Vancouver-based technical apparel and equipment brand and retailer Arc’teryx has continued its Canadian expansion with the 14th location in the market with a new store at CF Carrefour Laval near Montreal.
The 2,028 square foot store is the third location in Quebec for the brand which operates a network of direct-to-consumer stores as well as wholesale operations.
“As we continue our expansion in Quebec, Arc’teryx Laval is our third location in Montreal,” shared Megan Cheesbrough, VP Canada & Global Guest Services at Arc’teryx. “The Rue Sainte-Catherine store was of the earliest locations we opened when starting our vertical journey over 10 years ago. Since opening on Rue Sainte-Catherine, we saw continued success and a dedicated community following, which was our motivation to build the Beta lounge instore equipped with a bouldering wall.”
Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)
“The community growth encouraged us to open a smaller neighbourhood store in Westmount offering a selection of our most iconic products in early fall of 2021. Our latest store in Laval is home to a growing jacket destination where guests can select from a large selection of weatherproof products to compliment various activities and requirements.”
“The store also has a deep connection to the community and is working on a selection of events that introduces guests to various activities including ski & split board touring, hiking and local runs. The Laval store is our first mall location in Montreal and services the largest suburb of Montreal north of the island.”
As Arc’teryx expands into new markets, the strategy will evolve based on the location.
“The community has responded so well since we opened the doors at the Laval location the week of Black Friday. Every time we open a store, we get clarity on what our community requires in terms of product, experiences, and education. We will continue to open stores taking consumer insights, in depth community reviews and looking at how/where guests are using product to inform what size store and where we open.”
Arc’teryx products are distributed through more than 2,400 retail locations worldwide and includes 115 branded stores in the chain.
Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)Arc’teryx at Carrefour Laval (Image: Arc’teryx)
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.
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Despite dealing with a series of restrictions, lockdowns, and nightly curfews, Montreal retail sales in 2021 have increased by 22 per cent compared with 2020 and by five per cent compared with 2019.
Luciano D’Iorio
Luciano D’Iorio, Regional President and Managing Partner of CDNGLOBAL Quebec, said the retail landscape is looking good for Montreal but it continues to be in transition like it was pre-pandemic.
“Before the pandemic we saw a lot of apparel retailers looking at ways of reusing their spaces and looking at ways of maximizing their leases and so you saw a lot of that,” said D’Iorio.
“Now I’m getting a lot of interest for retail space from QSR (quick service restaurants) users, surprisingly because you think that some of the restaurants didn’t do well during the pandemic but the QSR guys are always looking for spaces. Grocery is still very much strong. I think it’s really the apparel business that’s in flux, entertainment as well. As things start to pick up and people want to go out and enjoy being together, I think you will see a lot more of those things coming to malls and coming to the retail scene.”
COSTCO WHOLESALE OPENS NEW WAREHOUSE CLUB IN ANJOU, QUEBEC
“They basically built a warehouse that’s 20 per cent larger than their former warehouse and their former warehouse which is not far from their new one they’re still going to operate it but as a business enterprise warehouse. So they’re going to have the business enterprise concept and then they have the Costco that you and I know. They opened that at the end of October. So I foresee in that neighbourhood it’s going to have some effects in terms of retailers.”
D’Iorio said retail vacancy in the downtown area is not that bad compared to other major cities, particularly in the US.
“It says a lot about Montreal in general. The city centre of Montreal is basically fuelled by three factors – the student population, the office worker population and then the tourist population.
Image: Montreal Eaton Centre
“The students came back in September and both McGill and Concordia returned to in-person classes. Ninety per cent of university students were back in person and over 50 per cent of office workers were back full time or in a hybrid situation,” he said.
“The missing piece here I see is obviously the other 50 per cent of the office workers and then the tourism because in August when we opened the land border to American US citizens coming into Montreal we started to see hotel occupancies increase and of course that just bodes well for retailers. As things start to come back, a street like St. Catherine Street will start to pick up.
“Bricks and mortar is still important to some retailers. Some others they were probably suffering during the pandemic but some of these were suffering pre-pandemic. It’s just the evolution of the way people are shopping.”
Downtown Montreal (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
A fall retail report by commercial real estate firm JLL said the Montreal retail market has seen considerable improvement in leasing activity this year, but not yet to the levels of 2019. A series of restrictions, lockdowns, and nightly curfews has impaired the ability of many retailers to make plans and expand.
