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.
Despite the numerous challenges that have restricted much of the retail industry over the course of the past two years, hampering merchants’ efforts and impeding progress, opportunities have also arisen for those in the position to take advantage of them. The digitization of the world around us, which has sparked a sharp rise in the consumer’s adoption of online channels to make purchases, has changed the way many within the industry are conducting their businesses. New processes and modes of product delivery and transfer are being developed in order to meet the growing expectations of an increasingly digital consumer. It’s a shifting retail environment that enables brands to get closer to those engaging with them. And, according to industry expert, Liza Amlani, it’s an environment that’s proving ideal for the development of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand strategies.
“There are a few different factors that are driving brands to invest more into their DTC strategies,” she says. “Most notably, however, much of the work currently being done in this area is through the lens of getting closer to the consumer. A lot of brands are losing a lot of third-party data. It’s really changing the way brands think about product and the opportunities to leverage insights related to them in order to drive better decision-making. Capturing the right product insights goes a long way toward informing product creation, merchandising and marketing and promotion. As a result, a number of brands are attempting to own and leverage this data to close the feedback loop and build deeper relationships with their customers. It allows them to better understand what consumers want and develop the right product for them at the right time in the right channel. This really comes from direct insights from customers.”
Speed to market
It’s a shift in thinking among brands that’s been building momentum for some time, recognizes Amlani, but is one that she says has certainly been facilitated by impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic and subsequent accelerated digitization of the retail industry. Brands like Canada Goose, Arc’teryx and others have benefitted tremendously from the growth of ecommerce and changing consumer purchasing preferences and behaviour. And, there are online marketplaces being introduced on a consistent basis which are meant to help consumers more easily find their favourite DTC brands. It’s changing the retail landscape considerably, suggests Amlani, who also points out the ability that it provides DTC brands in increasing their product cadence.
“Another force that’s prompting brands to develop or enhance their DTC strategies comes from their desire to accelerate their speed to market,” she asserts. “In order to do this, they need to be creating teams that really understand the customer and who are building the deeper relationships that are required. And, it’s not only important from a product and merchandising insights perspective. Some brands are beginning to use insights across multiple categories, helping to break down category silos, bringing everyone working for the brand onto the same page. Again, it’s all about getting closer to the customer in order to create and introduce the products they want as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
Digital transformation
Amlani goes on to explain that, in addition to helping brands gain control of their customer data and supporting them in increasing their speed to market, there are a number of other benefits that brands receive as a result of the development of an effective DTC strategy. Brands today, she says, are starting to assess whether or not they’re overly represented in the market. They’re also recognizing some of the wholesale nuances that a DTC strategy helps them avoid, like navigating the negative, devaluing impact adjacent brands might have on their product. One or a number of these factors are leading many brands to close or scale back some of their retail accounts, a move most noticeable by Nike’s decision to cutback some of the products that it makes available through Foot Locker. It’s been estimated that an astounding 70 per cent of the retailer’s sales in 2021 were directly generated through Nike product. Upon news of Nike’s decision, Foot Locker’s stock plummeted 30 per cent. Amlani says that it’s a trend that’s mounting, and one that she believes is leading many multi-brand retailers to increase their digital investment.
“This is really going to push a number of retailers to accelerate their digital transformations,” she asserts. “This is especially true for retailers with multiple banners that are buying the same product. The challenge inherent in that kind of structure is that when different teams are buying from the same product catalogue, they end up recreating things like item master and product knowledge, resulting in a lot of duplicated work that isn’t consistent across banners and channels. And so, brands like Nike and others who have been a little more forward in their thinking with respect to digital transformation are realizing that the retailers that they’re partnering with aren’t fast enough for them. As soon as Nike develop a product, it’s on their website, app and social platforms. For retailers who have not advanced their digital capabilities or updated their tech stack, there will remain a disconnect between them and their brand partners who are working in the cloud and with digital tools. It’s already leading some to reduce the amount of product they share with retail partners. And I believe it’s a trend that will continue for some time longer.”
