Good riddance: HBC's demise was long overdue

The Sunday of Victoria Day Weekend…what a wonderful day to be a Canadian! Here I am in my hotel room in St. John’s, Newfoundland waiting for my kids to wake up and enjoy all that North America’s oldest city has to offer.  I don’t have time to fact-check, but it sounds cool and there was a sign to that effect at the pub that sells great fish and chips.  I digress.  I love Canada and I can’t imagine calling anywhere else my home.   We have a vibrant well-functioning democracy...I am not gloating, I am just saying. And our economy is based on a capitalist model which is meant to promote  maximum productivity.  In a capitalist society such as ours we as consumers get to choose the products and services we buy.  The idea is that the ones that provide the best value proposition will win and thus there will always be incentive for companies to be as innovative and efficient as possible.  And then consumers will vote with their wallets.  Let’s review some great Canadian brands and why we shop there: Tim Hortons:  I am not a huge fan.  The coffee tastes like moosepiss and the bathrooms often smell the same.  I much prefer McDonalds for a cup of black coffee in the morning if I am on the go.  Tims does well because they have a great real estate strategy.  Some people pretend they go there because of some Canadian pride, but they don’t.  And it isn’t even owned here.  Roots. I like that place actually – they don’t develop enough new product to maximize frequency but they have good quality at a reasonable-ish price and the store is nice.  Lulu. pretty cool clothes but pretty overpriced. I am ok to shop there after selling a big project, maybe. Canadian Tire: Comme ci, comme ca.  They have a lot of great products and it is cool the way they put the categories together.  But the quality of many of the products is quite low and they don’t have enough staff to help you.  The few people who work there are quite nice and helpful when you find them, for what it’s worth.  I shop there because they have good parking at Yonge and Davenport and because their category array is wide enough to satisfy so many of my needs.  I almost always come out with something in a very different category from what I went looking for.  They are Canadian but I would never go there just for that.  Neither would you, don’t lie.  The Hudson’s Bay Company:  Canada’s oldest company.  Storied brand. Begun centuries ago by some fur traders or whatever.  What a shithole.  Giant cavernous stores. No service. Garbage product.  Poor marketing.  These are the reasons nobody shops there. Nobody has shopped there for years.  And you don’t have to be Canada’s leading management consultant (oh relax I am being ironic) to know that this will not lead to good things.  And it hasn’t.  It has led to bankruptcy, 10 years later than it should have.   So if I have to read one more smarmy loser celebrating this national failure I think I will throw up in my mouth.  You see, all you sentimentalists have already decided that this brand shouldn’t survive.  If you wanted it to survive you would have gone there and bought something.  But you couldn’t; it was too hard to do find something to buy.  If life were a hallmark card, I would really enjoy going to holiday dinners with my extended family and the brands we like would do well even if we don’t shop there. Neither of those things will ever be true.

There are some services that are so essential that the government subsidizes them to ensure that all Canadians get access to them.   We are debating this principle for the postal service and our national broadcaster.  I have not heard any motions put forth on a scratchy wool blanket with some random colours on it.

I am happy Canadian Tire got this asset and got a good deal on it.  The odd decent product may come out of it, and I may build a bigger basket on my next trip there; that is the point.  But I am even happier that the Bay is gone.  In a capitalist country that suffers from a productivity gap we need the losers to lose and make room for winners.  And this company was a loser for a long long time.  So good riddance.  Oh yeah and Happy Victoria Day!!!