being new with new amenities and big open windows, kind of an open concept. But also we are in kind of the downtown of Collingwood and it’s considered an historic area. I think the architecture fits in with the downtown. It’s a great new building but really fits in. Lots of natural light and just a great space,” said Hotson.
Sporting Life Collingwood (Image: Sporting Life)Sporting Life Collingwood (Image: Sporting Life)
The location is about 10,000 square feet and includes state-of-the-art equipment like the Wintersteiger, used to tune skis.
“The community reach was great. Not only our customers of course but even other local businesses. The Mayor even. Other retailers. Competitors of ours and all of our vendors. All of the people in the community no matter where myself or my staff were going to the grocery store, going out skiing, they would just stop and say ‘we love your store and can’t wait for the new store to open. That’s our store’,” said Hotson.
Sporting Life is partners with Alpine Canada, Alpine Ontario and the National Ski Academy, which the brand is celebrating 20 years of partnership since 2002. As partners, the brand provides athlete support from ski tuning and boot fitting to expert advice. It is also Canada’s Ski Team’s trusted source for product, service and advice.
“The Collingwood community didn’t have their Sporting Life to turn to when it burned down,” shared the brand. “But now we’re back and Collingwood has their community’s favourite spot to go to get expert advice and a unique assortment of the latest & greatest premium product. People come to visit to pass the time and talk ski & snow with Sporting Life experts, because there’s this mutual love and passion for the sport.”
Howard Israelsohn, Chief of Staff for the Sporting Life Group, said the brand has 11 stores across Canada. The general format is bigger than Collingwood with about 30,000 square feet.
“It’s really important for us to be in a place like Collingwood because Sporting Life is all about active outdoor and Collingwood represents that,” he said.
Melanie Auld Jewelry has expanded from its Vancouver base with the opening of a new Toronto boutique on the bustling Ossington Avenue strip.
The new location features on-the-spot piercing, permanent bracelet welding and jewelry engraving along with a wide selection of the brand’s fine and demi-fine jewelry collections.
It also includes the MA Studio which is an in-boutique annex at the back of the store housing a bracelet welding station, a jewelry engraving station and a dedicated piercing room.
Melanie Auld Jewelry Boutique in Toronto (Image: Melanie Auld)
“The MAJ Boutique in Toronto really speaks to what our brand is all about at its core, and that is, jewelry that celebrates personal connections,” said Auld, who founded the brand in 2013.
Melanie Auld
“With MA Studio, we wanted to create the perfect place to mark life’s special moments, giving our customers the opportunity to honour and celebrate their own experiences.”
Auld had been previously working in jewelry with her brand in the US prior to starting MAJ. The first brick and mortar store was opened in Vancouver in June 2019. The location remains in the South Granville area on West 6th Avenue. Prior to that, jewelry was sold online and sold throughout various retailers such as Nordstrom.
“Initially we started out doing wholesale and with our own e-commerce site,” she said.
Melanie Auld Jewelry Boutique in Toronto (Image: Melanie Auld)
“Originally when I started the brand it was more of like an artistic, creative outlet and we would sell to lots of specialty boutiques and retailers and we really followed that typical fashion calendar where you had collections every spring and fall. Going to trade shows. Trying to get new accounts. But over time we connected more to our customer, and actually we started a collection with Jillian Harris and it was called our Adorned collection, it was all about initials and telling your story. That led us down this path of personalized pieces and seeing how it resonated with our customers and how much they connected in being able to personalize their own piece and have so much meaning behind what they were wearing . . . it actually started us down what I would say now is our path.”
Auld said the brand decided not to continue its wholesale side of the business in order to connect to its customer more closely and to be able to offer them the more personalized jewelry experience.
“It just felt it wasn’t conducive to wholesale any longer as we were getting more into connecting our customer to their jewelry in a very personalized way,” she said. “After we opened our boutique in 2019, and being able to have that physical presence, and having our customer be able to come in, it was very eye opening having that direct relationship with them. It was the following year we decided to no longer offer our jewelry to wholesale.”
