Dec. 4, 2024 "From niche grocer to supermarket giant: How T&T plans to repeat success in the U.S.": Today I found this article by Rosa Saba on BNN Bloomberg:
On Thursday, Bellevue, Wash., will be home to T&T’s 37th store,
and its first south of the border as it looks ahead to more growth in Canada and the U.S.
“It’s a natural expansion for us,” said CEO Tina Lee in an interview at the T&T store in Toronto’s Fairview Mall.
Amid the current climate of distrust and frustration over food prices that many Canadian grocers are weathering, T&T seems to be enjoying a strong and dedicated customer base.
Shoppers post hauls of their products on TikTok
and line up around the block to visit new locations.
At the Fairview store, Lee points out a whole fried chicken in the hot food section that she says went viral online, and as she’s standing in the bakery aisle, two young shoppers recognize her and ask for a photo.
“We can feel (that) Canadians are cheering for us, just like you cheer for the Canadians at the Olympics,” said Lee.
It’s Lee’s 10th year as CEO of the company her mother founded more than three decades ago.
The T&T brand began in 1993, when Tina’s mother Cindy, with the help of her husband Jack, opened two stores in Burnaby and Richmond, B.C.
Tina and her sister Tiffany — who is coming up from Los Angeles for the Bellevue opening — make up the two Ts in the store name.
Lee said it’s been clear for several years that T&T had a good chance of making it in the U.S.
Though many Canadians travel south to snap up popular products they can’t get here at places like Trader Joe’s and Target,
the company was noticing a slew of American license plates in its own parking lots.
Usually it’s U.S. retailers that expand into Canada, not the other way around, said Lisa Hutcheson, a retail strategist with J.C. Williams Group.
“When you have a winning concept
and there is a demand for it in another market,
that’s when it’s time,” she said.
Aritzia and Lululemon are good examples of Canadian companies that have successfully expanded south of the border, said Hutcheson.
T&T has seen a lot of growth in just a few years, said Lee.
Being part of Loblaw
— which bought the retailer in 2009
— has helped support that growth through capital and distribution, she said.
Bringing a winning retail concept to another country isn’t always easy.
Just ask Target, which launched more than a hundred stores across Canada about a decade ago before spectacularly flaming out within just a couple of years.
But Lee isn’t worried about whether the business model will do well in the U.S. and is anticipating a warm welcome from American customers.
In fact, Lee said she thinks opening T&T stores in Quebec was a bigger challenge from a cultural standpoint.
T&T opened its first Quebec location in 2022 in Montreal, and its second just last month in nearby Brossard.
“That’s given me and given us a lot more confidence in saying, ‘Well, look, if we can make it in Quebec ... then yes, we can make it in Seattle.’”
While she may not be intimidated by the expansion, there’s certainly a lot of work involved, including
detailed market research,
changing labelling to meet nutritional
and language requirements,
adapting HR policies
and other technical details.
After customer research including focus groups in Bellevue, careful site selection
— a 76,000-square-foot former Walmart, the biggest T&T yet
— plus mass hiring
and months of training in B.C. for soon-to-be managers and supervisors,
“we’re very excited about it. I think the community is really excited about it.”
Though the Bellevue store is a big milestone for T&T, the company isn’t taking a breather.
It’s opening its 38th store in the spring, to be located in downtown Toronto.
A second Washington state location is on the way,
and its third U.S. location will be in San Jose, Calif.
The company hadn’t anticipated opening so many stores so quickly, but Lee said they had to take the good real estate opportunities that came up.
“The location is with you for decades,” she said.
The company has distribution partners set up along the west coast, with a lot of its products already coming up from California.
Hutcheson said she thinks T&T’s move makes “logical sense,” depending on the areas it picks, adding that while the banner still has room to grow in Canada, “the U.S. is just that much bigger.”
“It appears that they’ve been strategic in terms
of their rollout
and how they grow,
and it just seems like this is a next evolution,”
Hutcheson said.
The company’s widespread success story shows that stores like T&T aren’t just for certain communities anymore, said Lee.
Research has shown that North American consumers are increasingly interested in eating and cooking food from a variety of different cultures.
According to research firm Mintel, Gen Z consumers are driving consumption of international food and drink both at restaurants and at home, often turning to social media for cooking inspiration.
“I think certainly my mother would have never imagined it, but we’ve grown beyond just an Asian clientele,” Lee said.
“We’re appealing to a much broader range of customers.”
Lee said younger generations in particular are much more interested in cooking and eating food from all different cultures.
“Canadian culture is just having the best of all the different cultural backgrounds,” she said.
“What we are exporting is exactly that food mosaic concept.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 4, 2024.
Mar. 6, 2025 "Canadian Tire to restructure company for growth, will close some Atmosphere stores": Today I found this article by Tara Deschamps on BNN Bloomberg:
The True North plan launched Thursday is meant to usher in a new era for the Toronto-based retailer, which also owns SportChek, Party City, Mark’s and Pro Hockey Life, as its working to fend off the effects of tariffs the U.S. started applying to Canadian and Chinese goods this week.
Canadian Tire said the new plan will move the business away from its holding company model to a more agile organization by aggregating the systems and data it holds across all its banners.
The company declined an interview request but positioned the shift as a way to eliminate
silos,
redundancies
and costly back-office processes.
“We will operate more efficiently
and go to market more strategically,
harnessing our banners
and loyalty system to elevate our scale,”
Canadian Tire CEO Greg Hicks promised in a statement.
Canadian Tire spokesperson Joscelyn Dosanjh did not indicate whether any job cuts will stem from the closures, but said in an email that the company is trying to place employees impacted by the changes at other locations as their stores in Western Canada close over the next four months.
In addition to the closures, Canadian Tire’s new plan will see it optimize its SportChek portfolio with
new concept stores
and expand its loyalty program by adding brand partners that issue Canadian Tire money
and striving to acquire more Triangle Mastercard holders.
It will also carry out $400 million in share buybacks, doubling its previously disclosed plans to repurchase $200 million worth.
Guiding each part of the strategy will be a restructured leadership team. Susan O’Brien, the company’s chief brand and customer officer, will now serve as its chief transformation officer, while TJ Flood, the president of its Canadian Tire retail division, will become its chief operating officer.
A search will begin for someone to take Flood’s previous role.
The series of changes comes weeks after Canadian Tire Corp. signed an almost $1.3-billion deal to sell sportswear company Helly Hansen to Kontoor Brands,
which owns Wrangler, Lee and Rock & Republic.
Hicks has also spent time recently warning of the effects of the tariffs.
He has said
consumers had started to ease up on the frugality they adopted to cope with the economic slowdown,
but that progress was likely “substantially erased” when the U.S. started levying tariff threats.
Canadian Tire purchases about 15 per cent of its goods from the U.S.
It estimates it could find Canadian suppliers for between 25 and 30 per cent of the items it gets from south of the border.
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