Steve Payne

Nestled in the heart of South-East England, the High Weald National Landscape is a verdant escape made up of rolling hills, ancient woodlands and picture-perfect villages.

Throwback Thursday is a regular weekly feature in which we dip into the archives of the Hardlines Weekly Report. It has been a quarter century tomorrow since we reported, on Dec. 6, 1999, that Vancouver-based Revy Home & Garden was making a big push into the Ontario market by acquiring four new sites. At the […]

Hardlines toured The Buildings Show in downtown Toronto yesterday, to see which retailers were pitching the many pro builders in attendance. Home Depot (its fourth year in attendance) and RONA (its first year exhibiting at the show as RONA, but they have previously exhibited under the Lowe’s banner) had their pro sales reps out in force at their booths in the Homebuilder & Renovator Expo. Home Depot was promoting the new Flatbed Distribution Centre, dedicated to pros, which opened about a year ago and which ships direct to contractors in the Greater Toronto Area. The Buildings Show continues through tomorrow.

Real Canadian Superstore, the big box format for the Loblaw chain, started carrying appliances in a pilot project at its store in Milton, Ont., in early 2023. The retailer teamed up with Canadian Appliance Source with a store-within-a-store model. Now, Hardlines has learned, the pilot has concluded, according to Steve Shave, COO of Canadian Appliance Source. “It was a success and we learned a lot,” Shave said.

Castle Building Centres Group raised $5,250 for Ronald McDonald House Charities Alberta at its Western Buying Expo back in June.

Throwback Thursday is a regular weekly feature in which we dip into the archives of the

Costco Wholesale Corp. reported its first-quarter earnings yesterday, seeing revenue grow 7.5 percent, to US$62.15 billion, compared with the same quarter last year. Net income of US$1.8 billion was up 13.2 percent from Q1 last year. E-commerce sales increased 13.0 percent. Same store sales were up 5.2 percent in the U.S. and 5.8 percent in Canada. Costco operates some 108 stores in Canada and approximately 614 in the U.S.

Montreal-based JRTech Solutions has expanded its agreement with supermarket chain Sobeys to deploy some five million electronic shelf labels (ESLs) across Canada. The deal grows on the initial order from Sobeys, announced June 2024, for ESL deployments in 50 Sobeys stores. The deployment is expected to be completed by April 30, 2026.

Throwback Thursday is a regular weekly feature in which we dip into the archives of the Hardlines Weekly Report. Twenty-five years ago, on Dec. 13, 1999, we published our last Hardlines weekly newsletter of the millennium. To mark the occasion, we interviewed then-president of Home Depot Canada, Annette Verschuren. In the interview, she predicted that, […]

Party City Holdco, a U.S.-based company entirely separate from the Canadian Tire Corp.-owned Party City Canada, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy south of the border. Its approximately 800 stores will remain open, but the company has said they will commence going-out-of-business sales. This is the second Chapter 11 filing for Party City Holdco. Its last one, in early 2023, wiped out US$1 billion of its US1.7 billion debt. This time, it has a reported debt of US$800 million.