Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Canadian department store Zellers hopes to make a comeback next year, a decade after the discount chain shuttered most of its locations., brand owner Hudson's Bay Co. said Wednesday.
Zellers will debut a new e-commerce website and expand its brick-and-mortar footprint within select Hudson's Bay department stores across the country in early 2023, HBC said.
The relaunched discount retailer will offer "a digital-first shopping journey that taps into the nostalgia of the brand," the company said.
"We know how special Zellers is in the hearts and minds of people in Canada," said Adam Powell, Zellers' chief business officer. "Zellers is a brand deeply rooted in the Canadian experience."
The return of Zellers comes as soaring inflation drives consumers to discount retailers in search of lower prices and fierce competition from existing stores like Walmart, Dollarama and Giant Tiger.
Reviving the brand when people are looking for ways to save money could help Zellers capture market share in part through "the illusion of more competition," said Vass Bednar, executive director of the Master of Public Policy in Digital Society at McMaster University.
"We're in this inflationary period and people are more price conscious than ever before," she said. "Shoppers who remember the Zellers brand will associate it with saving money."
The planned resurrection of Zellers also comes amid an ongoing lawsuit over a Quebec family's use of the Zellers brand.
The Moniz family is behind various recent trademark applications and corporate registries, including Zellers Inc., Zellers Convenience Store Inc. and Zellers Restaurant Inc.
In a statement of claim filed last fall, HBC accused the Moniz family of trademark infringement, depreciation of goodwill and so-called passing off -- the deceptive marketing or misrepresentation of goods.
Retail analyst Bruce Winder said the reintroduction of Zellers likely stems in part from the lawsuit.
"It's most likely related to the legal issue with the trademarks," he said. "For Zellers to really say, 'This is ours,' they have to show that they're using it."
Zellers will face an uphill battle from entrenched competitors in the discount retail marketplace, he said.
"It could be a niche opportunity and I hope it works, but I just don't see it coming back successfully en masse."
The Zellers department store was founded in 1931 and acquired by HBC in 1978.
It operated as the discount division of its flagship Hudson's Bay department stores, with the slogan "Where the lowest price is the law."
The store hit its peak of about 350 locations in the late 1990s before losing ground to big box competitors such as Walmart.
In 2011, HBC announced plans to sell the majority of its remaining Zellers leases to Target Corp., closing most stores by 2013.
The retailer kept a handful of Zellers locations open as liquidation outlets until 2020.
The company recently launched pop-up Zellers shops inside Hudson's Bay department stores in Burlington, Ont. and Anjou, Que.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 17, 2022.
----
What are your memories of Zellers? Share your nostalgia by emailing us at dotcom@bellmedia.ca, and include your name and location. Your comments may be used in a CTVNews.ca story.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.