“Those who have expanded are focusing on the suburbs and urban areas outside the city’s core, as many office workers have stayed outside of the downtown areas and worked from home,” said the report.
“Montreal’s City Centre Report registered an increase in the percentage of downtown Montreal stores that were vacant or temporarily closed, from 28 percent in Q4-20 to 34 percent in Q1-21. The same study also revealed that the retail vacancy/temporary closure rate in downtown shopping malls surged from 20 to 34 percent. Sainte-Catherine Street experienced a slight increase.
“While net effective rents for occupied space decreased by three percent in 2020, they’ve now rebounded to 2019 levels. As retailers continue their path to recovery and landlords collect more rent, discussions surrounding rent relief, base-rent concessions, and adoption of percent sales agreements have faded.”
The report added that the ramp-up to the recovery of food services will certainly be slow as Quebec’s 2021 sales are down 29 per cent from pre-pandemic levels. After recovering much of the foot traffic in the summer, full-service restaurants in Montreal will likely see a weakening in business as the fourth wave moves through and the weather cools. Having fully recovered, QSRs will continue to perform better.
Image: Kisses from Italy Montreal
“Montreal has made great progress with the reopening of the economy, with increased visits to retail and recreational places. Compared with pre-pandemic levels, visits were down 62 percent in January 2021 but only down 14 percent in August. During the summer, visits to workplaces remained stable, down 35 percent from pre-pandemic levels, while August’s transit station visits were down 42 percent,” it said.
“Downtown foot traffic is set to rise in the long run as office workers, students, and tourists slowly return. More than 300,000 workers used to visit the downtown area every day. The redesign of Sainte-Catherine Street continues to progress, and construction work between Robert-Bourassa and Mansfield should be finalised this fall. The city will still be upgrading Philips Square and Union Avenue through 2022.
“The recent relaxation of quarantine for international visitors improved the prospects for downtown. Montreal hotels saw a considerable jump in their metrics during the summer. In July, occupancy sat at 42 percent, more than twice as much as July 2020.”
Manon Larose
Manon Larose, Senior Vice President, Retail with JLL, said she recently toured the principal malls and she noticed that consumers are more enthusiastic than ever.
“The consumers just want to go back. They bought nothing for the past 18 months. So they have some money to spend,” she said.
“In terms of retailers coming on the street, there are some very, very well-known banners that are looking at St. Catherine Street. I’m just thinking about three of them, which I cannot name for the time being, but I could say a prominent shoe brand who will soon be opening on St. Catherine. Electric cars are also looking at showrooms. So there is increasing demand for downtown and for St. Catherine.
“There are also a lot of companies that did pretty well on the web that are looking for brick and mortar now. I think a lot of the retailers that have postponed some of their projects are now ready to go and operate.”
“In the downtown core, there was already an element of vacancy and obviously the pandemic has exacerbated that situation. That said, there have been numerous new players that have entered the market over the last couple of years and that is helping invigorate and I guess rejuvenate the scene. So there are positives most definitely,” he said.
“In the last year and a half, we’ve opened Uniqlo with their largest store in Canada on Sainte-Catherine Street. We’ve reopened a larger and enhanced Sephora on the street. We had Victoria’s Secret that we had done. These are just things that we did from our own office. The full opening of the Ogilvy Holt Renfrew. There is new store development, there are things happening. Is it enough? Well it’s never enough but I would say Montreal hasn’t fared worse than the other major cities in Canada. As a matter fact, maybe because we do have a considerable amount of residential in our downtown core, it’s helped it be less empty compared to some of the other major markets over the course of the pandemic.”
Berkowitz said the main challenge that the retail real estate industry will have to live with, which will continue over the next couple of years, is the construction on the high street with the roadway being dug up section by section.
“That is a very disruptive factor for retail. I also think the city maybe needs to find a better way to deal with that project. So far, the sections that they’ve closed off have not really been properly. They haven’t made it as user friendly, pedestrian friendly when they closed the street off to vehicles. So hopefully the city will find its way to be more supportive to the retail environment while they’re getting the work that they have to do done,” he said.
Retail giant IKEA Canada continues to show its resilience and strength despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with strong sales in its fiscal year.
