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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Store Facts: No Frills Dixie Outlet Mall

I’m starting a new series called store facts where I talk about the history of a particular location of a chain, the layout of the store and some key points about the location. I’ll be talking about the No Frills located at Dixie outlet Mall in Mississauga. This location has an interesting past as it was previously a Knob Hill Farm Food Terminal. If you are not familiar with that chain, you can view my post here . Background This location originally opened as a two-level Knob Hill Food Terminal, which was down sized a few years after it opened. Knob Hill closed down all their stores in 2001 and Loblaws brought a couple of the stores and some, like this one were converted to a No Frills franchise in 2001. I’m not too sure which decor this store had originally, but I’m guessing Smile, which it had until 2016 when it was renovated Very yellow. The store was then refreshed with the Monochrome revision of “Very yellow” in 2018. Layout Here’s a rough map of the store that I'v...

165 The Source stores to re-brand as Best Buy Express

Best Buy Express Logo Image Credit: Best Buy Back in January of this year, Bell announced a partnership with Best Buy to convert 165 The Source locations to the Best Buy Express banner by the end of this year with locations that do not get converted closing. For those who don't know, The Source started out as the Canadian branch of RadioShack before being acquired by Circuit City in 2005 and being rebranded to The Source by Circuit City. Then in 2009, Bell acquired the chain and re-named it The Source. Some The Source locations in the blog’s coverage area are running a pre-renovation sale, so I assume that’s in preparation for the conversion to Best Buy Express. It will be interesting to see how these stores will look like in person. The first location in Surrey BC opened today according to a press release. According to the one image at that link, it looks largely the same as a typical remodeled The Source location, just with Best Buy branding just as I predicted....

Walmart store Number Meanings

Ever wondered what each of the store numbers that are on the top of Walmart receipts mean? These store numbers identify each Walmart store internally and seem to have a common pattern based on when each store was planned/opened. Here’s a list of the store numbers Walmart currently uses in Canada and what they mean. Note that they may be anomalies to this rule and stores may not follow these “rules”. Last updated June 20 th , 2020. Store number Meaning 3xxx 1990s built store. Also used on former Woolcos. 10xx Usually used for 2000s stores. 11xx Early 2010s stores. 12xx Mid 2010s stores. If you have anything to add to this list, please let me know in the comments. Side note: I'll be switching to my summer posting schedule of 2 posts a month from July 1st till September 1st. Until the next one: DZ

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