Results tagged “departmentstores”

For most city students, this week marks the start of another year of hitting the textbooks or reasonable facsimiles of. Back in 1929, local department stores such as Simpson's did their part to further the education of their future customer base by offering texts alongside the normal range of school supplies. Of the subjects listed, note that it was slightly cheaper for students to study British history than Canada’s past, which demonstrates the societal ties that remained between Ontario and “the mother country” (unless the publisher simply charged less). Also note how perilously the texts float above each student’s head—we hope this wasn’t a hint that knowledge should literally be fed to student brains.

If you were a retailer looking to launch a new department store chain in the early 1960s, the discount market appeared to be the way to go. While Toronto did have one-off discounters (Honest Ed's) and lower-priced annexes of existing retailers (Eaton's), businessmen looked at the prosperity of American discounters like E.J. Korvette and saw potential for setting up similar chains in Canada. For several years after Towers opened its first store in Scarborough in the fall of 1960, discount chains with varying degrees of longevity made their debut around Metropolitan Toronto. One of the splashiest openings belonged to Sayvette, who promised to shake up the department store sector. In its two decades of retailing, Sayvette went from grandiose dreams and promising new retail approaches to dead weight on the balance sheet of one of the country’s largest food merchants. Along the way Sayvette experienced little profitability, speculation over its ownership, unrealized expansion plans, and a constant search for where it fit in the retail landscape.