Auld said the brand’s business has done really well throughout the pandemic. Vancouver and Toronto are the brand’s leading markets online and customers from Toronto were constantly asking when a physical store would open in their city. For Auld, it just felt like the next step to take in the company’s growth.
Melanie Auld Jewelry Boutique in Toronto (Image: Melanie Auld)
“Right before COVID took hold in February 2020 we went to look at a few different areas in Toronto. In Vancouver, we have quite a neighbourhood community kind of feel. We’re a little bit off the beaten path. Not necessarily on a high foot traffic street,” she said. “And we really wanted to make sure that in Toronto we had the same feel with potentially higher foot traffic. But the same feel of it being like a community because our brand is so much about connections to people, places and things.
“It was really important that we found a community that felt like there was energy and there’s so many amazing restaurants, independently owned boutiques, and it felt like a really good synergy for us in Ossington.”
The brand is currently renovating another space in Vancouver on 4th Avenue in Kitsilano with a planned opening this summer. The new store will also have an MA Studio like the Toronto store.
“Our plan is to keep our 6th Avenue store open by appointment only and be more like a personal shopping fine jewelry experience there,” said Auld.
Lack of Talent Causing Retail Staffing and Employment Conundrum in Canada: Interview
Circumstances that have pervaded over the course of the past couple of years, since the onset of the pandemic, have challenged humanity worldwide, providing us all with a host of hardships, inconveniences, disruptions and obstacles to overcome. It’s a period that’s been mired in uncertainty and disarray, resulting in a tumult that’s been felt by everyone, everywhere. Within the retail industry, the impacts of the COVID-19 virus have been far-reaching, negatively effecting numerous aspects of the business. With respect to store operations, these negative effects have been most dramatically emphasized by a labour and staffing crisis that’s only now, it seems, beginning to ease, with a recent surge in hires within the Canadian economy and subsequent decrease in unemployment. Despite this positive trajectory, however, there remains a sense of dubiousness within the retail sector. And it’s a dubiousness, according to President of Best Retail Careers International Inc. and retail staffing expert, Suzanne Sears, that’s rooted in challenges that extend beyond retailers’ struggles to simply fill roles within their organizations.
“The number of new hires that were recorded in Canada throughout the months of November and December were completely off the charts,” says Sears. “There was a number of them back in November as a direct result of an increasing comfort among the general public. People were becoming much more confident in their ability to safely head back out into public spaces, malls and other venues, as well as in returning back to the workplace. There’s a growing assurance among people because of the high rates of vaccinations in the country. They feel safer knowing that most people around them have been double vaccinated. Even after the spike in Omicron cases, that assurance continues to grow. This, combined with the fact that pent-up savings among consumers, who have greater access to product than services, are making purchases. This has created demand for work in warehousing, shipping, supply chain, buying, stores, e-commerce, and right on through the entire operation. When there’s a surge in business, more people are needed to process the orders. However, with so many new hires, are these roles being filled with the right talent?”
Shortage of appropriate skills
Cluny Hiring Sign in the Distillery District (Photo: Dustin Fuhs)
Recent data released within Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey reveals that an astounding 154,000 jobs were added to the country’s economy in November, far exceeding the 38,000 additions that were expected. In December, a further 55,000 new hires were recorded, leading to an unemployment rate of 5.9 percent and a near return to pre-pandemic levels. In addition, the survey finds that nearly all of the gains in employment were made in Ontario and Saskatchewan, with a distinct rise in full-time employment and subsequent decrease in part-time work. It’s a trend that is, as Sears points out, driven primarily by an uptick in consumer demand. However, it’s also representative of retailers’ need to now fill positions that were vacated as a consequence of the pandemic and associated mass lockdowns. And, adds the retail staffing expert, much of that need is showing up in skilled management positions.
