Lockdowns, Nordstrom, Cartier, Gucci and La Vie en Rose
This week, Craig and Lee discuss Ontario’s latest lockdowns, Nordstrom’s launching Dover Street Market in Canada, Toronto’s Cartier renovations on Bloor, West Edmonton Mall’s Gucci opening and the continued expansion of retailer La Vie en Rose.
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Value-priced Japanese variety retailer Daiso has expanded into Canada with its first corporate store that has opened in downtown Vancouver. The retailer is testing the waters in Canada prior to launching a larger national expansion.
The 4,700-square-foot downtown Vancouver store is located at 810 Granville Street, which was formerly occupied by an Indigo Spirit bookstore. A wide range of products from stationery to cosmetics to home goods is carried in the new store. Origami paper and other traditional Japanese items can be found as well — the product assortment is known to be of a high quality for the price point which has resulted in Daiso’s success with more than 5,000 stores globally.
Almost all of the product in the new Vancouver store is imported from Japan, while some items were bought either in Canada or the US. A Canadian Daiso website is in the works and a US ecommerce site launched in December of last year.
Cash desks in Daiso store at 810 Granville Street. Photo: Daiso
Daiso Store at 810 Granville Street in Vancouver. Photo: Daiso
Interior of Daiso Store at 810 Granville Street in Vancouver. Photo: Daiso
JLL Canada represents Daiso in its further expansion into the Canadian market.
In 2003, the Fairchild Group opened a franchised Daiso store at the Aberdeen Centre in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond which operated for about 16 years. In August of 2019 Fairchild converted the 23,000-square-foot space to an Oomomo nameplate and the Vancouver-based Japanese-themed variety retailer continues with its own store expansion throughout Canada. Oomomo currently carries some Daiso products and the supply will be cut off as Daiso itself expands further in this country.
Daiso expanded into the United States in 2005 and the retailer now has over 80 stores there.
JLL is leading the Daiso expansion with a planned 10 stores in the Vancouver/Lower Mainland prior to a national expansion. Value shoppers in higher-income areas with a high Asian population will be initially targeted for stores that will include ‘daily needs’. Retail spaces between 5,000 and 7,000 square feet will be targeted initially with high foot traffic. Jack Voykin and Ryan McCarthy are points of contact at JLL for Daiso.
Home improvement retailer Lowe’s Canada is launching new contactless pick-up lockers where customers can grab items they have purchased online.
The new lockers will be in 48 select Lowe’s stores by the end of April, with the plan to expand the concept to more stores in the future.
Installed near the entrance of select stores, pick-up lockers will be equipped with Bluetooth technology and a touchscreen where customers will have access to instructions on how to retrieve their online orders, and where they will scan the barcode that they received in their confirmation email. Customers will have up to seven days following the reception of that email to retrieve their purchases at their convenience.
Tony Cioffi, Senior Vice-President, Stores at Lowe’s Canada, said consumers have embraced online shopping in a big way this past year and the retailer felt it was important to provide them with a quick and easy way to pick up their orders.
New contactless pick-up lockers at a Lowe’s location in Scarborough, Toronto. Photo: Lowe’s
“If they have a product that fits within the dimensions of the pick-up locker the customer could get the option of picking up that product in that locker without actually interfacing with anybody and in fact not really touching anything,” said Cioffi.
“We’re starting with rolling it out in 48 of our Lowe’s stores in April and then RONA is going to follow and Reno-Depot right after — 41 RONA’s and 15 Reno-Depot’s. In all it will be 104 stores which are going to have these lockers in the vestibule.
“That’s the first wave because we’re already having discussions about a next wave that’s going to come after. Our objective is we’re trying to create a consistent, seamless experience for our customers. So the more stores we can get this into the better it is obviously because it’s a great customer experience. It’s contactless and it’s efficient. Honestly, customers have been asking for this and with the ecomm business growing more and more obviously with everything that’s happened in the last year with COVID, it’s definitely something customers are excited about . . . Customers are looking for a seamless, omnichannel experience.”
Cioffi said another wave of 75 stores will take on the lockers, bringing the total in the future to 180 of the 236 corporate stores the retailer has in the country.
New contactless pick-up lockers at a Lowe’s location on Crowfoot Trail in Calgary. Photo: Lowe’s
New contactless pick-up lockers at a Lowe’s location on Crowfoot Trail in Calgary. Photo: Lowe’s
“We’re just going to continue to assess and the way we plan the rollout is it’s based on the volume of activity from weekly pickup activity in those stores,” he said. “We started with the Lowe’s 48 because they’re the ones that have the highest activity.”
