Analysis of what went wrong at Hudson's Bay

Donoreo · 2025-03-14T12:54:59+00:00

including a flawed rewards program, poor online delivery system, a disastrous online marketplace. issues with store maintenance, customer service, mishandled credit card transition, https://retail-insider.com/retail-insider/2025/03/can-hudsons-bay-survive-a-loyal-shopper-shares-insights/

digitalfutur

All but six stores (3 in GTA, 3 in Montreal) to be closed. Liquidation sales start Monday.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2025/03/21/hudsons-bay-heads-back-to-court-where-its-been-asking-for-liquidation-permission/

Thane_Bitter

digitalfutur All but six stores (3 in GTA, 3 in Montreal) to be closed. Liquidation sales start Monday.

I am surprised that they are keeping 6 stores open.

But I really do not think they will last. Quebec still has La Maison Simons, most people outside of it likely have not heard of it but it seems to be very well run and managed, and is well liked by shoppers. The story from the Bay seems to be of the narrative that people just didn’t want to pay a lot of money for the same items they could buy cheaper at another store; well, who could blame them? Rather than offering exclusive products (other than their stripped stuff, and retro zellers junk) they just had more pretend sales to price match but still had a lot of costs and bloat that drained the company.

Perhaps that is the only thing they should sell, stuff with stripes, and retro zellers crap since it the only thing they actually own and control.

KingB71

koira go to walmart levis for 33$

Don’t forget though, Walmart seriously squeeze their suppliers.
it was well known years ago that Levis refused to sell their jeans at Walmart as they couldn’t make any profit at what Walmart wanted to sell them at. Walmart then threatened to pull Dockers clothing from the shelves (owned by Levis). The end result was Levis moved production offshore and started offering cheaper jeans at Walmart that were only available there. They used to manufacture in Stoney Creek or somewhere around Hamilton, but that’s now all gone

GrumpyCanadian

KingB71 There is no exaggeration there. It was even mentioned in a few news reports at the time of the fatal accident at one of the clothing sweat shops in Bangladesh. Representatives from these sorts of “cheap fashion” retailers often look to squeeze every last bit of savings they can, even pestering the designers to use fewer buttons, shorter zippers, cheaper snaps, etc.

Walmart, in particular, was also known for dumping large amounts of product onto their suppliers, including (sometimes unsorted) returns with no return authorisation. Short of dumping this junk on the shores of a developing country (and sometimes they apparently do!) and writing it off as a cost of doing business, I can’t imagine how a company can account for such things in their accounting and inventory systems. All this in the name of parasitic profitability. We should be ashamed of ourselves for supporting this, and they should be ashamed of themselves for creating the problems in the first place!

Donoreo

Thane_Bitter La Maison Simons, most people outside of it likely have not heard of it but it seems to be very well run and managed,

There is one at Square One in Mississauga, Ottawa, and two will soon open at the Toronto Eaton Centre and Yorkdale this year. They have stores in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver as well.

urbanriot

My wife just came back from Hudson Bay and ranted about why it’s obvious they’re going out of business - winter is ending but they don’t have sales on winter jackets, winter boots, etc., and their products are still overpriced despite them claiming to liquidate, and like I complained about upthread, they didn’t have prices on some of their goods so she had to hunt to find someone to get a price check.

She took some pics of some prices to show me when she came home and everything is way more expensive than it has any right to be, which is why people are shopping elsewhere.

Donoreo

More analysis of what went wrong: https://retail-insider.com/retail-insider/2025/03/hudsons-bay-collapse-marks-shift-for-legacy-retail/

Despite efforts to modernize, Hudson’s Bay has failed to differentiate its online platform and maintain its physical presence, leading to the liquidation of nearly all stores. This development raises broader questions about the viability of traditional department stores and the need for legacy retailers to reinvent themselves in response to changing consumer behaviours and technological advancements.

Some points:

Legacy retailers must adapt to the evolving market by repositioning their brands, rethinking retail formats, and optimizing physical presence.

The rise of e-commerce, off-price retailers, and digital-first competitors has created a challenging environment for traditional department stores.

Canadian retailers must prioritize innovation, agility, and consumer-centric approaches to remain competitive in the market.

urbanriot

Donoreo

More analysis of what went wrong

I feel like those ivory tower pundits should come down off their perch and experience the real world, almost nothing in that article addressed the issues we’ve experienced with Hudson Bay.

Donoreo

urbanriot I feel like those ivory tower pundits should come down off their perch and experience the real world, almost nothing in that article addressed the issues we’ve experienced with Hudson Bay.

I have not experienced a lot of the things others have reported, so it seems to be hit and miss.

urbanriot

Donoreo

I have not experienced a lot of the things others have reported, so it seems to be hit and miss.