The company recently reported total sales increased 11.8 per cent to $2.59 billion for the financial year ending August 31, 2021, while online sales increased substantially by 161.5 per cent to $969.48 million. Reflecting IKEA Canada’s ongoing transformation to become more accessible and better reach customers, however they choose to shop and given pandemic-induced closures, online visits to IKEA.ca and the IKEA app increased by 32 per cent to 236 million.
Geoffrey Macdonald, IKEA Canada’s CFO, said it has been an unprecedented year, with some challenges, but a really successful year for the retailer.
IKEA Design Studio at Oshawa Centre (Image: IKEA)
“If we look at pre-pandemic levels, we’ve returned back to growth from those levels,” he said. “It’s been not without a lot of work but what’s been great is how those sales have developed and something we tracked through fiscal year 20 but then also fiscal year 21 is the online versus the typical store sales.
“And of course store sales being challenged with stores being closed but online sales growing dramatically. And that we saw heading into the pandemic, just the shift in consumer behaviour but what we’ve been able to accelerate through the pandemic from a transformative perspective to meet the customer in a good way. It’s great to see how our sales are developing headed into the new way of meeting the customer and how they want to shop.”
The company said the past year brought with it continued shifts in the way people use their homes, and the pandemic has irrevocably changed the way people choose to shop. IKEA Canada’s omnichannel transformation has included new ways to shop, prioritizing meeting customers wherever and however they choose; enhancing in-store experiences; strengthening ecommerce capabilities; and optimizing fulfillment.
Macdonald said the way consumers interact with the brand and interact with their homes is tending toward greater online activity which is obviously a shift from the original model for IKEA.
Image: IKEA Canada
Image: IKEA Canada
He said the pandemic offered the company an opportunity to challenge some of the old ways of working and to focus on providing a more wholistic omni channel customer experience.
IKEA Canada Customer Distribution Centres handled 1.8 million orders in 2021 (a 63 per cent increase from last year), while IKEA co-workers filled an average of 4,195 Click and Collect orders per day (up from an average of 645 orders per day, pre-pandemic).
“Demand has been high . . . (we’ve been) a bit of a benefactor for the way our lives changed during the pandemic. How we imagine our homes, how we interact with our homes, is certainly much different,” said Macdonald.
“That has been an opportunity for us and it’s given us the ability to transform how we interact with the customer, but also what we want to offer from an accessibility perspective, how we’re affordable to the right goods and right services and also in the space how do we enhance sustainable operations within how we operate as a company but also for our consumers to enhance their ability to operate sustainably.”
In its fiscal year, IKEA Canada:
Announced the location of its new small-format shopping experience at the corner of Yonge and Gerrard streets in downtown Toronto;
Launched IKEA Design Studio, a new small-format concept offering dedicated studio space for personalized design and planning services with IKEA design experts;
Expanded the network of Collection Points and Penguin Pick-up locations to 42 nationwide;
Enhanced home delivery through options like Doorstep Delivery, and a partnership between the Swedish Food Market and DoorDash; and
Introduced in-store experience enhancements, including new shopping functions via the IKEA App and express returns.
Michael Ward
“This year, we’ve seen life at home become more important than ever. As peoples’ needs continue to be shaped by the ever-changing world around them, their habits and homes change, too,” said Michael Ward, CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer, IKEA Canada, in a statement.
“For IKEA Canada, that’s what this year was about: helping Canadians create spaces and places that contribute to a better life at home, while strengthening our commitments to neighbourhoods, communities, and our shared home—the planet.
“I’m proud of our many accomplishments as a business, as leaders, and as people. We embraced the challenges that came with leading in the unknown and made incredible strides to meet and inspire customers in a better way. Building on our strengths and taking the lessons we have learned along the way, we will continue to transform our business to become more accessible, affordable, and sustainable than ever before.”
IKEA Construction – The Aura at College Park . Photo: Dustin Fuhs
The IKEA brand was founded in Sweden in 1943. IKEA Canada is part of Ingka Group which operates 389 IKEA stores in 32 countries, including 14 in Canada. Last year, IKEA Canada experienced 21.2 million visitors to its stores and 236 million visitors to IKEA.ca and the IKEA app.
Macdonald said the company is constantly evolving and the company knows it wants to be more accessible and more affordable and more sustainable.
