Eaton's
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| T. Eaton Co. Limited | |
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| Type | Privately-held (1869-1998), public (1998-1999) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1869 (defunct in 1999) |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Canada (with stores across Canada) |
| Key people | Timothy Eaton, John Craig Eaton, Lady Flora McCrea Eaton |
| Industry | Department store |
| Products | Over the years, everything from clothing to farming implements |
| Employees | 70,000 (peak) |
Eaton's was once Canada's largest department store retailer. Founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an Irish immigrant, Eaton's first advertisement read "We propose to sell our goods for CASH ONLY – In selling goods, to have only one price." In an era where haggling for goods was commonplace, this was a revolutionary business practice.[citation needed]
The T. Eaton Co. Limited grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying offices across the globe, and a catalogue that found itself in the homes of most Canadians.[citation needed] Eaton's was well known for its customer service, as expressed in its long-standing slogan "Goods Satisfactory or Money Refunded." For several generations, members of the Eaton Family were Canada’s merchant princes. A rapidly changing economic and retail environment in the late 20th century proved difficult for Eaton’s, however, and the chain went bankrupt in 1999.
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[edit] Early years
1869 was the middle of the reign of Queen Victoria, and the infancy of the nation of Canada (Confederation having occurred only two years previously). It was in this year that Timothy Eaton sold his interest in a small dry-goods store in the little market town of St. Marys, Ontario and bought a dry-goods and haberdashery business at 178 Yonge Street, south of Queen Street West, in the rapidly growing city of Toronto. On December 8, 1869, an advertisement ran in The Globe for the new “T. Eaton & Co.”, promoting “sound goods, good styles and good value”.
The first store was only 24 by 60 feet in size (7.3 by 18.3 metres), with two shop windows, and was located a fair distance from Toronto’s then fashionable shopping district of King Street West. In its first year of operation, staff consisted of “two men, a woman and a boy”[citation needed], with Timothy Eaton responsible for buying the goods to stock the store. Expectations were low that a store with a no credit and no haggling policy would succeed.
Nonetheless, the business prospered, and its growth matched the rapid growth of Toronto in the late 19th century. When further expansion of the existing store became impossible, Timothy Eaton moved his business one block north in August 1883 into much larger premises at 190 Yonge Street. The new store boasted the biggest plate-glass windows in Toronto, the first electric lights in any Canadian store, three full floors of retail space featuring 35 departments, and a light-well that ran the full-length of the store.[citation needed] The store’s first telephone, with phone number 370, was installed in 1885. In 1886, the first elevator in a retail establishment in Toronto was installed in the Eaton store (although only customers “going up” were invited to use the elevator, thus requiring them to pass by the various store displays on their walk down).
Despite the move to 190 Yonge Street, Timothy Eaton maintained the lease on the empty store at 178 Yonge Street until its expiry in 1884, in order to delay the expansion plans of one of his competitors, Robert Simpson. Over time, the competition between the Simpson's and Eaton’s department stores, facing each other across Queen Street West, became one of Toronto’s great business rivalries.[citation needed] As both businesses expanded into retail chains across Canada, the Eaton’s/Simpson’s rivalry was at one time as central to Canadian retailing as the Macy's/Gimbel's competition was to New York City’s retail history. The pedestrian crosswalk on Queen Street West, just to the west of the intersection with Yonge Street, was for years one of the busiest in Canada, as thousands of shoppers a day comparison shopped between Eaton’s and Simpson’s.
By 1896, Eaton’s was billing itself as “Canada’s Greatest Store”. The store continued to expand in size, and new buildings were constructed to house the mail order division and the Eaton’s factories. The number of people employed in the various Eaton’s operations numbered 17,500 in 1911. In 1919, the golden jubilee of the store, the Eaton’s buildings in Toronto contained a floor space of over 60 acres, and occupied several city blocks between Yonge Street and Bay Street, north of Queen Street West.
[edit] The Winnipeg store
At the beginning of the 20th century, Eaton's conducted a large business in Western Canada through its catalogue. At first, Eaton's considered Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada as the most logical location for a new mail order warehouse to better serve its western customers.[citation needed] At the time, Winnipeg was a thriving and rapidly growing city, serving as gateway to the Canadian West, with more millionaires per capita than either Toronto or Montreal. A store, however, was not originally part of the plans.