I have been to two Hudson Bay stores, St. Catharines and Square One in Mississauga, and the experience was exactly the same at both but even worse at Square One where they had a beautiful store but grossly overpriced goods with no one around to help you if you wanted to know what the price of their unmarked goods were. They had some cool things at the Square One spot where the ladies could get their makeup done up in a booth, something I’d never seen anywhere else in Canada in the past 30 years.

px_eliezer_

They are keeping 6 stores open ??

What is the point of that ??

Suppliers will not give volume discounts to such a tiny operation, the overhead costs to have a corporate office supporting just 6 stores will be disproportionately high, and the magic will be gone.

And with 3 of the 6 stores being in Quebec—added expense of complying with the unique Quebec consumer and language laws for just 3 stores—insane!

px_eliezer_

urbanriot

Damn American investors… 😉 🙁

Donoreo

urbanriot I was not specific: I meant the unknown sales, unpriced products, those things. They tried to go upscale and in doing so priced everything, including items available elsewhere, too high, that was common everywhere.

urbanriot

px_eliezer_

Damn American investors…

Pretty wild history when you review the Wikipedia entry on what’s happened over the past 25 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company#21st_century

My memory is pretty hazy as to when exactly it became less-good. I used to go in there all the time in the old days to buy perfume for the little lady, you had no choice the second you walked anywhere near the perfume area as you’d be assaulted by a group of women spraying every scent imaginable in your face (a practice that seemed to disappear after the 90s).

px_eliezer_

Donoreo

Were they overconfident (maybe even arrogant) because of their very long history, a feeling that shoppers will come to us no matter what ??

Donoreo

px_eliezer_ They should not be, no one should be, but that could explain why items available elsewhere could be overpriced. “I am already here” is fine if the price is higher but not too much higher. They seemed to go overboard on that idea. For that, I blame their merchandising department. For me, they stopped carrying a few things I would go there for regularly. Izod shirts for one. I would often get button up or golf Izod shirts from them. I would get them at the mid season or end of season sales. They stopped carrying them a few years ago and replaced them with mucher higher priced brands. They are good quality brands, but even at the sale prices they are too much.

urbanriot

px_eliezer_

Were they overconfident (maybe even arrogant) because of their very long history, a feeling that shoppers will come to us no matter what ??

They may have been overconfident with their ideas of increasing sales but I agree with a number of Donoreo’s points, nobody should be overly confident in their sales tactics in this day and age, and that they went overboard on high priced items, and that they stopped carrying certain brands (like his Izod shirts) which connects to a point I made upthread where I said they sold overpriced goods along with low priced value brands but didn’t carry products in between. It was like their in-between priced items were the high priced items on sale or the value oriented products at normal prices.

Thane_Bitter

Donoreo So they did what Eatons did, charge more, and wonder why business was poor. Plus that one had family members which used the company as a slush fund for personal use but had no interest in running it as a viable business. Here there was a corporation, private equity firm loading up the old company with debt while draining the income away back to the USA, in addition to mismanaging the entire premise of what a department store is supposed to be.

They had some clever ads but they alone could not fix corporate stupidity.

Edit: Forgot to mention the bonus for the executives while the rest of the employees enjoy nothing. One news outlet (might have been CTV had some sort of retail expert on whom was defending the bonuses say it was important to keep them around to run a successful liquidation. Has there ever been an unsuccessful liquidation in the history of retail, the prices get set lower till all the stuff goes? It seemed like a very week excuse. Even if they sold everything they have now at full markup it’s not going to dent the debt the company has. Creditors would rather have that three million given to them rather than pay those that couldn’t manage the company correctly or profitably.

mozerd

HBC simply did not understand that the MARKET had changed - Brick and Mortar does not have the attraction that it once had … buying paterns had shifted dramtically and HBC coould not adapt to this new reality …

I am 81 yrs old and 90% of my current buying is from online retails like Amazon … most of the people that I know are doing exactly the same thing …

Donoreo

Thane_Bitter Edit: Forgot to mention the bonus for the executives while the rest of the employees enjoy nothing.

Those are retention bonuses, to keep good people there doing jobs that need to be done. It is quite common.

px_eliezer_

Donoreo Those are retention bonuses, to keep good people there doing jobs that need to be done. It is quite common.

If the store had failed, better to spend some money to try to bring in some new leaders maybe with new ideas, rather than pay lots more money to those who had presided over the failure.

(As far as I’m concerned, “retention” calls for a laxative or even an enema). 😃

Thane_Bitter

Donoreo Lots of things are common, it doesn’t mean they are right. Really they have to do in a few months what the company didn’t do for years and try and make money, merchandise aside they also will be selling everything in the store from fixtures to even the store safe, these last items are not going to net a lot of money. I don’t think they will be able to successfully restructure, nothing has changed except they suddenly have fewer stores and employees but also lower sales since only six locations will remain.

The company will be entirely dead in a few years, its executives will blame US/Canada/China trade, market conditions, and other excuses but the fundamental unmentioned reason is they are just terrible at their jobs. Even if they are brilliant they have an uphill climb that is everest in size.

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