“We will always evolve and as situations adjust certainly with a view of ensuring that our co-workers health and safety is paramount as well as our customers, how we can continue to evolve our offering.”
Macdonald said the retailer is constantly evaluating opportunities to grow with more stores.
“We’re very much focused at the moment on developing our penetration in city centres. That is a key element of our strategy to get to more of the many Canadians. Just the density that is in the city centres is so important to us. That is very much a focus because we have been, as we joke in IKEA, in the potato fields, sort of on the outskirts of town,” he said.
“We know the density and the increased densification of our cities. To be able to be truly accessible, be on a transit line, be within walking distance to so many Canadians, that we perhaps don’t have the greatest accessibility to right now, and to bring our sustainable products to, that’s really certainly our focus now.”
TORONTO - Clutch CEO Dan Park (left) and COO and Founder Steve Seibel are creating an end-to-end e-commerce experience for car buying in Canada. Clutch launched in 2016 in Halifax and entered the Toronto market earlier this year. Glenn Lowson photo (CNW Group/Clutch)
Clutch, Canada’s first online car retailing platform, is poised for growth after raising $100 million Series B equity financing.
Dan Park
Dan Park, CEO of Clutch, said the company, which began in 2016, acquires a large selection of inventory for consumers based from a number of different sources.
“We take that inventory through our production process which involves reconditioning the vehicle, inspecting the car, photographing the car and putting it up on our website, do a 210-point inspection, fixing any cosmetic imperfections to a certain extent, and then selling those directly to consumers through our website,” said Park.
“The best comparison is Amazon for cars. You go online, you see the car you want, you buy it and we deliver it right to your door.”
Image: ClutchClutch Places 14th on LinkedIn’s 2021 Top Canadian Startups List
Clutch is modernizing the car buying experience across Canada. It is headquartered in Toronto and services Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island. Its first market was in Halifax.
Recently Clutch was named one of the Fastest Growing Canadian Companies by the Globe & Mail and one of the Top Canadian Startups by LinkedIn.
It was 47 out 448 in the Globe’s list with a three-year growth rate of 1,287 per cent. It was 14th on the 2021 list of LinkedIn’s Top Startups.
“We’ve grown considerably from that kind of fledgling startup that we were back in Halifax to one of the largest retailers of used vehicles in Canada now. It’s still a long way for us to go,” said Park.
“What we really pride ourselves on is the customer experience and the quality of our vehicles. The quality of our vehicles being the paramount of what we’re doing. For us, when we first started it was crazy that in Canada the really two only options to buy a car were either to a dealership and spend five, six hours haggling over the price and having to go back a few times . . . Or you meet a stranger in the Tim Hortons parking lot which isn’t that much better.
“For us, we’re trying to provide that really great customer experience when it comes to buying a vehicle. We wanted to make it feel like magic. You click a button and a car shows up the next day but also gives you all the insurance of the highest quality. We have our 10-day money back guarantee, a complimentary 90-day warranty and we individually inspect every single car that we have on our site to make sure that the quality is the highest level for the consumer.”
Image: Clutch
Image: Clutch
The recent financing round was led by D1 Capital Partners with participation from Flight Deck Capital, Canaan Partners, Upper90, Real Ventures, GFC, Brand Project, and FJ Labs.
“We believe consumers are seeking to buy higher quality pre-owned cars with greater convenience and more transparent pricing,” said Scott Baxter of D1 Capital Partners. “We are excited to invest in the outstanding team at Clutch, help improve the car-buying experience for Canadians, and continue to back leading auto ecommerce franchises across global markets.”
With this funding and support, Clutch plans to strengthen operations in the existing markets it serves, which includes Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island, as well as expand to new markets in the coming months. Additionally, the company has plans to continue expanding its product offerings in 2022, helping facilitate the entire car-buying process even further. Clutch plans to make significant investments in growing its rapidly expanding team by over 200 people next year.
“(The financing) is a vote of confidence in our ability to execute on our future plans. For us, it gives us a lot of obviously financial resources to go and hire more folks, increase our capacity to far more vehicles and offer more selection and continue to build the infrastructure and service more markets,” said Park, adding that the company is selling “thousands” of cars every year, but he would not specify a number.
