Just minutes it opened on Monday morning, shoppers poured into Sherway Gardens in Etobicoke, hoping to snag some deals at Hudson’s Bay as the end of the 355-year-old Canadian retail institution looms.
Some made beelines for the broken escalators, while others had to stop to consult the store directory, but either way, consumers with appliances, bedding and clothing in hand had soon formed long lines in front of the cash registers.
“You could barely move in the parking lot,” said Fraser Anderson, a self-described longtime Bay shopper, adding he hadn’t seen the store this busy since Christmas five years ago. “It’s really crazy.”
This frenzy played out at the chain’s stores across the GTA Monday as consumers looked to capitalize on the company’s liquidation sales.
The liquidation — set to start as early as Tuesday — marks the beginning of the end for Canada’s oldest retailer. After Hudson’s Bay filed for creditor protection earlier this month, an Ontario Superior Court justice gave the company the go-ahead to start closing all but six of its stores in a ruling on Friday.
For Anderson, at the Sherway Gardens location on Monday in search of a kettle to replace his broken one at home, the Bay’s collapse feels like “a kick in the head … Hudson’s Bay was basically part of our family.”
Three of the spared stores are in the GTA: the flagship store on Queen Street West, the Yorkdale Shopping Centre location and the store in Hillcrest Mall in Richmond Hill. The other three locations are in Quebec.
Not so fortunate is the Bay’s Fairview Mall location, where the excitement of finding deals soon turned to frustration and confusion as shoppers noticed that most items were still at full price — even as red “Sale” signs dotted the racks and sales floor. Geeta Coelho and Liz Bobbett, two old friends who bumped into each other at the store on Monday, said they had already seen many of the clearance items over the past week.
When Coelho asked a staff member where all the sales were, the store employee said the store hadn’t officially started the liquidation sale yet. Shoppers who approached staff at the Sherway Gardens location were told the sale wouldn’t start until Tuesday.
Some shoppers had a different kind of question for Bay staff. They asked them how they felt about the closure and what they were going to do afterward. Liquidation means the threat of layoff hovers over nearly all of the company’s 9,365 employees.
Amid the frustration over the lack of bargains Monday, Bobbett and Coelho said they felt nostalgic about the Bay and its history.
“Everything I’ve got in my house, pretty much, is from the Bay,” Bobbett said, adding it is her favourite store.
Coelho said she and her husband have been coming to the store for the last 45 years, since they moved to Canada from India. The couple were fairly frequent Bay shoppers back when their kids were young, she said. They bought their kids’ clothes and sheet sets here, because of the store’s standards — when you shop at the Bay, “you (can be) sure of a certain quality,” said Coelho.
Indeed, the Bay tends to sell higher-quality, higher-priced items. Kathleen Cassidy, professional bargain hunter and founder of Living on Loonie, an online savings blog, generally shops at the Bay when she “(needs) something for a special occasion, rather than the everyday,” she said. “A fancy dress to go to a dinner, or something along those lines.”
The Bay wasn’t her go-to store, however. “I associate it more with my parents and grandparents,” she said, adding it’s reminiscent of another time, when brick-and-mortar stores reigned supreme. “When I think of the Bay, I think about going into the mall more than shopping online.”
Bobbett and Coelho said they were saddened by the closure, and not only because of the department store’s centuries-long history. “I am losing some money, by way of rewards points,” Coelho said, adding she had at least $40-50 worth.
As time goes on, the liquidation-sale deals will likely improve, and different stores will probably have different bargains to offer, said Cassidy.