Leveraging customer insights
Apple Store at Yorkdale Shopping Centre (Image: Craig Patterson)
It’s a situation that Amlani says will result in a number of multi-brand retailers being left behind if they don’t catch up to their brand partners and the fast-advancing digital curve. She suggests that in order to combat these challenges, some are simply increasing their merchandising strategy to encompass a wider breadth of brands that appeal to their customers and, in some cases, enhancing the representation of brands within their product assortment and mix that truly reflect the retailer’s community of shoppers. This approach, however, has its obvious limitations, only allowing teams to be as creative as the product that’s available to them. In order to really respond in the face of increasing DTC competition and success, Amlani says that multi-brand retailers will need to leverage their own internal innovation and ingenuity and understanding of their customers.
“Creating private label products is perhaps the most effective way for multi-brand retailers to compete in this evolving retail landscape,” she says. “But doing this requires a great deal of work and is an area that many retailers don’t even want to venture into. However, for those with the resources and creativity to be able to execute on this, private label represents a fantastic way for some to really start to take advantage and deepen their understanding of their customers. And, again, this is all about engaging with the consumer, developing meaningful relationships with them, listening to them, and closing the feedback loop in order to hone an awareness of the product they want. The direct insights that many have access to through their customer-base can be used to great effect, informing and driving important decisions around design and product development.”
Extended product life cycle
It could be suggested by some, perhaps in a bit of a knee-jerk kind of way, that the current state of the traditional retail model could be under threat as a result of shifting consumer behaviour and an ever-expanding digital retail ecosystem. Might it be the demise or diminishing of the distributor? Amlani doesn’t think so. Instead, she believes that the pressures being placed on multi-brand retailers by their DTC competitors is a natural evolution of the industry that will simply yield greater innovation. In fact, she adds that as a result of rising sentiment around corporate social responsibility, there may soon be a need for even more distributors in order to properly manage an extended product lifecycle.
“What we’re going to start seeing is a lot more activity in the off-price space,” she says. “And, we’re also going to see increased activity around product beyond its full-price journey. That’s where we’re going to see more distributors and their increased importance as they take excess product. As retailers and manufacturers continue to place greater emphasis and focus on reducing the waste they create and operating within a more responsible and sustainable retail model, it’s going to push everyone to think about the product and its journey differently, resulting in a longer product life cycle. It’s actually in the end going to drive closer, deeper collaboration between distributors and their brand partners.”
Investing in technology
In order for multi-brand retailers to achieve this, however, Amlani underscores the significance of their task ahead, highlighting the amount of work that’s required. It’s a situation that calls for resilience, self-assessment, forward-thinking strategy and a penchant to get as close to the customer as possible. After all, retail is about delivering the right product and creating delight for the consumer. And, according to Amlani, it’s a fact that goes a long way toward highlighting just how critical it is for organizations within the industry to focus more energy and invest further into the development of their digital initiatives in order to achieve their objectives.
“Going forward, it’s really important for multi-brand retailers to look at other brands within the industry and learn from them. Brands like Nike, Amazon and Walmart take risks around their investment in technology and the way they test and iterate with product, understanding that they have to consistently improve their speed to market. Those brands are obviously the benchmarks for this type of approach to retail. But there’s a lot that can be learned from watching the way they do things in order to satisfy their customers. To start down that path and realize the opportunities in front of them, retailers have got to ramp up their investment in technology and accelerate their digital transformation.”
The Latest Scoop at CF Toronto Eaton Centre (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
Here’s the latest scoop on The Latest Scoop – it is continuing to grow its retail brand across the country with its unique strategy of launching pop-up spaces in preparation for longer-term leases and buildouts in certain markets.
The lifestyle concept store, which offers a curated selection of pretty things for people and their homes such as fashion, home décor, accessories, furniture, stationery, giftware, was born in 2004 as a series of pop-up shops and The Latest Scoop has quickly evolved into nine permanent locations in in Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary and Toronto.
The company’s first location was in Dundarave in West Vancouver.
