in
Montreal,
Quebec (store #3704). in
Richmond Hill, Ontario (store #3666). This store was replaced with
Marshalls and
HomeSense in Fall 2018. (store #3557). This store has now become a
Walmart. in Ottawa, Ontario. It never opened to the public, with its signage logo still intact, and was subsequently sold to
Walmart in 2015.
Trademark issues before 2010 In the absence of the Target Corporation chain in Canada, several retail companies, without any affiliation to the American company, made use of the "Target" name for various purposes. A regional
variety store chain in
Newfoundland and Labrador operated under the Target banner during the 1980s and early 1990s. There has also been a
liquor store named Target Liquor in
Edmonton, and a Target
convenience store chain based in Toronto. Before it entered Canada, Target Corporation attempted to solidify its rights to the "Target" brand name in Canada by buying the Canadian
trademark rights of some of these existing users, Target Apparel originally served as a private-label clothing brand, and not as the name of a retail store, and Fairweather would not apply to extend its trademark to cover retail services until April 2011. INC Group opened a small Target Apparel retail store adjacent to the company's head office in December 2003. In late 2010, soon after Target's announcement that it planned to expand into Canada (but before the Zellers announcement), INC began expanding the banner to other higher-profile locations, including conversions of some of its existing Labels stores. Target challenged INC's rights to the Target Apparel trade name on numerous occasions; INC had succeeded in retaining those rights, but faced a further court challenge with a trial set to start in 2012. On February 1, 2012, it was announced that Fairweather Ltd. and Target reached an agreement concerning the use of the Target name in Canada. Under this agreement, Fairweather would cease use of the Target Apparel name by 2013, giving Target Canada complete ownership of the Target brand in Canada.
2010: Consideration of Canadian operations Regular rumours surfaced since at least 2004 that Target was interested in expanding into Canada by acquiring
Zellers outright. In January 2010, Target publicly indicated long-term plans to expand internationally, likely including Canada, but that those plans would not take effect until 2013 at the earliest.
2011–2013: Leaseholds acquisition and partnership On January 13, 2011, Target announced that it would purchase the lease agreements of up to 220 Zellers stores for C$1.825 billion (approximately $2.427 billion in 2025 adjusted for inflation). Under the agreement, Zellers would sublease the properties, and continue to operate them as Zellers locations until at the earliest January 2012 and, at the latest, the end of March 2013. Target did not buy the Zellers chain outright, which was left with 64 stores in less desirable locations. HBC failed to find a buyer for the remaining stores and planned to continue operating Zellers as a smaller chain. However, the geographical constraints of serving these far-flung Zellers outlets meant that operating them was no longer economically viable, so HBC announced on July 26, 2012, that it would close almost all of these stores. In May 2011, Target revealed its first 105 selections and stated that the vast majority of those in this first group would be converted to Target outlets. In September 2011, Target unveiled 84 additional selections, bringing the number of Zellers leases acquired to 189 below the prospective upper number of 220 announced in January. The first store opening cycle would be in March/April 2013, followed by four additional cycles later that year. Zellers locations to be converted were typically closed for six to nine months for significant remodelling and renovation. Target announced plans to hire 27,000 new employees to support its expansion into Canada, including 5,000 in Quebec, and that its food and grocery items in Canada would be supplied by
Sobeys. After the Zellers stores at the selected locations closed, Target planned to renovate between 125 and 135 of them, and reopen them under the Target banner. Unlike Walmart's entry to Canada with the acquisition of the
Woolco stores in 1994, Zellers employees were not retained by Target nor Walmart, and they had to re-apply for their position to continue working in their same locations. Target Canada stated that former Zellers workers were guaranteed an interview though not a job; however, the
United Food and Commercial Workers of Canada complained that many Zellers employees were not hired, including those with long years of service. Target confirmed the list of its locations in July 2012. The first Target stores in Canada were opened on March 5, 2013, in the Ontario communities of
Guelph,
Fergus, and
Milton, being close to one of Target Canada's three distribution centres. Target Canada had its head offices in
Mississauga's Airport Corporate Centre in the same building as Pepsico Canada's offices during Target Canada's years of operation.
2013–2015: Years of operation Target Canada had supply chain problems, but its parent company did not want the planned opening date to be delayed, since they did not want to continue paying rent on unopened stores. On March 5, 2013, three Target stores in Milton, Fergus and Guelph, Ontario, were opened to the public and operating as test stores, and a further 17 stores in Ontario opened on March 19, 2013. Four additional stores in Ontario were opened on March 28, 2013, followed by a number of openings in three western provinces on May 6, 2013. On July 16, 2013, Target opened more stores in four provinces, including in the cities of
Regina and
Saskatoon. Target opened more stores between September 17 and October 18, including in the provinces of
Quebec and
Nova Scotia. It opened 33 locations between November 13 and 22, including in the provinces of
New Brunswick,
Prince Edward Island and
Newfoundland and Labrador. On March 14, 2014, Target opened three stores in the cities of
Toronto,
Edmonton and
Victoria. On August 1, 2014, it opened three stores in the cities of
Barrie,
Mississauga and
Candiac, Quebec. Target Canada included smaller
Starbucks stores in the majority of its locations. A notable Canadian clothing brand,
Roots, was "temporarily" sold in Target Canada.
