Lisa Agranove has been caught in a whirlwind since news broke that the once-venerated retailer she partnered with filed for creditor protection in early March.
The owner of Lisa Maxwell Jewelry, a Toronto-based handmade jewelry designer, said Hudson’s Bay’s “shocking” announcement left her in the dark.
Unsure how her merchandise at five stores in three provinces would be affected, she said she contacted retailers several times in the days following the announcement for clarification, but has received no response.
A week later, she said, she finally got through to a manager of the company, but the call left her with more questions than answers: Would her products would be sold at a discount? Would she still receive consignment payments?
“It became clear to me,” said Agranove, “that I needed to go and remove the rest of my products.”
During the week of March 17, Agranove, away on vacation, asked her brand representatives to drive to the retail stores in Oakville, Victoria, B.C., Vancouver and Montreal to pull products from the beleaguered retailer. They successfully cleared out all her inventory.
Agranove’s not the only one trying to reclaim stock.
Other suppliers have seen loading docks at flagship stores in downtown Toronto and Oakville filled with small cars loaded with goods, The Canadian Press reported.
Amid the evolving reports of liquidation of all locations except six top-tier stores, Canada’s oldest company, founded in 1670, kicked off sales last Monday at 73 Hudson’s Bay stores, along with two Saks Fifth Avenue stores and 13 Saks OFF 5TH locations in Canada.
It’s only been a little over two years since Agranove, a self-taught jewelry maker, became a vendor with the Canadian retail icon. A Hudson’s Bay rep approached her at a pop-up event in downtown Toronto and asked if she wanted to sell her jewelry in their stores.
“Immediately, I was like, yes!” she recalled. “I was so excited.”
However, concerning signs about the retailer emerged in 2024, she said. Late payments became “very delayed” in January of this year, and eventually stopped altogether.
Agranove says she is owed more than $1,000.
As of March 7, court documents reveal that Hudson’s Bay owes some $950 million to nearly 1,900 creditors, including landlords, fashion brands, banks and various levels of government.
Ralph Lauren is owed $16 million, and Estée Lauder is owed $9 million. Taylor Norris, a co-partner of 519 Clothing, said his company has not been paid since November 2024 and is owed about $8,000.
While Norris also wanted to retrieve his inventory, he hasn’t been able to reach the company, aside from receiving a letter from the court-appointed monitor that says “enforcement processes, rights, and remedies are stayed as against or in respect of Hudson’s Bay Canada or affecting Hudson’s Bay Canada’s business or property.”
To Norris, it seemed that, according to the letter, he was prohibited from retrieving his stock.
“We honestly haven’t been hearing back from them since November,” Norris said. “I contacted each of the locations and it seems like they’ve been let go or something.”
Hudson’s Bay did not respond to the Star’s question about vendors’ rights to inventory by the time of publication.
Timothy Dunn, an insolvency lawyer who is not involved in the Hudson’s Bay file, said while the letter does prohibit “ordinary suppliers” from removing merchandise, it’s possible that Hudson’s Bay’s contracts with consignors allow them to remove their products, as they are not considered the retailer’s goods until sold.
The delayed payments were “the writing on the wall” that led some companies on the creditor list to cut their losses with Hudson’s Bay a year ago.
The retailer was a partner of Vanilla Studio, a furniture wholesaler, for more than 10 years, accounting for 20 per cent of its online sales during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When unpaid invoices grew to $25,000 in 2024, the supplier cut off inventory shipments — and says it is still owed that amount. to this day.
Elizabeth Alexandre, the chief operating officer of Vanilla Studio, said her company participated in Hudson’s Bay’s push to strengthen its e-commerce platform by launching a premium, curated shopping marketplace in 2021.
Vanilla Studio invested heavily in integrating into the marketplace, where vendors manage their own platform using Hudson’s Bay’s system, with the retailer covering freight fees.
But after launching, “halfway through the year,” the marketplace shut down for more than six months, and when it reopened, Hudson’s Bay asked suppliers to pay for shipping.
“We turned off the marketplace,” said Alexandre. “We asked them to pay us so we could keep moving forward (on the original online store). And they said they would, and the payments never came.”
After years of a good relationship, Canadian Down & Feather Company also stopped selling on Hudson’s Bay’s website in 2024.
The small business is owed nearly $100,000, according to its CEO Ashwin Aggarwal, a balance reduced from almost $1 million by the retailer’s payments early last year.
The department store tried its best and paid the majority of money owed even though it was late, said Aggarwal. But it had hit the point where he could no longer afford to keep giving them products without receiving timely payments.
“We said we were going to hold on to listing the products (on Hudson’s Bay websites). They were sort of in agreement, and they continued to stay in touch with us and say, ‘Look, we’re still trying. We’d like to get you back online,’ ” said Aggarwal.
As a Canadian company and citizen, Aggarwal said he feels sad about the loss of the country’s oldest retailer, especially given the ongoing Trump trade wars and sovereignty issues with the U.S.
“We hope that they come out of this stronger, even if it’s a smaller version of themselves. Hopefully there’s a Bay brand that gets to continue to serve the Canadian economy.”