Image: The Latest Scoop on Ossington Ave (Photo by Dustin Fuhs)
Debbie Nichol
Deborah Nichol, Founder of the brand, said the retailer has a total of 12 locations currently. The most recent is in Woodgrove Centre in Nanaimo. Prior to that it opened in CF Market Mall in Calgary and CF Chinook Centre in Calgary. It has also opened in Mayfair Shopping Centre in Victoria. Guildford Town Centre in Surrey, BC, and the CF Toronto Eaton Centre were also opened since the pandemic began.
Nichol had been in retail for a number of years and retired many years ago to take care of her young son Adrien, who is now the brand’s CEO.
Adrien Nichol
“But I missed working. I had a really popular store in town and I just missed being out in the workplace and it was a very creative business that I enjoyed and even Adrien said to me I should go back to work and open up another store,” she said. “I guess he had it in his blood at an early age.
“I had the money to go shopping and not working I had the time to go shopping for once and I couldn’t find anything I wanted. Nothing was motivating me. When I go into a store, I want to feel something. I go shopping for emotion, for experience . . . That’s why people go to brick and mortar stores. And there was nothing. It was a time when all the designers were coming out with their own stores and they all looked the same – all gray, white, black, taupe, whatever it was, there was nothing new.
The Latest Scoop at CF Toronto Eaton Centre (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
The Latest Scoop at CF Toronto Eaton Centre (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
The Latest Scoop at CF Toronto Eaton Centre (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
“I started thinking what could I do that would fit into my lifestyle as a mom of a young child, and my husband travelled, my life was pretty busy, but not interrupt my lifestyle. So I thought a pop-up store. I would open whenever I wanted and carry whatever I wanted and open for short periods of time. This turned out to be a very successful strategy. It was definitely fun. I had no rules in my buying mix. If I felt like I wanted to carry a tennis racket, I’d carry it. Anything. There were no rules. Complete outside the box thinking, which is still our strategy today.
“We would sell out after two or three weeks basically.”
The brand started opening stores for longer periods of time because of customer demand. That demand continued and it led to some of its stores having permanent locations.
“What COVID has done is offered us the opportunity to get back to our roots, which is why we opened up Mayfair and Chinook and Toronto Eaton Centre in the various pop ups that were opening – to go back to our roots and have fun with the neighbourhoods that we’re in and develop and grow our ecommerce. We love ecommerce but we really love brick and mortar retail because we get to meet the customer, hear them and talk to them,” said Nichol.
The Latest Scoop at Guildford – Photo by Lee RivettImage: The Latest Scoop
“It gives us the opportunity to test market new neighbourhoods without committing to long-term leases. Should we wish to switch to long-term leases then that’s our choice at that point.”
According to the company’s website: “Our Purpose is to inspire our people and our customers to embrace their individuality through genuine interactions.
“We travel from Paris, Italy, New York, Bali, Los Angeles to Spain to uphold our standards of always having fresh new arrivals weekly, based not on brands, but on what we find to be beautiful, inspirational, and meaningful. While searching for fabulous pieces, we also bring back innovative design concepts to create beautiful stores, reset seasonally.
“When you’re here, we urge you to lose yourself in the sense of discovery. We want you to have fun, laugh, connect and most importantly, fall in love with your wardrobe and your home.”
Image: The Latest Scoop on Queen Street West in Toronto (Photo by Dustin Fuhs)Image: The Latest Scoop
Nichol said opening a new store is a big undertaking financially and it’s a big commitment. When you open a pop up, you get to test market to see if you’re accepted by the neighbourhood. If you’re in the right location. If the store is the right size.
“You get a chance to feel it out,” she said. “It’s like a test drive. If you buy a car you want to test drive it and that’s sort of what we do with retail locations. And to be honest, we go in with full integrity of becoming full-time stores within that community and we just want to make sure that the neighbourhood understands us and we’re a good fit.
“We’re already looking at other neighbourhoods in Canada, in other provinces. And we will continue down the path of temporary stores, pop-up stores, that we hope to convert to full-time. But we’ll also go into smaller communities like Nanaimo where we don’t know if it will lead into full-time at this particular time. It’s unknown territory to us but we feel confident that the cities that we’re choosing are chosen with purpose.
