Heavily discounted merchandise, part of the Bay's final liquidation sales, signals the end is near for Canada's oldest retailer.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
As a voice crackled over the loudspeaker at the Hudson’s Bay store in Sherway Gardens mall on Friday, the message was not simply about discounts; it was also an acknowledgement that for Canada’s oldest retailer, the end is nigh.
“If you see it, you like it, you buy it – because it won’t be here when you come back,” an employee announced to shoppers gathered at the location in suburban Toronto. “I promise.”
Welcome to the final days of Hudson’s Bay Co., as the 355-year-old retailer prepares to close its doors for the last time. The department store chain will complete its final liquidation sale this Sunday.
While some sweeping-up and fixture sales will remain to be completed after that, along with the court-supervised windup of the business, this weekend effectively marks the demise of a company founded in 1670, whose history is inextricably tied to Canada’s.
“It’s my last visit,” said Zofia Sadkiewicz, 65, who has shopped at the Bay for 30 years. She picked wanly through a small pile of mismatched cloth napkins, admitting she really didn’t need anything. “It’s like a funeral.”
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But the farewell is unceremonious. On a glass table nearby, two halves of a disassembled waffle iron sat next to a sign warning, “All sales are final.” Beside several racks of empty shelves stood the lower halves of two nude male mannequins, dispossessed of their torsos. Beneath a picked-over rack of men’s clothing marked down by 80 per cent, several pairs of tan Dockers lay crumpled on the floor.
“To be honest, it’s not my kind of store,” said Monika Grzelak, 40, adding that she prefers the fashions at stores such as Aritzia and Zara. She visited on Friday specifically to find the black sandals she had just tried on. She hadn’t been sure about the style when she had seen them previously, but then found out they were marked down from $80 to $16. “I’m like, why not at this point?”
The end of the Bay was not sudden. The stores had been cutting staff for years, leading to customer complaints about service. The company did not invest in much-needed repairs at many locations, where signs telling shoppers to use the escalators as stairs were not uncommon. Hudson’s Bay delayed payments to its product suppliers – leading some to cut off shipments, a sure sign of financial problems for a retailer.
Retired sales associate Mary Grimmett started her career at Simpsons in 1987, and continued working there when the store became a Bay.
Ms. Grimmett remembers Hudson’s Bay merchandise buyers coming to the sales floor to ask for advice about what shoppers were looking for. As department head in luggage, she consulted on amounts to buy. “I felt important. It was wonderful,” she recalled. Over time, as jobs were cut, that changed.
Though she retired from the Sherway location in October, she has kept in close touch with her former colleagues. “I said I would pop in on Saturday to say goodbye to everyone,” she said. “It’s awful.”
Shoppers encounter empty shelves at Bay locations, as the company sells off all remaining inventory.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
When Hudson’s Bay filed for court protection from its creditors on March 7, the company had more than 9,300 employees. By next week, more than 8,300 of them will have lost their jobs.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now. And I have a family,” said Rosie Wright, standing behind the cash register on Friday. After 20 years with the Bay, her last day is Saturday.
“We get no severance,” she said. “You work all this time, and we are leaving with nothing.”
Many Bay employees are working to the end, even as the discounts make their jobs busier. A crowd gathered on Friday around display cases containing glittering diamond rings and necklaces. Staff behind the counter ripped orange raffle tickets off a roll, handing out the numbered tickets to keep track of who would be served next.
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But for Gabrielly Espinosa, 25, the discounts were less important than one last trip with her mom, Giovana Herrera.
“She would take us here in the stroller,” Ms. Espinosa recalled.
“I was crying the other day,” Ms. Herrera said.
The women said they came to the Bay for everything – dresses, makeup, perfume, sunglasses and Christmas presents. “Now it’s whatever is left,” Ms. Espinosa said.
Other shoppers acknowledged that the stores had lost their relevance, complaining about the service, or saying they had gone elsewhere to find cheaper prices. But Maria Henry, who visited on Friday, lamented the loss of another homegrown retailer – recalling the fall of chains such as Eaton’s and Simpsons.
“This is Canadian history,” she said. “How do you let go of history?”