John Craig Eaton, the son of Timothy Eaton, became an early proponent of building a combined store and mail order operation in Winnipeg. Although Timothy Eaton initially had misgivings over the difficulties involved in managing a store 2100 kilometres from Toronto, John Craig was eventually able to convince his father to bless the project.[citation needed] Eaton's acquired a city block on Portage Avenue at Donald Street, and the five-storey Eaton's store opened to much fanfare on July 15, 1905. Timothy Eaton and his family were on hand for the opening of the second Eaton's store, with the Winnipeg Daily Tribune noting in its front page headline: "The Canadian Napoleon of Retail Commerce Reaches the Capital - Views His Great Store for First Time - Well Pleased".
The landmark red brick store, known as "the Big Store" to Winnipeggers[citation needed], was an instant success. The initial staff of 750 grew to 1200 within a few weeks of the opening. By 1910, three more storeys were added to the store and other buildings were constructed. By 1919, the Eaton's operations in Winnipeg covered 21 acres and employed 8000 people.
For many years, the Winnipeg Eaton's store was considered the most successful department store in the world, given how it dominated its local market. As late as the 1960s, Canadian Magazine estimated that Winnipeggers spent more than 50 cents of every shopping dollar (excluding groceries) at Eaton's, and that on a busy day, one out of every ten Winnipeggers would visit the Portage Avenue store.
[edit] Canada’s dominant retailer
The store founded by Timothy Eaton was not the first department store in the world, nor was the Eaton’s store the first to offer fixed prices and a money-back guarantee. Nonetheless, the success of Eaton’s revolutionized department store retailing in North America.[citation needed] American retailers flocked to view the “retail palaces” on Yonge Street and Portage Avenue, anxious to replicate Timothy Eaton’s methods south of the border. Until the 1950s, Eaton's promoted itself as the "largest retail organization in the British Empire".
In 1905, the Globe wrote: “There is hardly a name in Canada, with the possible exception of the Prime Minister, so well known to the people at large as that of Mr. Timothy Eaton.”[citation needed] Timothy Eaton died in 1907, and was succeeded by John Craig Eaton as President of the T. Eaton Co. Limited.
The company’s success continued under Timothy’s heir. In 1911, Saturday Night magazine declared: “Never before in the history of the world has it been possible for a store to be run on this humanitarian basis of beauty, use and efficiency. All of Canada is proud of Eaton’s; and Canada should be, for here we find a store that has set the world a pace in modern merchandising.”[citation needed] In the same year, the Illustrated London News stated: “The T. Eaton Co. of Toronto can claim their stores are the greatest in the British Empire.”[citation needed]
In 1925, Eaton’s purchased the Goodwin’s store in Montreal. By 1927, Montreal boasted a new six-storey Eaton’s store on Saint Catherine Street, which was expanded to nine storeys in 1930. Over time, Eaton’s stores opened in other cities across the country.
In 1977, the crown jewel of the Eaton's empire, the Toronto Eaton Centre, opened in downtown Toronto, replacing two previous downtown Eaton's stores. The massive complex — stretching 400 m on several levels from Dundas to Queen Street and boasting 200 stores — was anchored at the north end by an immense nine-storey Eaton's.
[edit] The Eaton’s catalogue
The first Eaton's catalogue was a simple 34-page booklet, issued in 1884. Inside the front cover was the declaration: “Owing to the immense increase in our Mail Order Department, we find it has become a necessity to issue a catalogue of this style, and even this is incomplete, in that it contains only a limited description of the stock, and therefore does not give you a correct idea as to the immense varieties and extensive stock carried by us”.
As Eaton’s grew, so did the catalogue. By 1920, Eaton’s operated mail order warehouses in Winnipeg, Toronto and Moncton to serve its catalogue customers. Catalogue order offices were also established throughout the country, with the first opening in Oakville in 1916.
To many, the catalogue became known as the Homesteader's Bible or the Wishing Book.[citation needed] It was often said[citation needed] that only two books mattered in a typical Canadian home: the family Bible and the Eaton's catalogue. At a time when Canada’s population was predominantly rural, often living in isolated settlements, the Eaton’s catalogue provided a selection of goods that was otherwise unavailable to many Canadians. Moreover, it served an important economic role, as it broke local monopolies and allowed all Canadians access to the prices and selection enjoyed in some of the larger cities. The catalogue offered everything from clothing to farming implements. Some Canadians even purchased their homes from the catalogue, with Eaton’s delivering to them all the materials necessary to build a small, prefabricated house. Today, a large number of “Eaton’s catalogue homes” still exist throughout the country, primarily in the West.
The catalogue became an icon of Canadian culture, even appearing in many works of Canadian literature. The most famous example, in Roch Carrier's story "The Hockey Sweater," a young Quebec boy asks his mother for a Montreal Canadiens hockey jersey from the Eaton's catalogue, but receives a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey instead. Due to the prevalent language and cultural barriers of the English- and French-speaking Canadian populations, his family is unaware that the item could be exchanged, and they do not wish to offend Mr. Eaton by returning it.