“As far as expanding the pop up we’ll be looking throughout the rest of Canada and also we’ll be going back into the United States. Before COVID, we had one temporary store in Pasadena, California and there’s a benefit to having stores in the US, because our buying team travels down to California every three or four weeks.”
College Park in Toronto, formerly Eaton's (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
Brand Finance Canada’s latest report indicates RBC is the country’s most valuable brand while Scotiabank is the nation’s strongest brand.
Brand Finance is the world’s leading brand valuation consultancy. It was set up in 1996 with the aim of bridging the gap between marketing and finance.
David Haigh
In its 2022 report, David Haigh, Chairman & CEO, Brand Finance, said the purpose of a strong brand is to attract customers, to build loyalty, to motivate staff.
“All true, but for a commercial brand at least, the first answer must always be ‘to make money’. Huge investments are made in the design, launch, and ongoing promotion of brands. Given their potential financial value, this makes sense. Unfortunately, most organizations fail to go beyond that, missing huge opportunities to effectively make use of what are often their most important assets. Monitoring of brand performance should be the next step, but is often sporadic,” he said.
“Where it does take place, it frequently lacks financial rigour and is heavily reliant on qualitative measures, poorly understood by non-marketers. As a result, marketing teams struggle to communicate the value of their work and boards then underestimate the significance of their brands to the business. Skeptical finance teams, unconvinced by what they perceive as marketing mumbo jumbo, may fail to agree on necessary investments. What marketing spend there is, can end up poorly directed as marketers are left to operate with insufficient financial guidance or accountability. The end result can be a slow but steady downward spiral of poor communication, wasted resources, and a negative impact on the bottom line.”
The most valuable Canadian brands of 2022 (Image: Brand Finance)
In its report, the Top 10 Most Valuable Brands in Canada were:
RBC
TD
Scotiabank
Canada Life
BMO
Circle K
CIBC
Telus
Brookfield
10.Bell
Charles Scarlett-Smith
“The top 10 has traditionally been dominated by the big banks and telcos. Incidentally, these are the kind of brands we would expect to see at the top of a ranking in a developing economy, rather than mature economy. Tech sector brands are still notably missing at the top of the table, but with the current trends in the sector, we will likely see Shopify and Constellation Software vying for the top 10 in the near future,” said Charles Scarlett-Smith, Director of Brand Finance Canada.
“The dominance of the banking system is really telling. The Canadian financial sector really punches above its weight. What’s been interesting though in the last couple of years is seeing how Circle K with its new brand strategy has really synthesized their brand messaging.”
Three years ago, Alimentation Couche-Tard began the mammoth project of rebranding their large global portfolio of brands under the Circle K global masterbrand. Circle K is now part of the fabric of the Canadian landscape, except for in Quebec, where the winking Owl and Couche-Tard nomenclature remains. Blue and red is gone now though in favour of red and orange; we are curious to see if Quebecers noticed, said the report.
The report said the list of most valuable brands reflects the Canadian economy generally: low-risk, conservative, and effective.
“These traits have historically been a safeguard against economic crises; however, the pandemic has put forward a unique set of challenges for Canadian brands. Brands have been required to constantly adapt to shifting pandemic response policies. This manifested as a blessing in disguise for some sectors, and a quagmire of cutbacks and logistics for others. The typically reliable Canada Top 100 has never been more dynamic,” said the report. “There is also some light at the end of the tunnel. From 2020 to 2021, the aggregate value of the Top 100 Canadian brands fell by one per cent. It was the first time that the brand economy decreased in value since we began our study. This year, we are happy to report that Canadian brands are back in the green, having grown in value by an average of 22 per cent. Canadian brands (for the most part) are bouncing back.”
RBC (brand value up 13 per cent to CA$23.5 billion) has regained the top spot as the most valuable brand in Canada after falling second to TD in 2020 (brand value up three per cent to $21.7 billion). RBC and Scotiabank are the only two banking brands that have seen double digit growth since 2020.