“Since the start of the pandemic, there have obviously been a number of people who have dropped out of the workforce,” she recognizes. “Many have made the decision to retire. And others have found fruitful side gigs that they’re happy with. This has created more vacancies than retailers have ever seen, creating more opportunities in senior positions than could ever have been expected prior to COVID-19. However, the real need is in the middle of the organization within positions that require a high degree of skill and expertise and a real knowledge of the industry and the ways in which retail ticks. As a result, many organizations are finding that the pool of available talent to draw from to fill the vacancies has nearly been decimated. When there was a surplus of talent, which wasn’t that long ago, most organizations wanted to steal the top performers from other organizations. It allowed them to onboard people and get them to hit the ground running with minimal training. Today, they’re finding that they need to hire the people who simply want the job, hoping that they have relevant experience and skills that are close to what they’re looking for, and that they’re teachable.”
Store level stresses
Sears goes on to explain that as a result of retailers’ inability to attract the appropriate talent to their organizations, many are realizing that a substantial amount of training is being required to onboard most new hires. In some cases, drawing from a diluted talent pool means training from the ground up. It’s a reality that’s forcing many within the industry to at least start to reassess and enhance their current onboarding strategies and processes and the personnel within their organizations who can adequately transfer and impart the necessary information new hires require in order to perform and excel at their jobs. It’s something that, according to Sears, is placing a great deal of stress on many retailers and other businesses, causing a ripple effect through the entire organization, as the employment and talent landscape continues to evolve.
“If you just look at street level retail and individual store locations, there is suddenly an enormous amount of stress placed on retail managers,” she asserts. “They are typically not equipped to be trainers. It’s not part of their job and hasn’t been for decades. So, the pressures involved in their day-to-day activities are multiplied. Then, when you move up the chain to the district managers, they’re being torn to shreds because they’re the ones that are supposed to be providing the leadership for the store managers. How is anyone expected to execute an effective and accurate performance review when more than half of the retail staff aren’t adequately trained? And in many cases, it all leads back to the human resources departments which have traditionally not done a very good job of exploring and investing in training programs that address anything beyond running the cash register. And, when you consider issues like diversity and mental health, training has become a big umbrella that most HR departments just aren’t equipped to handle – something that’s been highlighted by our current shortage of talent.”
Greater emphasis on training and development
It’s a situation that, as Sears explains, impacts the entire organization, restricting their ability to grow and innovate. However, she also points out that perhaps the most detrimental effect that a dissatisfactory onboarding and training program has on any retailer is reflected in the levels of service that their staff have been enabled to provide. And, given the amount of focus that’s been paid by the industry over the course of the past number of years on developing ecommerce capabilities and digital service, a focus that’s only intensified throughout the pandemic period, it may be time for many within the industry to shift their attention to the experience that’s being provided in-store. And then, in order to deliver the exceptional service and experience that customers are increasingly looking for, Sears suggests that organizations conduct a formal review of the value that their brands place on training.
“Consumers have generally been giving retailers a pass for poor service of late because of COVID-19. But that won’t last forever. Soon, people will start to vote with their feet. Retail has always been about customer service. Most retailers and brands profess to know this and to be able to deliver an exceptional experience. But, the fact of the matter is that most don’t. Going forward, customer service is going to serve as an even greater differentiator for brands than ever before. And those who realize this will be those that will quickly separate themselves from their competitors. In order to create that separation, they need to hire more, hire sooner, hire faster and provide all new hires with a minimum 30-day classroom-level training program. In addition, they need to do a much better job of mentoring talent within their organizations to enable their employees for success. In short, they need to put much more emphasis on training and developing their talent as quickly and effectively as possible, viewing it as the most meaningful investment that they can make with respect to the future and continued growth of their brands.”
Retail Insider is streamlining its Canadian retail news from around the web to include a handful of top news stories that can be viewed quickly during the day. Here are the top stories from the past 24 hours.
