Your eyes aren’t deceiving you: After years spent closed and out of the spotlight, Zellers is making a return, and it’s getting its new start in Alberta.
Starting this week shoppers at Edmonton’s Londonderry Mall can take a walk down memory lane at the iconic chain’s new location, though without much fanfare.
“It’s a very soft launch; they’re opening quite slowly,” said Henry Zavriyev, CEO of the mall’s owner, Leyad, in an interview with CTV News Edmonton Thursday.
The new location will be housed in one floor of a former Hudson’s Bay location -- one of the many across Canada that closed their doors after the retail giant went out of business in June. Leyad says the revived Zellers is the country’s first to occupy a now-former Bay store.
The Hudson’s Bay name and trademarks have since been sold to Canadian Tire, though the company says that the Zellers brand, as well as the ongoing revival, are not part of that deal.
“I think Canadians are pretty excited,” said retail expert Bruce Winder in an interview with CTV News Channel Thursday. “Canadians have seen this story before, though.”
In 2023, when Zellers was still owned by Hudson’s Bay, the retailer made a brief revival through a series of pop-up locations inside Bay stores, though that was not to last. This time, Winder notes that things may feel different than the store shoppers remember.
“It only really includes fashion products, so women’s, men’s, children’s fashion or clothing, and home goods,” he said. “It’s kind of cherry-picked the higher-margin parts of the former Zellers, but we’ll have to see what the pricing’s like, what the product’s like.”
To stay competitive in a new decade and a new market, Winder says Zellers needs to understand its customers.
“It has to have a clear target market, whoever that is; whether it’s the ‘value’ customer, or what have you,” he told CTV News. “It has to have the right value in the marketplace; the right combination of quality and price.”
As for the question on everyone’s minds: Unfortunately, it’s not yet clear whether the beloved Zellers restaurants will be part of the comeback.
With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Craig Ellison and Evan Kelly