Early results Target Canada president Tony Fisher expected that some Canadian consumers would continue to cross the border and shop at Target stores in the United States. Fisher acknowledged that the Canadian stores would not have price parity with their U.S. counterparts, saying "Transportation costs are higher, distribution costs are higher, fuel costs are higher, wage rates vary across the country, the tax rates are different, cost of goods are different, the duties — I think the scale we have here in Canada is quite different from the incredibly different, densely populated U.S. marketplace." Because of complexities and other legal requirements, Target's existing distribution network could not be used to service Target's Canadian locations. In addition, Canadian Target stores did not have local authority to order their own merchandise; this resulted in the
Windsor, Ontario, stores stocking
Toronto Maple Leafs and
Toronto Blue Jays apparel, instead of that of the
Detroit Red Wings and
Detroit Tigers, which were more popular in Windsor, given its proximity to
Detroit across the
Detroit River.
Supply chain and demand issues also led to situations where some of the early locations were not adequately stocked in certain product categories, resulting in empty shelves. The supply chain problems were blamed on using a brand new
SAP inventory software and not giving sufficient time for staff to work out the system's problems, as the parent company refused to push back the planned launch date as they did not want to keep paying rent on unopened stores. Target Canada enjoyed a strong opening, but subsequent results were disappointing, dragging down its parent company's second-quarter results. Despite the initial high traffic at Target's new stores, customers were not returning frequently enough to these stores to buy the basic household items, as that market was dominated by entrenched Canadian grocery and drug retail chains such as
Loblaws,
Shoppers Drug Mart, and Walmart Canada. In addition, while Target Canada aimed to have its customers do "one-stop shopping", Canadian consumers generally pick and choose between different retailers' strengths, often going to different retailers whenever certain items go on sale as evidenced by Canadians sometimes carrying shopping bags from competing businesses. While Target Canada stores were said to be an improvement over the untidy Zellers stores, some Canadians lamented that they missed the deals found at Zellers. leading to some alienation and confusion, although Target CEO
Gregg Steinhafel defended this practice saying "trying to compare prices at Target Canada with that of certain Target stores in the U.S. would be like comparing prices in
Boston to prices in rural
Iowa". Deutsche Bank's pricing survey on 31 health, beauty and food items at Canadian Target and Walmart stores found that while Target had a cheaper basket of goods by 19 cents, Walmart had a pricing advantage of 65 percent of the popular items in the basket thanks to its own "Rollback" prices, likely furthering consumers’ current price perceptions. Other American chains operating in Canada did not suffer a backlash from Canada–U.S. pricing disparities as much, likely as Target had hyped its Canadian stores to provide the same experience as their U.S. counterparts. Two weeks after Steinhafel's abrupt departure, Target Canada president Anthony S. "Tony" Fisher was dismissed and replaced by Mark Schindele, who had been serving as Target's senior vice-president of merchandising operations. Subsequent commentators did not blame Fisher, "the odds were stacked against him from the start, given the extremely tight timeline and the thin margin for error." Likewise, plans to open a smaller Target store in the former Zellers location in Lawrence Square Shopping Centre (later renamed
Lawrence Allen Centre in late 2019) in Toronto similar to the CityTarget format were also cancelled and were replaced with two additional public mall entrances,
Marshalls,
HomeSense and
PetSmart by early 2016 (and
Structube a few years later but before the mall's renaming). By 2015, the subsidiary had lost $2.1 billion and was not projected to make a profit until at least 2021 assuming the COVID-19 pandemic did not happen. Target Canada would have been unable to meet its employees' payroll for the week of January 16, 2015, if it had not filed for Court protection from creditors. in
Ottawa (store #3658) in February 2015
Liquidation sales began at the stores the following day; Target began to close stores on March 18, 2015, with 58 locations scheduled to close that week, and 58 in total closed by April 5, 2015. The remaining 58 stores closed on April 12, 2015. In May 2015, the company returned some of its leases back to their landlords, and began the process of auctioning off leases and properties to other new owners.
Canadian Tire announced plans to acquire 12 locations,
Walmart Canada reached a deal to acquire 13 locations (including the aborted Bayshore Shopping Centre location) and one of its distribution centres, and
Lowe's also reached a deal to acquire 13 locations and a distribution centre.
Giant Tiger also acquired a part of a Target location.
Metro's discount supermarket chain
Super C would open stores in two former Target stores in Quebec. ==Target International Shopping==