Scotiabank in Downtown Toronto (Image: Dustin Fuhs)The Top 10 Strongest Canadian brands of 2022 (Image: Brand Finance)
The Top 10 Strongest Canadian Brands were:
Scotiabank
A&W
WestJet
Canadian Tire
TD
Tim Hortons
Canada Life
Winners
Crown Royal
10.Maple Leaf
Scarlett-Smith said a brand’s strength is determined through a balanced scorecard exercise, where brands are benchmarked and indexed against their competitors on over 30 different brand strength related metrics. Metrics in the BSI range from the amount businesses invest in their brands, to stakeholder equity metrics (momentum, awareness, familiarity, recommendation etc…), to the price premium a brand can command compared to its peers.
“For the first time in three years, Crown Royal is not the strongest brand in the table. The strongest brand is Scotiabank with a Brand Strength Index (BSI) score of 85.8 out of 100 and a corresponding AAA rating. The strength of the Scotiabank brand has increased by an impressive 6.9 points since the start of the pandemic, the most of any banking brand in Canada. Scotiabank’s brand strength growth is largely down to increased recommendation and NPS (Net Promoter Score), where the bank vastly outperforms its competitors,” said the report.
“The recent announcement (by Canadian Tire) of a $3.4 billion investment strategy, with a focus on building out its ‘Owned Brands’ products and offerings, signals an exciting future for the retailer and its portfolio of sub 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 weekend.
The company is targeting May when it will relocate from its current 140,000-square-foot head office space in Burnaby to a new 70,000-square-foot space in the Mount Pleasant area of Vancouver.
The new office space will be used for intentional connection, collaboration, to inspire cross-functional innovation and serve as a space for those who want/need the option to work in an office.
Best Buy Canada HQ (Rendering: Best Buy Canada)
Carol Graziani, Director of Diversity and Inclusion for Best Buy, who also wears a hat for employee experience and the corporate environment, said prior to the pandemic the retailer had about 1,200 people assigned to the corporate headquarters.
Carol Graziani
“Pre-pandemic we all worked on site all of the time. We all worked five days in the office. That was our structure. Before the pandemic we were moving to a semi-remote structure where we were going to do what we call work away and give people the opportunity to work remotely two days a week,” she said.
“We were going to launch that in April of 2020. Then the world changed and we went to 100 per cent corporate employees working remotely. So the fortunate piece was we already had the infrastructure and the technology in place to facilitate remote work two days a week and we just pivoted because when the lockdown happened we closed our office.
“We tried a couple of times to bring people back on site but the health mandates kept shifting so we really stayed almost fully remote for the entire two-year period.”
Best Buy Canada HQ (Rendering: Best Buy Canada)
Graziani said when the company designed the new office and looked to the future it did so with the intention of no longer requiring employees to be on site for a routine schedule. Only about 30 people have to be on site five days a week in the areas of shipping and receiving, IT services or security.
“But the vast majority of our employees are basically on site when they want to be here or when their leaders deem it’s an advantage to come together,” she said.
“This differs a little from what you hear about hybrid. In the hybrid model, companies say you have to be on site two to three days a week. We’re basically saying we’re not requiring you to come on site any number of days a week. It’s your choice. You can be flexible. And when leaders say you know what we want to have a town hall, we want to do some team building, then people will come. Really flexible.”
A survey of employees found that 96 per cent of respondents felt they were able to do their jobs as effectively if not more effectively working remotely than when they were in the office full time. Over 50 per cent said they only wanted to come to the office when specifically required, as opposed to on a regular basis or required number of days per week of month. An additional 25 per cent saw themselves coming to the office (post COVID) between one and five times a month.
Best Buy Canada HQ (Rendering: Best Buy Canada)
The top three reasons that employees would come to the office were: Events like large team sessions, strategy sessions or town halls; To connect with others (face to face /team building); and To work on a complex project that required face to face collaboration.
“We’re a technology company so we embrace technology quite readily and so learning how to use technology and being able to pivot into that environment, I think that’s kind of in our DNA. It’s what we do because we’re Best Buy,” said Graziani.