Based in Boucherville, Quebec, Lowe’s Canadian business, together with its wholly-owned subsidiary RONA inc., operates or services some 470 corporate and independent affiliate dealer stores in a number of complementary formats under different banners, which include Lowe’s, RONA, Reno-Depot, and Dick’s Lumber. In Canada, they have more than 26,000 associates, in addition to approximately 5,000 employees in the stores of independent affiliate dealers operating under the RONA banner.
Early this year, Lowe’s Canada said it hopes to fill over 7,000 full-time and part-time positions in an extensive spring hiring campaign throughout its network of stores.
“Over the last year, we have seen a great deal of interest in home improvement among Canadians. More than ever, our customers are counting on us to help them make their home comfortable and safe, and our store associates play a key role in supporting them throughout their projects,” said Marc Macdonald, Senior Vice-President, Human Resources. “To meet the public’s increased demand and continue to offer the best service possible, we are looking for people who want to work for a top employer in a stimulating environment where they will be encouraged to harness their talents.”
Available positions range from Receiving Clerk and Sales Associate roles, to Sales Specialist, Administrative Support, and Merchandising roles.
Cioffi said the retailer is “super fortunate” to be an essential service in the current environment.
“We feel it’s a privilege. We take it very seriously. And yes we’ve been fortunate. Obviously people aren’t travelling. They’re staying home more and their home is becoming their office. It’s becoming everything to them. So people are investing in their home to expand the space that they’re living in by either building a home office or even spending time renovating their existing property because their disposable income is not being spent on travel and not as much in restaurants, etc,” he said.
“We’re fortunate in the home improvement industry that people are using some of that disposable income to spend on their home and obviously that benefits us because that’s obviously what we sell and the type of service that we provide. Business has been good.”
Cioffi said the retailer has already hired about 5,000 people in its spring hiring campaign.
“We continue to make sure that we get people, our associates, hired to help support us during these busy times,” he said.
(Interview) The Importance of Agility to the Future of Retail with Adam Sturrock of Amplience
An off-schedule podcast discussion with Adam Sturrock (VP of Product Marketing at Amplience). Craig and Adam discuss the importance of agility to the future of retail.
“Everyone says bricks and mortar is dying. I say it just has to evolve,” says Adam. Part of that evolution is the device sitting in everyone’s pockets – the smartphone. Everything is already in place, retailers just need to harness the right technology to really connect with their customers and enrich their experiences, whether they’re shopping online or walking into their physical stores.
A big part of the technology and infrastructure needed will be headless commerce. It provides the business agility retailers need to adapt quickly and proactivity implement change to gain a competitive edge.
Interview Details:
Adam Sturrock (VP of Product Marketing at Amplience)
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A recent survey by Angus Reid, commissioned by EMERGE Commerce, has found that COVID-19 pandemic habits developed when it comes to online shopping will persist even when the current health crisis is long over.
Consumers are increasingly getting used to the convenience and ease of shopping from home and avoiding other people in stores. That will become the new normal, post-pandemic for many of them.
In fact, the recent release of Deloitte’s Global State of the Consumer Tracker indicated that about 50 percent of consumers said they will be doing more shopping online compared to 2019.
The Angus Reid survey found that only 51 percent of people in Ontario plan to return to in-person shopping post-pandemic, with just eight percent of them shopping primarily in-person during the pandemic, compared to a massive 82 percent of Ontarians that shopped primarily in-person pre-pandemic.
Ghassan Halazon
Ghassan Halazon, CEO of EMERGE, a diversified, rapidly-growing acquirer and operator of e-commerce assets, said the results of the survey doesn’t surprise him.
“It just solidifies what we’ve been seeing across our ecosystem of EMERGE Commerce properties,” said Halazon. “There was a pause. But when this pandemic struck, there was this macro acceleration of online shopping behaviour. I suppose the million-dollar question was, what’s next? How will this curve look like a year or two out? And I think we’re starting to now get early glimpses of the new world which is online first. There’s no such thing as offline commerce or ecommerce. It’s really now just commerce and where consumers are at it happens to be online — increasingly.
“With the numbers, if I had to guess, I would have probably guessed around there. So nothing shocking to me. But I’m a practitioner here with our ecommerce portfolio. We get to see how consumers are voting with their wallets online.”
EMERGE was named one of the fastest growing companies in Canada by the Startup 50, and the Globe and Mail’s 2020 Canada’s Top Growing Companies.
Halazon said the trend to online will continue to grow the longer the pandemic sticks around and lockdowns are in place.
“Every additional quarter or year that this drags on I think just more and more people build these habits of doing shopping the easier, more convenient, cheaper way,” he said.