“We think the Canadian market is ripe for disruption. The way Canadians have bought and sold cars hasn’t changed in almost a century.”
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.
Craig and Suzanne discuss COVID’s impact on retail staffing in Canada, including the challenges being faced due to shortages and options to improve the situation.
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/
A well-known downtown Toronto commercial and entertainment complex previously known as 10 Dundas Street East has been rebranded to The Tenor, the culmination of a multi-year re-investment strategy for the property by BentallGreenOak, one of Canada’s leading real estate investment management firms.
The Tenor is a 10-storey, 360,000-square-foot entertainment, retail and office complex at the northeast corner of the intersection of Yonge and Dundas Streets. This is the 11th year of the building’s existence.
The real estate company’s re-investment strategy included the installation of one of Canada’s largest outdoor digital billboards, the successful addition of new anchor tenant “Little Canada” – a one-of-a-kind tourist and education destination – and earning international distinction by taking home The Outstanding Building of the Year (TOBY) Award in 2021, BOMA International’s most coveted prize.
Image: The Tenor (Facebook)
“As we look ahead with great anticipation to the revitalization of our district and a reimagining of the surrounding public spaces, The Tenor will be a strong and central presence in an inspiring future for Torontonians and all who visit our great city,” said Bob Emond, General Manager of The Tenor.
“Our vision is to showcase The Tenor’s dynamic energy with a new brand identity that captures the character and vitality of our tenants and our collective aspirations for a future that reflects the diversity of cultural and commercial activities that will animate this building for decades to come.
“The offices are comprised of Ryerson University, the Ministry of Tourism, the Toronto Film School, and The DMZ, which is an entrepreneurial startup run through Ryerson. The offices themselves are very mixed. The commercial aspect of the property itself we’re home to Cineplex which houses 24 theatres including their VIP theatre. We’ve got Jack Astor’s, which coincidentally per square is the busiest Jack Astor’s in Canada. It’s just incredible. We’ve got Spring Sushi. We’ve got Milestones. Those are our big three dine-in restaurants. And they’re all unique.”
He said all three of those restaurants have exterior rooftop patios that overlook the downtown core.
Image: The Tenor
“So it really is kind of a happening place – a gathering place – for folks after work, lunches, whatever,” said Emond.
There’s also a traditional food court with a variety of tenants. It’s unique because it’s on the third level of the building with a huge window expanse that overlooks the heart of Yonge Street.
“When students are back in class (at Ryerson), generally they use 11 to 14 of the cinemas daily, Monday to Friday, as lecture halls through the week,” said Emond. “It’s amazing. Around lunch time you’ll see 4,000 students come down the escalators or elevators to the food court or restaurants. It’s a happening place.”
There’s also a number of retailers such as Adidas, Winners, Dollarama, Tim Hortons, Blaze Pizza.
Image: The Tenor (Facebook)Image: Little Canada (Facebook.com/littlecanada.ca)
“But most importantly, in 2019 we were lucky enough to get Little Canada. We signed a lease agreement for 45,000 square feet here to bring their new attraction to Canada and that started the whole conversation. We’ve always been known as an address. We’re 10 Dundas. In 2019, we wanted to really identify the building as a destination. So we started the process. In 2019, we were awarded the Building of the Year through BOMA, the TOBY Award for best retail under a million square feet,” said Emond.
“We made a lot of inroads through the year. Yonge and Dundas basically it’s our Times Square if you think of it with all the media boards, the signage, the activity. We introduced a multi-million dollar digital screen on our exterior and really it’s one of the biggest billboards in Canada. It becomes a focus.
“So we were talking, what are we? We’re more than an address. We started kicking around names and we did some focus groups. We thought we’ve got to come up with a name that’s the go-to place that kind of resonates with people. We started the conversation and actually just this past summer . . . we won the prestigious international TOBY for 2021 as Building of the Year. That was awarded in Boston this past August.
“Little Canada is anticipating in their preliminary numbers up to 300,000 visitors in the first couple of years, growing to as many as half a million visitors a year. We thought we’ve got the cinemas, we’ve got the dining, we’ve got fast food, we’ve got Little Canada. We’re more of an entertainment destination . . . We thought of identifying ourselves as simply more than an address. We landed on The Tenor and it was a play on the number 10, being on 10 Dundas, 10 floors.”