“We had been experimenting with different work models over the last five years. So for example an agile work process. Our employees are quite adaptive and I think our workforce also tends to be skewed to a younger demographic who are quite open to exploring new ways of working. I don’t know if that makes it easier for us or not but again because we are a technology-focused company, embracing new ways of doing things is kind of what we do.
“This gives people choice and I think choice and empowerment are really important to employees in today’s workforce.”
Kelly talks about the missed opportunity to help small businesses recover from the pandemic, the rising costs for doing business, concerns about government spending and tax increases, the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, the business tax rate, and credit card processing fees.
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Connect with Mario Toneguzzi, a veteran of the media industry for more than 40 years and named in 2021 a Top Ten Business Journalist in the world and the only Canadian – to learn how you can tell your story, share your message and amplify it to a wide audience. He is Senior National Business Journalist with Retail Insider and owner of Mario Toneguzzi Communications Inc. and can be reached at mdtoneguzzi@gmail.com
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Palliser Production Facility in Winnipeg (Image: Palliser)
Winnipeg-based furniture manufacturer Palliser is making a big investment in its operations to fuel the company’s growth in North America.
Peter Tielmann
The company is building a new 130,000-square-foot facility in Winnipeg as well as another plant in Matamoros, Mexico, to complement its facilities already in place at those locations.
“This investment is our commitment to growth in the North American market,” said Peter Tielmann, President and CEO. “We’re eager to create new jobs right here in Manitoba, where our business is anchored, as well as in our Mexico facilities that primarily support our US customers. It’s important for us as a company to continue to produce domestically, which reduces our environmental impact by lowering our emissions and carbon footprint.
The two new facilities will create 700 new jobs.
Palliser Production Facility in Winnipeg (Image: Palliser)Palliser Production Facility in Winnipeg (Image: Palliser)
“We are dedicated to providing retailers and consumers with personalized, made-to-order products our customers have come to appreciate over our nearly 78-year history. We are proud of our success, which we attribute to personalization, as well as our commitment to style, and dedication to comfort, quality and sustainability.”
Tielmann said the company currently has three factories in place in Winnipeg, employing about 1,200 people. Those three factories are about 500,000 square feet in total.
“Winnipeg is our hometown. We’ve been there for a long time. We’re a 75-year-old company. That’s where our head office is. In the past we produced more in Canada but it’s been difficult for the last number of decades because competition was very stiff from countries where labour rates are much lower and we were dealing with certain unfair trade practices coming out of Vietnam and China – at least that’s what the industry complained about,” he said.
“Once the government looked into it and found that was true and implemented tariffs against these certain categories of furniture, that really gave us confidence to invest in Canada because we’ve been otherwise expanding in Mexico. In Mexico, we have 2,500 employees and we’re still growing there. And we’re using the Mexican plans to support our US market. But now that the tariffs are in place we’re confident again in investing in Canada as well because we believe that under these new conditions there is a future for manufacturing of these types of product in Canada again.”
The creation of the two new facilities will help the company increase total North American production capacity by 30 per cent in 2022.
The Winnipeg facility is expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter of this year.
In Mexico, Palliser has four factories in place currently with about 600,000 square feet. Another 100,000 square feet is being added. It is also adding more shifts there to meet demand.
Palliser Production Facility in Winnipeg (Image: Palliser)
“We have been investing in new product lines and these product lines have been successful in the marketplaces both in the US and Canada so that requires more capacity,” said Tielmann.
“More importantly, we really see a trend towards on-shoring. That trend we believe will continue. There’s more market share going towards manufacturers who manufacture on the continent. So that’s really a big trend that’s been going on for multiple reasons. During COVID there were a lot of supply chains interrupted and retailers decided they didn’t want to be dependent on supply chains that rely on really very distance places and wanted to on-shore to re-balance their product portfolio.