Over time, the catalogue became a less profitable operation, and by the 1970s, it was a money-losing proposition. As Canada’s population became more urban over the course of the 20th century, Canadians had access to a greater number of local stores, and were less reliant on catalogue purchases. By the mid-1970s, it was estimated[citation needed] that 60% of the suburban customers throughout Canada lived within a thirty-minute drive of an Eaton’s store. Others, however, blamed Eaton’s management for the catalogue’s failures[citation needed], pointing to the similar Simpsons-Sears catalogue (now the Sears Canada catalogue), which continues to this day even though it has never enjoyed the iconic status or popularity of the Eaton’s catalogue.
At a news conference on January 14, 1976, Eaton’s announced that the 1976 spring-summer catalogue would be the last. 9000 mail-order employees were out of work. Many Canadians were in shock.[citation needed] In one notable incident, Barbara Frum of CBC Radio’s As It Happens opened her interview of Eaton’s president Earl Orser with the question “Mr. Orser, how could you?”
[edit] The Santa Claus Parade
Eaton sponsored the annual Toronto Santa Claus Parade. The first parade took place on December 2, 1905. For a number of years, Eaton’s Santa Claus Parades were also held in Winnipeg and Montreal. Macy’s in New York started its own annual Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924 due largely to the success of the Eaton’s parades north of the border.[citation needed]
By the 1950s, the Toronto parade was the largest in North America, stretching for a mile and a half and involving thousands of participants. It was broadcast live on radio and television in Canada, and even CBS television in the United States broadcast the parade for a number of years.
In August 1982, Eaton’s announced that it would no longer sponsor the Santa Claus Parade, due to increasing costs. A consortium of local businesses saved the parade, which continues to be held every year, but another cherished Eaton’s institution was gone.
[edit] Eaton’s in Quebec
Long before Eaton’s established its first Quebec store, it reached out to its francophone customers in Quebec and other parts of Canada at a time when it was uncommon for large anglophone businesses to do so.
In 1899, francophone catalogue customers were publicly invited to contact Eaton’s in French, although a number of them had been doing so for years. In 1927, Eaton’s published its first all-French catalogue. In the Montreal store, sales staff were predominantly bilingual, with advertising, posters and signs appearing in both English and French.
Nonetheless, by the early 1960s, Eaton’s was seen by many[citation needed] in the emerging Quebec nationalist movement as a symbol of English Canadian hegemony. It was, for instance, at Eaton's stores that some francophone Quebeckers were reportedly told to "speak white," in turn inspiring another famous work of Quebec literature, Michèle Lalonde's poem Speak White. As a consequence, Eaton's stores in Quebec dropped the English possessive in the chain's name, becoming simply Eaton. A few years later it undertook a major effort to woo French language Quebeckers, by increasing the number of francophone staff, increasing the predominence of the French language on store signage, and spending millions on marketing efforts in the French-language media. A similar effort was made by The Bay (la Baie), the other formerly "Anglo" chain in Quebec. As a result, Eaton's and the Bay grew and grew again in Quebec all through the late 1960s and 1970s by taking a large part of the customer base which had formerly gone to "French-only" department stores such as Sauvé and Dupuis, which eventually closed down.
[edit] Decline and bankruptcy
In the 1970s, Eaton's tried to expand its reach in Canadian retailing by opening a chain of discount or "junior" department stores called Horizon. The Horizon chain was closed in 1978. Three of its stores were converted to Eaton's stores, and the others were shuttered.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Eaton's was a partner in the development of other downtown malls in smaller centres, particularly in Ontario, intended to foster the revitalization of urban cores. Nearly all these malls — in cities such as Sarnia, Brantford, Hamilton and Guelph — had high vacancy rates and poor patronage, and contributed to the store's financial problems.
The economic recession of the early 1980s hurt the company. The consolidation of department store retailers in the 1970s and 1980s gave rise to national competitors such as the Hudson's Bay Company, Sears Canada and Zellers, all of whom took market share from Eaton’s. By the 1990s, American retailers, most notably Wal-Mart, were expanding into Canada, and Eaton’s found it increasingly difficult to compete.
Retailing and land use trends in the last decades of the 20th century did not favour Eaton’s. Traditional department stores, including (but not limited to) Eaton’s, commanded an ever-shrinking share of the Canadian retail dollar, as discount department stores, such as Wal-Mart and Zellers, and specialty stores (the so-called “category killers”) expanded their respective shares of retail sales. With the advent of urban sprawl, most Canadian downtown shopping districts (which were historically dominated by Eaton's) had to increasingly share the retail sales pie with growing suburban shopping areas (where Eaton’s was just one of many competitors).
