Southern Ontario Retail Blog

Welcome to another Store Facts Post! Today's store will be the Loblaws in Heartland Town Centre in Mississauga. This store opened sometime before June of 2003. This store has the older Market decor package, which is becoming rare as most stores with this decor package has been remodeled to Great Food or Inspire. Aside from that, it's you typical older barn-model Loblaws store. Layout The layout follows a typical Market Layout with produce and service departments on the left and a later addition of Joe Fresh and Books & Magazines in the front right of the store. This store still has its Market signage intact, complete with old U-Scan Self Checkouts and old flooring. There's no map since I only been in here a few times. I may upload one in the future. Aerial View Below are a few Google Earth aerial views of the Loblaws. Not much changed to the building itself between 2003-2019 aside from more stuff being built around the store. Google Earth Satellite Imagery from June 200...

Everyone knows how they are annoying ads that come on constantly (**cough**Kroger**cough**) trying to sell you something. We all hate them, but some are just quality and iconic. Here are some of my favourite Retail Ad Campaigns that I enjoy the most. 1. No Frills Anime Ad (2021) Here's a cool campaign that No frills recently came out with. It features . They even have a comicin their weekly flyer. 2. No Name Simple Check (2019) This one is unique and really creative. To promote the new Simple check program for their generic private label, No Name, Loblaws made a creative ad campaign where they plaster random objects with the signature No Name yellow and black text. They also made the above ad were everything is yellow and the overall ad is no frills looking and low budget, fitting for the No Name Brand. 3. DQ Lips (late 2000s-early 2010s) I love this era or DQ ads. They are funny and memorable. In fact they recently became a meme. These ads feature floa...

Back in October, I moved my blog over to WordPress. Now, I've decided to revive this blog as a secondary mirror for my WordPress blog with the same articles that will be posted on there and some additional content that was previously found on DZ's Retail World.  If you want to catch up on the blogposts you may have missed, click here to go to my Wordpress. See you Saturday for my next post on both blogs. Sorry for the confusion,  I'll be posting on both blogs now. Also, I'll be rebranding this blog as Dom's Retail World with the same URL.

Indigo is the largest and only major surviving bookstore chain in the country. The Indigo brand has been expanding like crazy lately with a lot of new stores replacing Chapters and Coles locations. They have 209 stores operating under various banners including Indigo, Chapters, Coles, and IndigoSprit. In today’s post, I’ll be going over the rise of Indigo and how they grew to be Canada’s #1 bookstore. Brief History Indigo Books & Music   was founded in 1996 by Heather Reisman . Indigo opened their first “superstore” in 1997 . Indigo then   merged with Chapters in August 2001 , which got them a lot of locations under the Chapters and Coles banners. Reinventing Indigo Indigo introduced what they call a “Cultural department store concept”. While still featuring books, this concept expands Indigo’s non-book merchandise to include home decor, toys and more. My thoughts It’s kind of amazing seeing Indigo thrive a little pre-covid when most book retailers around the world a...

Today’s post is part 2 to my series on Loblaws models and store decors. I’ll be going over the store decor packages that Loblaws uses. This will only be going over the ones that I can find and ones used for Loblaws and their other market banners because there is some over lap with the decors used. 80s neon (Loblaws only) This decor package was used in the 80s and featured neon signage. Market (90s-2008) This decor package was introduced in the 90s and features real tile floors in the grand aisle as well as a painting of a streetscape in the grand aisle. Stores also have some local flair in the form of exterior signage that said “xx market” where xx is the plaza/neighborhood/cities’ name and a mural with local landmarks or skyline. Deluxe version of Market The deluxe version has the front end decorated like a street. The lane lights had fake lamps on them. The service departments are deluxe looking with more detailed elements. Great Food (2008-2011) Loblaws created a food focused format...

Another retailer was killed by the pandemic. On September 9th, Groupe Dynamite, owners of the Dynamite and Garage chain filed for creditors protection and will be filing for Chapter 15 Bankruptcy in the US. It's unknown right now how many stores are going to close, but I can confirm that the one in the blog's coverage area already closed with signage intact. They operate 400 stores under both banners. Source:  https://www.retail-insider.com/retail-insider/2020/9/groupe-dynamite-files-for-and-obtains-creditor-protection-amid-pandemic-struggles

Hi everyone, here's a quick update on what's going on with the blog right now! I'm in the process of writing posts for this month and October. Those posts will automatically go up bi-weekly on Tuesdays @6:00 p.m Eastern Time like usual. So if you notice anything off about those posts, please let me know. Also, I'm experimenting with using Tumblr as a blogging platform. As part of that, those posts will be posted on both this blog and Tumblr.  Thanks for reading this update :). - Dom, aka DZ.