Never again defined by just the automotive market, Canadian Tire Corporation, Ltd. has always looked at a bigger picture, recently demonstrated when they opened their 458th retail store Aug. 18 in downtown Vancouver, a stunning four-story tall showcase of their unique combination of products.
Today more of a general store, Canadian Tire is technically a “hardware merchandiser,” as Lisa Gibson, a spokesperson for the company, explains. “For many years we’ve had everything from home and housewares along with (regular) hardware products like automotive and sports and leisure items.”
Now with nearly 1,100 stores, Canadian Tire has grown into one of Canada’s best-known and most successful retailers, with a flagship store in Vancouver.
Mark Foote, president of Canadian Tire Retail, said in a recent press release, “This flagship store in Vancouver is unlike any other Canadian Tire store and is a great example of how we used a strategic and innovative design to offer our customers in the urban market an outstanding and completely unique shopping experience.”
According to Canadian Tire, the four-story building represents a “highly customized urban format combined with West Coast-inspired interior design and new and expanded product offerings.” At 63,000 total sq. feet, 57,000 sq. feet is devoted to retail space divided into four categories: driving, living, fixing and playing.
“We’re a very different retailer from our competitors in terms of just the product offering that we have,” says Gibson. “There’s nothing really comparable with our broad assortment, and certainly nothing that has the Canadian Tire heritage.”
In the “playing” section alone, they have a huge sporting goods section, which even includes a marine department. “And obviously there’s our automotive service center and all the automotive products,” she adds.
Of the latter, Canadian Tire has 9,000 automotive hard parts displayed in a unique store-within-a-store concept focused on “driving.”
Their redesigned tire wall showcases 3,000 tires, with quality brand names, winter and specialty tires. Offering custom rim installation and a separate tire and battery counter for one-stop shopping, this store features everything customers need for their car.
Meanwhile, Vancouver’s automotive service department features 13 service bays offering customers the latest in diagnostic equipment as well as a completely redesigned auto service waiting area.
“Our automotive service is a very important business for Canadian Tire,” says Gibson, “so we ramped up our service center; this waiting room has leather chairs, plasma screens and remote laptop access. We’ve also got a couple of bays that can service cars like BMWs and Mercedes, which, depending on the market you’re in, we may not have had before.”
While these changes cover what is primarily seen as a male market, what about the female market?
“The difference with this store is that it focuses a lot more on women,” Gibson explains. “People have traditionally seen our store as geared more toward men, despite the fact that 50 percent of our customers are women. We talked to these customers to see what they were looking for.
“Our research was telling us that women make a lot of the purchasing decisions in their households,” Gibson continues. “As a result, we made the aisles wider, so if they were pushing a cart and have their kids with them they could get through.
“We are looking at our opportunities in various markets,” Gibson concludes, “but as part of our strategic plan, we’re looking at up to 285 either new or replacement stores. Canadian Tire is one of the ‘youngest’ chains in that we’ve been on this store expansion program since 1993; we’re constantly taking smaller stores and upgrading them, or just making them more modern through merchandising and design.”
The Vital Stats
Years in business: Corporation — 83 years; Vancouver store — since August 2005
Growth plans: Overhaul of all outlets
Number of employees: 150 to 200 at Vancouver store
Wholesale/retail ratio: In this division of the company, 100-percent retail
Snapshot of Canadian Tire: Starting in 1922 as Hamilton Tire, the store quickly turned into a more general retailer “to meet the needs of customers.” The company changed its name in 1927 to Canadian Tire, eventually becoming one of the leading retailers in Canada. In 1982, Canadian Tire expanded into the U.S. with the purchase of over 400 Whites Auto retail stores and sold them in 1985 to Western Auto. They re-entered the U.S. market in 1991 with three prototype Auto Source stores, two in Indianapolis, Ind., and one in Dayton, Ohio.
Affiliation: None
Competition: None with this unique combination of products
Location/Facility size: 2290 Cambie St., Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The store is 63,000 sq. feet.
