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Welcome to the Southern Ontario Retail Blog!

Started in January 2019, the Southern Ontario Retail Blog (originally called DZ's Retail Blog) is your source for keeping up to date with everything retail in Canada with a focus on the Southern Ontario region. Here, you can find info on unique, old or interesting stores as well as relevant Canadian retail news. You'll also find store maps and some 3D models of stores that I've been to before and ones that I've made up.

Popular posts from this blog

Lost Retail: The history of Knob Hill Farms

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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....
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Pier 1 to file for bankruptcy; close all Canadian stores

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

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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
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