“Also, the consumer sentiment towards sustainability is a big deal and that’s been an ongoing trend already but it’s been accelerating as the more the public is aware of requirements for us to do something about the climate change we’re dealing with – the issue of our generation. Many consumers want to do what’s in their power to make choices that are more sustainable. We make bulky products and shipping across the ocean leaves a huge carbon footprint. So being domestic makes a big difference. And also domestic manufacturers can be more transparent towards the materials and where they come from and how they make things. Also for us our goal is to be leaders in our industry of making products more sustainably. So it’s a big deal. Sustainability is a factor that has driven a move towards on-shoring and it’s driven from the consumer.”
Rendering of Future lululemon at 2 Bloor Street West in Toronto (Image: Kingsett Capital)
Vancouver-based retailer lululemon will open one of its largest stores in early 2024 in 2 Bloor at the iconic northwest corner of Yonge and Bloor Streets, in downtown Toronto.
The lululemon store will span about 12,100 square feet over three floors including street level and second floors as well as access in the concourse with direct connection to the TTC. A signature double-height glass facade with wraparound corner exposure will give lululemon a significant presence. The store is part of a substantial podium renovation including an expanded third floor glass façade and an office lobby upgrade which will modernize the 430,000 square feet Class A office tower located above.
Tim Sanderson of JLL in partnership with Open Realty Advisors acted on behalf of lululemon in the lease deal with KingSett Capital which owns 2 Bloor Street West. The landlord broker for the deal was Graham Smith of JLL with Jaimy Hunt of KingSett Capital handling the transaction on behalf of the company.
Rendering of Future lululemon at 2 Bloor Street West (Image: Kingsett Capital)
Lululemon is relocating from a much smaller 3,067 square foot space nearby at 153 Cumberland Street. That building, known as 130 Bloor Street West, is also owned by KingSett Capital and houses retailers Aveda, Nicolas Menswear and a recently opened Moscot store on the Cumberland Street facing side, and Gucci, St. John Knits and a future Lafayette 148 store on the Bloor Street side.
When it opens in early 2024, the Yonge & Bloor lululemon storefront will be one of the retailer’s largest. In Chicago, lululemon operates a store spanning about 20,000 square feet in the city’s Lincoln Park area that opened in July 2019.
KingSett Capital’s 2 Bloor Street West retail podium is located directly at the northwest corner of Yonge and Bloor Streets. We recently reported that retailers Swarovski and Talbots had shut for the podium renovation which will create about 15,500 square feet of retail space at the corner.
The commercial podium has a few remaining available spaces. Next to lululemon at the corner of Mayfair Mews/ Bloor, there is a 3,355 square foot flagship opportunity (825 square feet at street level and an additional 2,530 square feet on the second level). There are also four small CRU units spanning from 380 square feet to 640 square feet in the concourse that are directly connected to the TTC subway entrance. The space is being marketed by Graham Smith and Brandon Gorman, co-Practice Leads of the Agency Retail Group at JLL.
2 Bloor Street West Lobby Rendering (Image: Kingsett Capital)
The immediate area is seeing significant changes. A development facing Cumberland Street called Cumberland Square in years to come will transform the area behind Holt Renfrew into a new neighbourhood also housing thousands of new residents in tall residential towers. Significant changes to the Hudson’s Bay Centre at the northeast corner of Yonge and Bloor Streets is said to be at play following the closure of a Hudson’s Bay store next month. On the southeast side of the intersection is a Nordstrom Rack store and on the southwest side is The ONE, a massive tower that is under construction that will house an Apple flagship store at its base according to news reports. The Bloor Street corridor to the west will also see big changes as per an article in Retail Insider last month.
Lululemon won’t be the only yoga-themed retailer on the block — we reported in January that US-based Alo Yoga will be opening a flagship storefront at the northeast corner of Bloor and Bay Streets in the 60 Bloor St. W. office tower podium, replacing The Gap which shut early last year. Sources said that Gap-owned yoga-focused brand Athleta had also been considering the former Gap space.
Vancouver-based furniture store Sundays has expanded its reach in Canada with the opening of a warehouse and a store in Toronto and the addition of an executive to oversee its logistics network.
