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The Urban Jungle
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Target

I thought the Target liquidation sale would take all of a week. They never had anything on the shelves to begin with. Joking aside, I went in there a couple of times spanning a year after they opened and never could get what I wanted. Finally, I just gave up like many other Canadians.
 
bangkok said:
I thought the Target liquidation sale would take all of a week. They never had anything on the shelves to begin with. Joking aside, I went in there a couple of times spanning a year after they opened and never could get what I wanted. Finally, I just gave up like many other Canadians.
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That was pretty much my experience. Inventory management is something Canadian retailers seem a lot less adept at than Americans. I was hoping Target would show us how it's done; instead they were terrible even by our low standards.
 
Target is actually pretty weak at store operations and inventory management in the United States. Having visited a large number of their stores in the U.S. prior to their launch in Canada for a major Canadian retailer, we were surprised at how weak their store standards actually were and the absolute absence of merchandising intensity in their stores.

They did manage, as everyone acknowledges, to be a lot worse in Canada than they are in the U.S. but they are far from good in the U.S.
 
One thing Canadian Tire mocked when Target first opened was the fact that none of their first stores to open would have been allowed to open under Canadian Tire's standards. Lowes also had similar standards when opening in Canada, and was willing to delay opening in order to ensure their in store experience was 100% before the doors opened.

We were also pretty surprised that they appeared to have absolutely no standards when opening. In terms of store operations, I found Target had pretty good store level staff and standards, however, having little to no stock, and few customers makes it much easier to excel at that. We never had the opportunity to experience what it could have been like.

The only good thing that has come out of Target's Canadian experiment is that it forced Canadian retailers to step up their game.
 
AndreaPalladio said:
Canadian Tire has standards? Not of customer service, or store neatness, or of keeping items in stock.
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Customer service and stock is my biggest complaints with them. However I think they keep their stores pretty neat. I think maybe they're just crowded, and aisles a bit too small.
 
AndreaPalladio said:
Canadian Tire has standards? Not of customer service, or store neatness, or of keeping items in stock.
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I've never had problems finding someone to help in Canadian Tire. And shelf stocking seems far better than I've observed at Walmart in Canada, or Toys R Us in Canada, where I've long since given up trying to find the things they are supposed to have. Though the worst offender I've seen lately is Walmart in the USA - which is far worse than it was a couple of years ago. I've never set foot in a Target.

The worst I've seen in Canada was Consumers Distributing. Felt like a cheese store skit ...
 
Canadian Tire stores are neat and the stores well stocked. Years ago, some of the stores were not great, but the last store I can think of that was consistently a dump was a Laird, and that's been renovated and is now a nice store. Finding assistance can sometimes be a challenge, but no more than any other large format retailer.
 
khristopher said:
Customer service and stock is my biggest complaints with them. However I think they keep their stores pretty neat. I think maybe they're just crowded, and aisles a bit too small.
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Yeah, I find that the aisles can be very crowded with stuff. The Canadian Tire on the Queensway is a good example.
 
AndreaPalladio said:
Canadian Tire has standards? Not of customer service, or store neatness, or of keeping items in stock.
Click to expand...

A brand new store has none of those issues. Customer service is great because they send in teams from home office to help with the grand opening period, stores have to be neat before the doors even open, and fully stocked.

Target was neat, but only neat because there was barely any product.
 
While Canadian Tire may not have a grocery section (not counting snacks), they do own Mark's (formally Marks Work Werehouse) which is clothing, and the Forzani Group (Sport Chek, Sport Mart, Athletes World, National Sports, Sports Experts, Intersport, Atmosphere, Tech Shop, Nevada Bob's Golf, Hockey Experts, The Fitness Source and S3) who are into sports.

Is that where "department" stores going, splitting up into individual stores, aiming for different targets instead of everything in one place?
 
W. K. Lis said:
While Canadian Tire may not have a grocery section (not counting snacks), they do own Mark's (formally Marks Work Werehouse) which is clothing, and the Forzani Group (Sport Chek, Sport Mart, Athletes World, National Sports, Sports Experts, Intersport, Atmosphere, Tech Shop, Nevada Bob's Golf, Hockey Experts, The Fitness Source and S3) who are into sports.

Is that where "department" stores going, splitting up into individual stores, aiming for different targets instead of everything in one place?
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I don't think that is the way the department store is going. CT is structured that way because it has bought out all of these companies, and each company already had its own strong brand. Bringing them all under one roof would have diluted the brands. For a while, CT was putting Marks into stores, however even that has now stopped since it was limiting the growth of Marks, and removing floor space from Canadian Tire. (Even though it is one company, CT stores are individually owned, while Marks are corporately run)

For companies that have had these lines existing from day one within their stores, there is no worry about ruining an existing brand that already does well. Also, CT's structure doesn't allow for the banners to co-exist in a single space.

There are still a number of Canadian Tire stores that carry groceries leftover from the pilot a few years ago. The stores that were part of the pilot were allowed to keep the grocery section, and most opted not to remove it. I think the pilot would have been much more successful if CT had a partnership with a grocery store rather than going at it alone.
 
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