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Recent Retail News- August 2021

Welcome back to another post. Sorry for not posting since May. Lately, I don't have the time to sit down and write a blog post. For now on, posts will be infrequent on this blog as a result, so expect random months long breaks. Anyways, here's some exciting recent retail news.

EB Games Canada Finally Rebrands to GameStop

GameStop announced today that they will be rebranding EB Games and EBX stores in Canada to GameStop by the end of 2021. They already rebranded their website, so it's only a matter of time to see new signage roll out to stores. It kind of sucks to see the EB Games banner get phased out, but I'm glad to finally see the GameStop banner expand in Canada.

Source: Global News

Toys "R" Us Canada sold to owner of Sunrise Records

Toys "R" Us will be sold to Doug Putman, owner of the Sunrise Records chain from Fairfax Financial , current owners of the chain, for a undisclosed amount. It's going to be interesting to see if there will be any integration between the two chains in the future.

Source: CBC News

That's all the exciting retail news that I have for now.

See you in the next post!

-Dom

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