Hudson`s Bay has announced that Home Outfitters across Canada will close. At one time there used to be near 70 stores across Canada but that number has dropped to 37 and 700 employees. In Winnipeg in 2016, HBC converted three Home Outfitters to Hudson’s Bay Home and the concept was supposed to spread across Canada. Those locations were Kenaston, Regent, and St. James.
Since that, for a few years, the store was always full of customers, but in the last year, it was a big decline in retail business. It would be easy to blame Amazon as online retailing has indeed created problems, but, perhaps, it’s just time for a change and new store and new models of retail business has come to Winnipeg.
Now the location at Kenaston Blvd is closing, as shown on the photo there is a huge “Store Closing” sign at the top of the store.
In 2019 though it would appear landlords are going to have to struggle to fill space. It could be we see some rent decreases and sub-dividing space to make it more palatable. We also might see some local concepts take off in this new landscape.
Also, recently another big store closed their longtime location, the Hallmark moved out of Winnipeg Square. The store cleared the shelves and moved out, as of now there is no information if this store is closed permanently of just moving to a new location.
Also, there is no information from the Winnipeg Square management about the new tenant that will be moving in to occupy the freed up space. But in any case, it is expected to be a big-name brand store!