Canadian Retailer - Store 2013 - 89

1990s
Walmart crosses the border,
begins deep discounting

The ramifications and impacts of
Walmart’s entry into the Canadian
market in 1994 are well-known. Their
purchasing power allowed their ‘lowest everyday price’ motto, their sustainability efforts are impressive,
and their ‘big box’ everything in one
place format changed the way competitors operated. Customers were
impacted by convenience and low
prices. This forced specialty retailers
to up their game and compete on service and knowledge

1998: Retail Council of Canada’s first British Columbia
office opens followed by
the opening of five more
regional offices across the
country, strengthening the
voice of retail in Canada.

side groceries and scaled up the offer
to massive square-feet supercentres.
Walmart also forced other retailers
to begin rethinking and broadening
their assortment where it’s now table
stakes for a grocer to have ancillary
products in the GM or health categories alongside groceries.”
Throughout the 1990s, a lot more
foreign retailers entered Canada—in
fashion, and in big-box retailing such
as Staples. The result was a consolidation of the retail market space. Some
of the discounters who couldn’t compete with Walmart started getting
absorbed by one another or closing.
The biggest consolidation occurred
with department stores. Eatons was
struggling, Simpsons was taken over
and regional malls disappeared with
conglomerates of Hudson’s Bay and
Sears, etc.

2000s & Beyond
e-commerce/Amazon.ca created

“Walmart changed the relationship
between retailers and national brand
manufacturers as cost, cost, cost became the basis for every negotiation,”
explains Jackmans’ Paul Clark. “They
really introduced the concept of merchandising general merchandise be-

In June 2002, Amazon.ca launched.
This website was created especially for
Canadians to offer customers everyday low prices in Canadian currency,
local shipping and fulfillment from
Canada. This had huge implications
on the future of e-commerce and or-

2001: The association enters
into an agreement with
Human Resources & Skills
Development Canada to develop retail sales and management certification and
career awareness programs.
2006: The association
develops the RCC Safety
Group to improve health and
safety best practices and
reduce claims injuries for its
members across the country.
2008: Retail Council of Canada wins the battle against
proposed federal levies
on MP3s, cell phones, and
computers, easing further
financial burden on retailers
and their operations.
2011-Present: Retail Council
of Canada forms new Grocery Division, merges with
ShelfSpace—a BC and AB
association, opens an office
in Quebec, officially launches MySTORE, the independent division of Retail Council
of Canada and merges with
Canadian Booksellers.

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Canadian Retailer - Store 2013

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