Eaton’s difficulties, however, were not all caused by external forces. Poor management by the last two generations of Eaton family members to run the chain certainly contributed to the demise of Eaton’s.[citation needed] Stores that once served as landmarks in their respective communities were not renovated. New Eaton’s stores built since the 1960s were largely indistinguishable from other chain stores, thus increasingly reducing Eaton’s status as a destination store. The chain that had touted itself in the 1940s and 1950s as “The Store for Young Canada” lost touch with younger customers, and unintentionally became known as a chain that catered to older shoppers. Once known for its superior customer service, Eaton's began to cut back on sales staff and training in an effort to trim costs. A chain that had once prided itself on its buying offices throughout the globe and on the unique and diverse goods that it offered its customers had, by the latter half of the twentieth century, an antiquated supply chain and a haphazard and confused approach to merchandising. The end of the catalogue and of the Eaton’s Santa Claus parades helped sever the emotional links between Canadians and the Eaton’s chain.[citation needed] One apocryphal tale states that once the women of the Eaton family stopped shopping at Eaton’s, the chain was doomed.
In one particularly disastrous move, Eaton’s moved to an “Everyday Value Pricing” strategy in 1991, which meant that all discounts and sales, including Eaton’s famous Trans-Canada Sale, were eliminated. The strategy quickly drove away customers[citation needed], but was inexplicably continued for four years before it was abandoned.
The chain, which controlled almost 60% of all department store sales in Canada in 1930, had been reduced to a market share of 10.6% in 1997.[citation needed] The T. Eaton Co. Limited first filed for bankruptcy protection in 1997. The chain finally folded in 1999 after operating for 130 years, and its corporate assets were acquired by Sears Canada.
Sears Canada closed some Eaton's stores, converted others to Sears stores, sold others to The Bay, and kept a number of downtown stores with the intention of relaunching eatons in 2000 as a more high-end, modern brand, with a lowercase "e" in a circle as its logo and a splashy ad campaign built around the colour aubergine. According to Rick Brown, senior vice president for strategic initiatives at Sears Canada, merchandise was priced above the level of Sears Canada and The Bay, but below Holt Renfrew. The seven-store experiment was not particularly successful, so in 2002, Sears retired the "eatons" name; it converted the remaining stores to Sears, including the flagship Eaton Centre store located at the Toronto Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto.
[edit] Legacy
Eaton's transformed retailing in Canada, and its methods were eagerly adopted by retailers throughout the world. Many approaches to sales and service that are taken for granted by customers today were originally popularised by Timothy Eaton and his store. There was a time when Eaton's represented the cutting edge of retail and could virtually dictate retail trends and customs both to its customers and competitors.
Many Canadians, particularly older Canadians, have fond memories of the Eaton’s stores and the catalogue. Few defunct companies evoke the same strong emotions among Canadians as does Eaton’s.[citation needed]
Although the Eaton's chain is no more, several shopping centres in Canada continue to be called Eaton Centres, most notably the Toronto Eaton Centre, the Centre Eaton in downtown Montreal and the Calgary Eaton Centre. In fact, the Toronto Eaton Centre is the number one tourist attraction in Toronto, with over one million visitors a week. The fact that one of North America’s top shopping and tourist destinations is located on this stretch of Yonge Street is due, in large part, to Timothy Eaton’s original decision in the 19th century to establish his store at this location. (For more details about Eaton Centre malls across Canada, see Eaton Centre).
Eaton’s also leaves an architectural legacy, primarily through the work of the architecture firm Ross and Macdonald. Eaton’s College Street in Toronto, opened in 1930, is an Art Deco masterpiece, and is currently used as a retail, office and residential complex. The famous Seventh Floor, occupied by the Eaton Auditorium and the Round Room restaurant, was recently restored and now operates as “The Carlu” event venue.
Similarly, the former Eaton’s store in Montreal, also designed by Ross and Macdonald, remains a landmark on Saint Catherine Street, and is currently occupied by a large shopping mall. After being closed for several years following Eaton's bankruptcy, the famous 9th floor restaurant in the downtown Montreal store was recently restored by Fournier, Gersovitz, Moss et associés, a Montreal architectural firm. It is protected as a registered historical site, because of its rich Art deco design.
Another Ross and Macdonald-designed landmark, the former Eaton's store in downtown Saskatoon, now serves as the offices of the Saskatoon Board of Education. The long-time downtown Calgary store, designed by Ross and Macdonald in the 1920s, was largely demolished in 1988], although two facades were preserved and incorporated into a new Holt Renfrew store as part of the Calgary Eaton Centre redevelopment.
