In this image provided by Nike Inc., Tiger Woods appears in a Nike commercial to air starting Wednesday, April 7, 2010 on ESPN.
Each week, Report on Business editors choose five stories that shouldn't be missed. Here are the 'must reads' for the week of April 5, 2010.
It's somewhat fitting that the first thing you see when you pop open Apple's iPad case is yourself. The tablet computer (or multimedia entertainment device, or Kindle-killer, or whatever you want to call it) is so incredibly shiny that under even the softest light it turns into a glare mirror. As such, half the time you're staring at it, you'll see your own face staring back at you. Ultimately, that's what the iPad is: a new benchmark for the concept of technology as an extension of (or, if you're cynical, a substitute for) personality; a loud affirmation of the same phenomenon that brought us overnight line-ups outside electronics stores, "unboxing" videos and the term "fanboy." The iPad is sleek, glass-encased hysteria.
Pity the publicans, restaurateurs, haberdashers and booksellers, for they are the victims of Canada's increasingly house-poor economy. The stories are all too common. There's the couple down the street who haven't dined out in years and the kids wearing hand-me-downs, all to make the mortgage payment and cover the interest on the line of credit that paid for their home's renovation. The tales are not apocryphal. The shifting spending patterns are clearly evident in retail sales data. Canadians are funnelling more disposable income to homes at the expense of most anything that isn't housing related. The government is aiding and abetting this with policies designed to support housing, such as tax credits for renovations and mortgages backed by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
Stephen Wetmore says it's time to put a little more testosterone into Canadian Tire . When he took over as the retailer's top executive in January, 2009, Mr. Wetmore began grappling with an old question: In the name of expansion, how far should Canadian Tire stray from its strengths of sporting goods, hardware and, yes, tires? Then came the worst of the recession, and it gave him the answer. Amid all the economic gloom, the company's flagship stores held up relatively well; operating profit fell just 4 per cent last year. Hit much harder were Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd.'s other two businesses, the financial services unit and the Mark's Work Wearhouse apparel chain. They had been growing quickly, then suffered steep declines in the downturn (31 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively). Those results helped persuade him of the urgency of taking Canadian Tire back to its roots - and doing it better.
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Parity for the dollar, opportunities for you. There's a consensus that the Canadian dollar is entering a period of sustained strength against the U.S. dollar, and that means all kinds of opportunities for you in your spending, travelling and investing. Rob Carrick offers five things you can do to benefit.
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In a new black-and-white advertisement which began airing Wednesday in the United States on ESPN and the Golf Channel, Nike stands by their man in a way normally reserved in such reality soap operas for the jilted wife. A reflective Mr. Woods faces the camera as viewers hear the voice of his late father, Earl, who died in 2006. "I want to find out what your thinking was; I want to find out what your feelings are. Did you learn anything?" he asks. The ad concludes with an image of the Nike swoosh. Nike is calculating that its risk is little, and its potential reward enormous, in leveraging its brand in aid of the Tiger Woods' image. But in doing so, they may only be minding their own asset.
Just two weeks after the real estate industry changed its controversial rules, some quick-footed agents have jumped in with markedly lower fees, drawing the wrath of competitors in the process. These agents are operating amid what some see as confusion in the industry, created by the Canadian Real Estate Association's heated dispute with the Competition Bureau. Alleging anti-competitive practices involving the body's Multiple Listing Service (MLS), the bureau is taking the association to the Competition Tribunal even after CREA altered its MLS rules.
Consumers are about to feel the brunt of pharmacies' battle with the Ontario government over generic drug pricing as the country's largest drugstore chain prepares to slash store hours and staff in a bid to escape a massive profit hit. Shoppers Drug Mart is moving quickly to scale back the number of stores it keeps open around the clock and until midnight; shut some stores' pharmacy sections early; ditch free services such as deliveries and patient counselling or charge for them; and chop a program to hire 350 pharmacy students this summer.
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