“I think user experience and optimizing the site, whether that’s desktop or mobile first, has a lot to do with how consumers ultimately convert online. So conversion rates are that much higher for optimized sites and simplified user-friendly sites. People are looking for an authentic voice these days. So transparency and authenticity are themes that consumers increasingly reward online shopping portals for when they see it.
“Of course, front and centre is ultimately the pricing, the shipping cost, and the logistics, effectively what is perceived as cost-effective shopping is also definitely at the top of consumer preferences or focus.”
Halazon offered some examples of EMERGE’s key portfolio companies to illustrate the growth in online shopping.
The company acquired truLOCAL on December 31, 2020 and Halazon described it as the market leader in premium meat subscriptions. It connects local farmers and grass-fed meat with a health-conscious, digitally-savvy audience online. That was a $20 million revenue business last year. The prior year it was only a $8.9 million revenue business.
“That’s an example of how the pandemic supercharged shopping for groceries,” said Halazon. “Grocery has been a huge category that was propelled by the pandemic and truLOCAL is Exhibit A.
“The other segment we can speak to and share some phenomenal results is golf, golf products. We have a website that’s powered by Shopify called JustGolfStuff.ca. It grew tremendously during the pandemic. You’re talking about a couple of thousand percentage points of growth that it has seen. We saw golf equipment, apparel, and golf balls grow. Obviously the pandemic made golf the envy of all other experiences. At a time when everything was locked down one of the only things that were allowed was to play golf. It brought together all these new demographics into the sport which resulted in people not only buying vouchers to play golf but also golf equipment.”
The golf website in February of this year grew by 4,000 percent from a year ago. The truLOCAL site grew 116 percent year over year.
“Golf and grocery are our two biggest categories. Both saw huge growth. And we believe they’re here to stay. People shopping for meat online has changed forever. If you tried it and it works, you’re very likely to stick around,” said Halazon.
He said truLOCAL is the company’s fifth overall acquisition and the largest revenue business, doubling every year. It’s also EMERGE’s first foray into subscriptions.
“We’re looking to build out our food tech platform through truLOCAL and through other acquisitions in grocery and food tech. We think that’s a big vertical for us and of course we continue to focus on the golf business,” added Halazon.
Rendering of Diamonds Direct storefront. Rendering: Diamonds Direct
Diamond and fine jewellery brand Diamonds Direct is expanding further throughout Canada with plans for standalone stores in major markets. The brand is known for its industry-leading pricing which will see it grow market share quickly.
Diamonds Direct at the CF Toronto Eaton Centre. Photo: Diamonds Direct
Diamonds Direct, which offers both natural and lab-grown diamonds, says that it is dedicated to providing customers with fair pricing and an overall radically-transparent diamond buying experience, including industry-insider pricing data. Customers can shop the brand’s loose diamonds as well as its Jewellery Direct® and Gold Direct® collections of fine jewellery. The jewellery and gold collections are currently available in Canada online.
Diamonds Direct currently operates an e-commerce business in Canada (DiamondsDirect.ca) as well as four physical showrooms in Ontario in partnership with Toronto-based retailer European Boutique. The showrooms are located at CF Toronto Eaton Centre in Toronto, the Yorkdale Shopping Centre in North York, CF Sherway Gardens in Etobicoke, and at Square One in Mississauga.
The expansion for Diamonds Direct will include larger storefronts for the brand, with the exact location and size of the storefronts to be announced in the coming months. We’ll continue to follow this story when more information becomes available.
Sarah Joyce will join Retail Council of Canada’s President and CEO, Diane J. Brisebois, on April 30, 2021 at 2:00pm ET for an in-depth conversation about how Sobeys successfully launched the Voilà by Sobeys service and how the grocery powerhouse plans to keep leading innovation in the grocery industry. [Register: RCC Members $64.99 | Non-members $129.99]
Voilà by Sobeys is a first-of-its-kind grocery delivery system that was expedited during the pandemic. Sarah Joyce, Sobeys Inc. Senior Vice President, Ecommerce mobilized multiple stakeholders on a national scale to accelerate the launch of Voilà by Sobeys grocery delivery service to more quickly meet the unexpected and heightened demand for grocery delivery. The new ecommerce platform has a freshness guarantee, products are offered at affordable prices with no hidden fees, and groceries are delivered straight to customers’ doors in convenient one-hour delivery windows. Voilà delivers from an automated warehouse where robots assemble orders and Voilà teammates safely deliver them direct to the customer’s home with minimal handling.
This is the first of four In Conversation With Retail Leaders webinars where Canada’s most visionary retailers and industry insiders will discuss innovation in retail and provide critical insights to successfully leading businesses through disruptive times.
Other In Conversation With Retail Leaders guests this spring include:
