5 ms·

I don't think it's regulation, I think it's just a very hard market. Canadians have something like 20% less purchasing power than Americans, and I think a lot o

I don't think it's regulation, I think it's just a very hard market. Canadians have something like 20% less purchasing power than Americans, and I think a lot of entrants don't really appreciate that. Plus the country is large and sparsely populated with entrenched retail competitors. It's quite sad that Target murdered Zellers (my grandma liked their restaurants!) but Target lost to Walmart (and its own ineptitude) not to any regulation. Walmart by contrasts entered pretty cautiously and fits well into the purchasing power disparity situation. I think if Target had entered cautiously they would have done much better -- open a few stores in the east near the border with easy logistics and grow from there.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Not only that, but most Canadians live near the American border, and can shop American stores in the states at lower prices. Why go to Nordstroms in Vancouver when you can hit the one in Seattle? Costco in Bellingham does brisk business with mostly BC license plates.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  There is no way the exchange rate makes it work out to actually be cheaper to cross the border to shop these days. Does it? Our dollar sucks
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Crossing the border is a bit of a PITA. A few years ago I took my kids to play in a youth hockey tournament that was split between the US and Canada. Our hotel was on the Canadian side. Crossing back and forth was a nuisance and even though beer was cheaper on the US side it was technically illegal to bring very much back across the border. I assume the same is true for other shopping.
  - buildbot 4y ago
    People who doe this regularly will get a NEXUS card, which makes the process much easier. Bringing alcohol back is totally fine in any quantity if I recall correctly, you just have to declare it and maybe pay some tax either direction. Fruits/veggies are more restricted I believe actually.
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      My impression was the whole “go to the USA to shop because everything is cheaper” thing was illegal but I didn’t look into it deeply.
      - buildbot 4y ago
        Totally legal, just be sure to declare whatever. We do it for ketchup chips (From Canada)
- bluedino 4y ago
  I live 2 hours from the border and our Outlet Mall parking lots are full of vehicles with Canadian license plates on the weekends.
- wk_end 4y ago
  Bellingham is one thing, but Seattle is a good 2.5h drive from Vancouver, or maybe even more depending on border crossing and traffic along I-5. I can't imagine anyone deciding that they want to drive for five hours plus to save a little bit of money at Nordstrom, especially given the cost of gas, especially since folks who shop at Nordstrom aren't exactly penny-pinchers, and especially because Nordstrom is pretty high-end...so by the time you've spent enough money to have saved enough money to make all that worthwhile, you've blown past your duty exemption allowance.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Yeah, I've never heard of someone going to NYC for a weekend specifically to go shopping and taking empty suitcases on the plane. /s (feel free to fill in whatever city Paris, Milan, LA, etc) People make shopping excursions all the time. Just because you don't do it, doesn't mean others don't. People drive from Houston<->Dallas specifically to go shopping. Yes, there's no international border to cross, but it is still a 5 hour drive one way. So a 2.5 hour drive from Vancouver to Seattle would be nothing for those that are into it.
    - wk_end 4y ago
      I'm not saying no one does it (though, like I said, I can't imagine why), I'm saying there's a very good answer to OP's question of: > Why go to Nordstroms [sic] in Vancouver when you can hit the one in Seattle? Also...are you familiar with Vancouver or Seattle? New York, Paris, Milan, LA are shopping meccas in a way that Seattle isn't. Heck, Seattle isn't even a shopping mecca in comparison to Vancouver. I actually am having a hard time picturing someone going to Seattle with an empty suitcase unless they live in Yakima or something. Maybe an empty icebox, if they're real into fish.
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        You are sort of right about Seattle, but not Bellevue. Bellevue is a high end Nordtrom store (so is Seattle, but Bellevue has a lot more stuff these days). And Bellevue these days caters a lot to Indian and Chinese shoppers (like it does in Vancouver). There is also Seattle Outlet malls that is way north of Seattle and is pretty much just luxury brands with a bunch of BC plates in the parking lot.
- arecurrence 4y ago
  My understanding is the Vancouver store is the only one that regularly hit its targets.
  - danbolt 4y ago
    This reminds me of Car2Go being relatively well-utilized in Vancouver compared to other parts of North America.
- vezuchyy 4y ago
  My impression is that groceries are more expensive in the US. I didn't do an extensive research but I was camping for a week in WA and OR last summer and didn't get any groceries with me. I didn't find Costco, Safeway or Walmart to be any cheaper than in Vancouver.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    Not sure about food, but diapers, in particular, are much cheaper in the states than in Canada.
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
It is a hard market but foreign retailers can be very successful if they have the right value proposition. Uniqlo and Decathalon (French) are both packed whenever I go.
- voisin 4y ago
  They have very few locations though, which I think is a good takeaway - Target entered with a massive number of stores and failed. Minimum Viable Product people!!
raverbashing 4y ago
Yeah. If American (or other) retailers just think of Canada as "Cold USA" they're going to have a bad time. There are several impedance mismatches compared to doing business in America. Even several stores are positioned a bit differently from the US which make competitors not really fit in. Example: does Home Depot compete with Canadian Tire? Walmart fits neatly because Canada has a niche for it and similar competitors like Loblaws.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Just to show my uncultured Americaness, but how is Canadian Tire related to Home Depot? Wouldn't Canadian Tire be more appropriately compared to Sears?
  - Pet_Ant 4y ago
    Canadian Tire doesn't have almost any clothing and it does have tools. It's definitely not as home-focussed as Sears. I mean I think Home Hardware competes more directly with Home Depot, but I'd say that Canadian Tire is the mid-point between Sears and Home Depot.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    Sears in Canada was mostly a clothing store. 20+ years ago Sears did have more variety—tools and other products—but it was still fundamentally a clothing store. In my memory, Sears was nearly identical to the Hudson's Bay Company (The Bay), and my local mall had both. Whereas Canadian Tire is first and foremost a tire store and an auto mechanic shop. The other half of the store is tools, sporting goods, household and kitchen goods, gardening tools and supplies, and a small selection of what a hardware store would have (plumbing, electrical, lighting). Canadian Tire also owns Mark's Work Wear House (now just "Mark's") that sells work clothes, and sometimes the stores are combined, but otherwise Canadian Tire doesn't sell clothes beyond some hunting and fishing gear. There's almost no overlap with Sears. Home Depot in Canada is fundamentally the same as in the US. Home Depot and Canadian Tire are very much competitors for some things.
    - 4y ago
jt2190 4y ago
> Plus the country is large and sparsely populated with entrenched retail competitors. A huge portion of the Canadian population is concentrated in a few small areas. Retail does not need to be evenly distributed over square area. > It's quite sad that Target murdered Zellers (my grandma liked their restaurants!) This is revisionist history. Zellers (Hudson’s Bay) was killing itself well before Target arrived (very briefly) in Canada. Both Walmart and Target really misunderstood the Canadian consumer, and believed a product packaged for the U.S. market would operate largely unchanged in Canada, and they were terribly wrong. (Walmart had to abandon it’s “everyday low prices” approach because that promise alone didn’t motivate Canadian shoppers to visit.) Ultimately both retailers had to make big adjustments: Walmart ground it out, Target decided quickly it wasn’t worth it.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > and believed a product packaged for the U.S. market would operate largely unchanged in Canada, and they were terribly wrong. Really? I was under the impression cross border shopping told a vastly different story. Seems there's a lot of demand for American products by Canadian shoppers.
  - jt2190 4y ago
    Not “American products” but “the retail product”, i.e. the experience of walking into a Canadian Walmart or Target and buying a good, as opposed to buying the same good from a different source. As you noted, cross-border shopping by Canadians in the U.S. is a completely different “product” (retail experience) and there’s still a ton of demand. This was probably part of the calculation that enticed Target and Walmart into Canada in the first place. Whatever was “lost” when they tried to translate the U.S. experience directly to Canada included something that mattered (and still matters) to Canadian shoppers.
    - 908B64B197 4y ago
      > the experience of walking into a Canadian Walmart or Target > included something that mattered (and still matters) to Canadian shoppers. What is it? From recollection, stores in Canada weren't that different than here in America.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

Not only that, but most Canadians live near the American border, and can shop American stores in the states at lower prices. Why go to Nordstroms in Vancouver when you can hit the one in Seattle? Costco in Bellingham does brisk business with mostly BC license plates.

bluefirebrand 4y ago
There is no way the exchange rate makes it work out to actually be cheaper to cross the border to shop these days. Does it? Our dollar sucks
SoftTalker 4y ago
Crossing the border is a bit of a PITA. A few years ago I took my kids to play in a youth hockey tournament that was split between the US and Canada. Our hotel was on the Canadian side. Crossing back and forth was a nuisance and even though beer was cheaper on the US side it was technically illegal to bring very much back across the border. I assume the same is true for other shopping.
- buildbot 4y ago
  People who doe this regularly will get a NEXUS card, which makes the process much easier. Bringing alcohol back is totally fine in any quantity if I recall correctly, you just have to declare it and maybe pay some tax either direction. Fruits/veggies are more restricted I believe actually.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    My impression was the whole “go to the USA to shop because everything is cheaper” thing was illegal but I didn’t look into it deeply.
    - buildbot 4y ago
      Totally legal, just be sure to declare whatever. We do it for ketchup chips (From Canada)
bluedino 4y ago
I live 2 hours from the border and our Outlet Mall parking lots are full of vehicles with Canadian license plates on the weekends.
wk_end 4y ago
Bellingham is one thing, but Seattle is a good 2.5h drive from Vancouver, or maybe even more depending on border crossing and traffic along I-5. I can't imagine anyone deciding that they want to drive for five hours plus to save a little bit of money at Nordstrom, especially given the cost of gas, especially since folks who shop at Nordstrom aren't exactly penny-pinchers, and especially because Nordstrom is pretty high-end...so by the time you've spent enough money to have saved enough money to make all that worthwhile, you've blown past your duty exemption allowance.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Yeah, I've never heard of someone going to NYC for a weekend specifically to go shopping and taking empty suitcases on the plane. /s (feel free to fill in whatever city Paris, Milan, LA, etc) People make shopping excursions all the time. Just because you don't do it, doesn't mean others don't. People drive from Houston<->Dallas specifically to go shopping. Yes, there's no international border to cross, but it is still a 5 hour drive one way. So a 2.5 hour drive from Vancouver to Seattle would be nothing for those that are into it.
  - wk_end 4y ago
    I'm not saying no one does it (though, like I said, I can't imagine why), I'm saying there's a very good answer to OP's question of: > Why go to Nordstroms [sic] in Vancouver when you can hit the one in Seattle? Also...are you familiar with Vancouver or Seattle? New York, Paris, Milan, LA are shopping meccas in a way that Seattle isn't. Heck, Seattle isn't even a shopping mecca in comparison to Vancouver. I actually am having a hard time picturing someone going to Seattle with an empty suitcase unless they live in Yakima or something. Maybe an empty icebox, if they're real into fish.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      You are sort of right about Seattle, but not Bellevue. Bellevue is a high end Nordtrom store (so is Seattle, but Bellevue has a lot more stuff these days). And Bellevue these days caters a lot to Indian and Chinese shoppers (like it does in Vancouver). There is also Seattle Outlet malls that is way north of Seattle and is pretty much just luxury brands with a bunch of BC plates in the parking lot.
arecurrence 4y ago
My understanding is the Vancouver store is the only one that regularly hit its targets.
- danbolt 4y ago
  This reminds me of Car2Go being relatively well-utilized in Vancouver compared to other parts of North America.
vezuchyy 4y ago
My impression is that groceries are more expensive in the US. I didn't do an extensive research but I was camping for a week in WA and OR last summer and didn't get any groceries with me. I didn't find Costco, Safeway or Walmart to be any cheaper than in Vancouver.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Not sure about food, but diapers, in particular, are much cheaper in the states than in Canada.