Barbora Samieian
“I think we’ll primarily continue to be ecommerce, however we do see opportunity for two more physical spaces as we consider US expansion going into 2022,” said Barbora Samieian, Co-Founder, Director of Brand and Community for Sundays.
The retailer launched in November 2019.
“An interesting time to launch a new business,” said Samieian. “The model was just to be a direct to consumer model with everything in stock. That was sort of our motto. We’ll stock a very curated selection of items and in November of 2019 we started with livingroom only – some sofas, coffee tables and a few end tables.
Sundays on Ossington (Image: Sundays)
“Eventually we started expanding our living room collection and then we got into dining and bedroom as well but still a very tight and focused line.
“We started with just ecommerce but during COVID there were all of these empty spaces because restaurants were leaving and other businesses were shutting. So we actually started a little pop-up – a showroom – in Vancouver in about May or June of 2020 and we saw from that kind of experiment – it was like a two to three month lease – there was a lot of interest for customers to be able to touch and feel our furniture. So we’ve since opened a permanent showroom in Vancouver. That opened in the fall of 2021 on West 6th Avenue, South Granville, just off of the main furniture row in Vancouver.”
Samieian said the company opened a Toronto pop-up location in the spring 2021 which has now also turned into a permanent showroom in Toronto. That one is on Ossington Avenue.
“In addition, we started a partnership in November 2021 with a business in Calgary called Socality House. They’re a coffee shop and sort of creative working space on 17th Avenue S.W.,” she said. “What we’ve done there is we’ve partnered with them where we furnished their entire space and any Calgary customers that are interested in seeing our furniture in person can go there to Socality House to check it out.”
Sundays x Socality House
Sundays x Socality House
Samieian said the retailer’s line is smaller and more focused than some of its competitors in that space. It’s very design-forward.
“We’re very passionate about the product. I would say we’re not a tech that chose to sell furniture but we’re furniture people first,” she said. “The value proposition is that there’s an accessible price point for the quality that we offer.”
The retailer also has a white glove delivery service for all orders, so that customers’ items get unwrapped and assembled on the spot, with packaging removal as well.
“That’s a differentiator for us,” she said. “Since we started the business, we wanted to provide a premium experience to the customer. Furniture shopping overall can be quite a headache for people. It can be a little overwhelming. You go into these big furniture stores and there’s so much choice, you order it, you’ve got to figure out delivery, you get free shipping if it’s over a certain amount but then they drop it at your curbside, and you live in an apartment building and you’re hauling it up the stairs in your building.
“We really saw an opportunity to re-haul that. We built in white glove delivery into our pricing. All of our larger items, anything that needs assembly, is shipped with our delivery partners in each market and it is assembled in the customer’s home and we remove the packaging.
Image: Sundays
Image: Sundays
Sundays on Ossington (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
“I think people want that kind of service. It also reduces the chance of a customer maybe assembling something wrong, which then might result in a damage claim or potential return. That’s the other benefit. But I think it’s just a much nicer, smoother kind of A to Z experience for our customers.”
Recently, the company opened a warehouse in Toronto to ensure even speedier deliveries of furniture to those in Eastern Canada, with some items even being delivered the same week as they’ve been ordered.
It has also continued to grow their inventory so that there is even more product available.
Sundays on Ossington (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
“When we started we thought everything would be in stock, there would be no need to have pre-order items on our website. But we realized pretty quickly that we’d be at zero revenue and we wouldn’t be able to sell anything when the supply chain issues really started unfolding,” said Samieian.
“We made pre-orders available and because we’ve been growing quite significantly being a bit bullish in our projections, knowing that the lead time for furniture is pre-COVID it used to be 100 days from placing an order to receiving items. During COVID that turned to almost 300 days. Just managing those expectations with our customers. It’s normalized a little bit. The supply chain issues have improved and customers grew to expect that. We saw when the supply chain issues started that likely this would take some time and so fairly early on we started ordering some bigger quantities to make up for that. It’s been a challenge absolutely.
“Because of the supply chain issues that we saw in the market, I think one thing that we maybe expedited and did sooner than we otherwise would have as a startup is we actually brought on a Director of Logistics earlier this year.”
