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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Lost Retail: The history of Knob Hill Farms

A picture of a Knob Hill basket. Credit: Wikipedia For today’s lost retail post I’ll be talking about an old, local chain of grocery stores called Knob Hill Farms. Knob Hill Farms was a chain of 10 warehouse-like “food terminals” in the Toronto area. These stores were pretty large for a supermarket at the time they operated ranging from 65,000 sqft to a gigantic 335,000 sqft. Due to financial issues, Knob Hill Farms closed/sold all their stores in 2000. History Knob Hill Farms was founded in 1954 by Steve Stavro as a more conventional grocery chain operating 9 markets in Toronto. It wasn’t until 1963 that Stravro opened his first 65,000 sqft “food terminal” in Markham. In 1971, Knob Hill Farms expanded into Pickering with its second terminal. Knob Hill Farms than opened their first Toronto store in 1975 and second Toronto terminal opened in 1977. Their fifth store, which was billed as the largest food store in North America at the time, opened in 1978 in Mississauga....

Lowe’s stores in Canada begin re-brand to Rona+

As you might know already, Lowe’s sold their Canadian division to a private equity company, Sycamore Partners, earlier this year. Rona then announced that the Lowe's stores will be gradually re-branded as Rona+. These conversions started at the end of July with 10 stores in Ontario. So far all they did was replace all the Lowe’s logos with Rona+ logos with the Lowe's decor remaining intact. What’s interesting about Rona+ is that some Lowe’s stores were converted from larger Rona stores. So in a way, this will go full circle at some locations. Hopefully this will be successful for Rona. Until the next post (hopefully it won’t be another 2 years), Dom

Pier 1 to file for bankruptcy; close all Canadian stores

Pier 1 logo Today, Pier 1 put a notice on their website saying that they are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as the company pursues a sale of its US business. As a result, Pier 1 decided to cease Canadian operations and close all of their Canadian stores. There goes another retailer killed by a changing industry. :( Via C TV News

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