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

It is a hard market but foreign retailers can be very successful if they have the right value proposition. Uniqlo and Decathalon (French) are both packed whenever I go.

voisin 4y ago
They have very few locations though, which I think is a good takeaway - Target entered with a massive number of stores and failed. Minimum Viable Product people!!

raverbashing 4y ago

Yeah. If American (or other) retailers just think of Canada as "Cold USA" they're going to have a bad time. There are several impedance mismatches compared to doing business in America. Even several stores are positioned a bit differently from the US which make competitors not really fit in. Example: does Home Depot compete with Canadian Tire? Walmart fits neatly because Canada has a niche for it and similar competitors like Loblaws.

dylan604 4y ago
Just to show my uncultured Americaness, but how is Canadian Tire related to Home Depot? Wouldn't Canadian Tire be more appropriately compared to Sears?
- Pet_Ant 4y ago
  Canadian Tire doesn't have almost any clothing and it does have tools. It's definitely not as home-focussed as Sears. I mean I think Home Hardware competes more directly with Home Depot, but I'd say that Canadian Tire is the mid-point between Sears and Home Depot.
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  Sears in Canada was mostly a clothing store. 20+ years ago Sears did have more variety—tools and other products—but it was still fundamentally a clothing store. In my memory, Sears was nearly identical to the Hudson's Bay Company (The Bay), and my local mall had both. Whereas Canadian Tire is first and foremost a tire store and an auto mechanic shop. The other half of the store is tools, sporting goods, household and kitchen goods, gardening tools and supplies, and a small selection of what a hardware store would have (plumbing, electrical, lighting). Canadian Tire also owns Mark's Work Wear House (now just "Mark's") that sells work clothes, and sometimes the stores are combined, but otherwise Canadian Tire doesn't sell clothes beyond some hunting and fishing gear. There's almost no overlap with Sears. Home Depot in Canada is fundamentally the same as in the US. Home Depot and Canadian Tire are very much competitors for some things.
  - 4y ago

jt2190 4y ago

> Plus the country is large and sparsely populated with entrenched retail competitors. A huge portion of the Canadian population is concentrated in a few small areas. Retail does not need to be evenly distributed over square area. > It's quite sad that Target murdered Zellers (my grandma liked their restaurants!) This is revisionist history. Zellers (Hudson’s Bay) was killing itself well before Target arrived (very briefly) in Canada. Both Walmart and Target really misunderstood the Canadian consumer, and believed a product packaged for the U.S. market would operate largely unchanged in Canada, and they were terribly wrong. (Walmart had to abandon it’s “everyday low prices” approach because that promise alone didn’t motivate Canadian shoppers to visit.) Ultimately both retailers had to make big adjustments: Walmart ground it out, Target decided quickly it wasn’t worth it.

908B64B197 4y ago
> and believed a product packaged for the U.S. market would operate largely unchanged in Canada, and they were terribly wrong. Really? I was under the impression cross border shopping told a vastly different story. Seems there's a lot of demand for American products by Canadian shoppers.
- jt2190 4y ago
  Not “American products” but “the retail product”, i.e. the experience of walking into a Canadian Walmart or Target and buying a good, as opposed to buying the same good from a different source. As you noted, cross-border shopping by Canadians in the U.S. is a completely different “product” (retail experience) and there’s still a ton of demand. This was probably part of the calculation that enticed Target and Walmart into Canada in the first place. Whatever was “lost” when they tried to translate the U.S. experience directly to Canada included something that mattered (and still matters) to Canadian shoppers.
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
    > the experience of walking into a Canadian Walmart or Target > included something that mattered (and still matters) to Canadian shoppers. What is it? From recollection, stores in Canada weren't that different than here in America.