The original downtown Vancouver store, on Hastings Street, also remains and now serves as the downtown "Harbour Centre" campus of Simon Fraser University. Some Vancouver residents associate this heritage building with the Spencer's Department Store (which commissioned the construction of the store), rather than Eaton's (which bought Spencer's in 1948 and occupied the store until the 1970s). In fact, the former Eaton's store is today known as the "Spencer Building".
Not all former Eaton’s stores are architectural landmarks: the stores constructed from the 1960s onwards were typically architecturally inferior to their predecessors. Notably, the exterior of the Toronto Eaton Centre store can best be described as a mustard-coloured box, and is generally considered (from an architectural perspective) to be a poor replacement for the demolished Main Store. Designed in the style of the 1970s and intended at that time to be a statement of Eaton's dominance and its future aspirations, the "modern" design of this behemoth has not aged well (despite efforts by Sears Canada in 1999-2000 to improve the look of the building facades). Similarly, the main Vancouver store, connected to the downtown Pacific Centre mall, was also built in the 1970s as a large, white box.
After the demise of Eaton’s, most stores were quietly converted to other retail banners or other uses, with the downtown Winnipeg store generating the most controversy. When the store was emptied in late 1999, various alternative uses for the building (including residential condominiums) were considered, and ultimately all rejected. After a highly emotional civic debate, which included a “group hug” of the “Big Store” by hundreds of people in 2001, the store was demolished in 2002 to make way for a hockey arena, the MTS Centre. In one concession to history, red bricks were incorporated into the design of the arena façade, evoking the memory of the Eaton’s store that had once graced Portage Avenue. An original store window and Tyndall stone surround is mounted in the arena concourse to house a collection of Eaton's memorabilia.
Happily, Timothy Eaton still watches over Winnipeggers and Torontonians. In 1919, two life-sized statues of Timothy Eaton were donated by Eaton's employees to the Toronto and Winnipeg stores, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the company. For years, these two statues greeted shoppers and it was tradition for customers in both Toronto and Winnipeg to rub the toe of the statue for good luck. The Toronto statue is now exhibited in the Royal Ontario Museum. The Winnipeg statue was housed in the suburban Polo Park mall for a few years after 1999, until the Hudson's Bay Company opened a Bay store at that location and wanted the statue of its former competitor removed. After a tussle with the Eaton family, who wanted to move the statue to St Marys, Ontario, the Manitoba government declared it a provincial heritage object. It now sits in the city's new arena, the MTS Centre, in almost exactly the same spot where it stood in the old store. Museum-goers in Toronto and hockey fans in Winnipeg continue to rub Timothy’s toe for luck.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- CBC Digital Archives - Eaton's: A Canadian Institution
- Archives of Ontario - T. Eaton Co. Records
- Archives of Ontario Remembers An Eaton Christmas
- Timothy Eaton
- The Canadian Encyclopedia - The T. Eaton Co. Limited
- Canadian Museum of Civilization - Before E-Commerce: A History of Canadian Mail-Order Catalogues
- Timothy Eaton Statue Begins Relocation to MTS Centre
- Calgary Public Library -- The Calgary Eaton's Store
[edit] References
- Anderson, Carol and Mallison, Katharine, Lunch With Lady Eaton: Inside the Dining Rooms of a Nation, Toronto: ECW Press, 2004.
- Eaton, Flora McCrea, Memory's Wall, Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1956.
- Gourluck, Russ, A Store Like No Other: Eaton's of Winnipeg, Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, 2004.
- Macpherson, Mary-Etta, Shopkeepers to a Nation, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1963.
- McQueen, Rod, The Eatons: The Rise and Fall of Canada's Royal Family, Toronto: Stoddart, 1998.
- Nasmith, George G., Timothy Eaton, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1923.
- Phenix, Patricia, Eatonians: The Story of the Family Behind the Family, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 2003.
- Santink, Joy L., Timothy Eaton and the Rise of His Department Store, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.
- Scribe, The, Golden Jubilee 1869-1919: A Book to Commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the T. Eaton Co. Limited, Toronto: The T. Eaton Co. Limited, 1919.
- Staib, Kay, ed. Eaton 100: 1869 – 1969, A Special Centennial Edition of Eaton Quarterly, Toronto: Eaton’s Consumer and Corporate Affairs, 1969.
- Staib, Kay, ed., The Dreams of Man – The Toronto Eaton Centre, Toronto: Eaton’s Consumer and Corporate Affairs, 1977.
- Stephenson, William, The Store That Timothy Built, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1969.
