4,400 pieces of art and artifacts including the royal charter that birthed the company in 1670.
That shit should be going to a museum, not bid on the open market. I imagine the reciever has to put them up for sale as assets, but that's a travesty.
Canadian Tire already owns SportChek and Mark's, they are already in the clothing space.
I also take issue with the description of Canadian Tire, they are a department store focusing on automotive, tools, home and garden, kitchen, and sporting goods.
Their businesses aren't that drastically different, and it sounds more like they want the brand for a smaller range of goods using HBC stripes.
I mean Canadian Tire is more of a general store.
Hudson Bay started out as a general store and evolved to a more upper class department store. It's way classier or at least it is meant to be but I totally see the link between the two.
Also, Canadian Tire has more than just the Canadian Tire stores now, they own Mark's, Sports Chek, Helly Hansen, Sher-Wood and a couple of other sport related stores in Quebec primarily focused on Hockey, they've been slowly expanding for a couple of years.
Much like HBC, Canadian Tire has a lot of overpriced retail. They don't overlap much beyond kitchenware though.
I guess this gets Canadian Tire into the full department store business like Walmart, Target, or Sears. Now they just need to start selling groceries (again).
I'm not too surprised, but I think CT needs to be careful with how many product categories they have. Earlier this year they sold off the Helly Hanson brand ($1.3bil), so they've got a hole in their portfolio to fill during the 4-year/$2bil restructuring.
Not to applaud corporations, but my biggest worry hearing about HBC shuttering was the point blankets. Those things are a cultural staple and afaik HBC was the only major place to get them.
One of the Bay's most well-known trade marks, the stripe motif, shown in the article thumbnail. The striped blankets, coats, etc are sort of iconic Canadiana.
This makes a whole lot of sense. They can easily keep a strong position in the retail market across a variety of lifestyles. It's a healthy portfolio and (as far as I know) is actually Canadian. Hopefully they change a few things though, The Bay went out of business for a reason.
The reason is that the private equity firm that bought them, sold the land that they owned to another private equity firm and then forced them to pay exorbitant rent on land that they had owned for literally hundred+ years.