United Cigar Stores Limited was a Canadian chain of cigar stores based in Toronto, Ontario which at one point had operations across the country. It once included United Cigar Store Agencies, which operated as franchisers of the brand.
The red fronted buildings once spotted the Toronto landscape, but had largely disappeared by the late 1990s, shortly after the company had been acquired from Imasco by Hachette Distribution Services, when the vast majority of locations were renamed Great Canadian News Co. [1] However, at least one location, in the basement of the Toronto Coach Terminal, had remained under the United Cigar Stores name.
In 2014, LS Travel Retail (the former HDS, which had been acquired by Lagardère Group) sold the chains to Gateway Newstands, which promptly rebranded all locations (including the Toronto Coach Terminal store) under its own banner. [2]
The following is the primary body copy of an advertisement which ran in "Toronto's 100 Years".
WH Smith is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, entertainment products and confectionery.
Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited is a Canadian retail company which operates in the automotive, hardware, sports, leisure and housewares sectors. Its Canadian operations include: Canadian Tire, Mark's, FGL Sports, PartSource, and the Canadian operations of Party City. Canadian Tire acquired the Norwegian clothing and textile company Helly Hansen from the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan in 2018.
Zellers was a Canadian discount department retail chain and currently a brand name owned by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Founded in 1931, it was based in Brampton, Ontario. Zellers was acquired by HBC in 1978 before closing in 2013.
Shoppers Drug Mart Inc. is a Canadian retail pharmacy chain based in Toronto, Ontario. It has more than 1,300 stores in nine provinces and two territories.
Sears Canada Inc. was a publicly-traded Canadian company affiliated with the American-based Sears department store chain. In operation from 1952 until January 14, 2018, and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the company began as Simpsons-Sears—a joint venture between the Canadian Simpsons department store chain and the American Sears chain—which operated a national mail order business and co-branded Simpsons-Sears stores modelled after those of Sears in the U.S. After the Hudson's Bay Company purchased Simpsons in 1978, the joint venture was dismantled and Hudson's Bay sold its shares in the joint venture to Sears; with Sears now fully owning the company, it was renamed Sears Canada Inc. in 1984. In 1999, Sears Canada acquired the remaining assets and locations of the historic Canadian chain Eaton's. From 2014, Sears Holdings owned a 10% share in the company. ESL Investments was the largest shareholder of Sears Canada.
Loblaws Inc. is a Canadian supermarket chain with stores located in the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. Headquartered in Brampton, Ontario, Loblaws is a subsidiary of Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest food distributor.
Loblaw Companies Limited is a Canadian food retailer, encompassing corporate and franchise supermarkets operating under 22 regional and market segment banners, as well as pharmacies, banking and apparel. Loblaw operates a private label program that includes grocery and household items, clothing, baby products, pharmaceuticals, cellular phones, general merchandise, and financial services. Loblaw brands include President's Choice, No Name, Joe Fresh, Everyday Essentials for cooking machinery, Red Rooster for asian foods, T&T, Exact, Life, Seaquest, Azami, Theodore & Pringle and Teddy's Choice. It is the largest Canadian food retailer.
The T. Eaton Company Limited, later known as Eaton's, was a Canadian department store chain that was once Canada's largest. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton's grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying-offices around the globe, and a mail-order catalog that was found in the homes of most Canadians. A changing economic and retail environment in the late twentieth century, along with mismanagement, culminated in the chain's bankruptcy in 1999.
Woolco was an American-based discount retail chain. It was founded in 1962 in the city of Columbus, Ohio, by the F. W. Woolworth Company. It was a full-line discount department store unlike the five-and-dime Woolworth stores which operated at the time. At its peak, Woolco had hundreds of stores in the US, as well as in Canada and the United Kingdom. While the American stores were closed in 1983, the chain remained active in Canada until it was sold in 1994 to rival Walmart, which was looking to enter the Canadian market. All of the former UK Woolco stores were sold by Kingfisher, who had bought the UK Woolworth business, to Gateway who subsequently sold them to Asda.
Virgin Megastores is an international entertainment retailing chain, founded in early 1976 by Sir Richard Branson as a record shop on London's Oxford Street.
A chain store or retail chain is a retail outlet in which several locations share a brand, central management, and standardized business practices. They have come to dominate the retail and dining markets, and many service categories, in many parts of the world. A franchise retail establishment is one form of chain store. In 2005, the world's largest retail chain, Walmart, became the world's largest corporation based on gross sales.
Staples Inc. is an American office retail company. It is primarily involved in the sale of office supplies and related products, via retail channels and business-to-business (B2B)-oriented delivery operations. At some locations, Staples also offers a copy and print service.
A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down costs.
Giant Tiger Stores Limited is a Canadian discount store chain which operates over 260 stores across Canada. The company's stores operate under the Giant Tiger banner in Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan; under the GTExpress and Scott's Discount banners in Ontario only, and under the Tigre Géant banner in Quebec.
The Scarborough Town Centre (STC) is a shopping mall in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Central to the Scarborough City Centre in the former city of Scarborough, it is adjacent to Scarborough Centre station, the Scarborough Centre Bus Terminal and the CTV Toronto studios. Opened in 1973, the mall is the fourth largest shopping mall in Canada and third in Toronto by retail space.
Food Basics was a no-frills discount supermarket chain owned and operated by The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company in the northeastern United States.
Longo's is a chain of retail supermarkets and grocery delivery service serving Southern Ontario, Canada, controlled by Sobeys parent Empire Company in partnership with the founding Longo family. Its corporate office is located in Vaughan and operates locations mainly in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
Paradies Lagardère operates stores in airports, hotels, and other locations throughout the United States and Canada. Locations include specialty stores, restaurants and bookstores. The company was founded in 1960 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Target Canada Co. was the Canadian subsidiary of the Target Corporation, the eighth-largest retailer in the United States. Formerly headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, the subsidiary was formed with the acquisition of Zellers store leases from the Hudson's Bay Company in January 2011. Target Canada opened its first store in March 2013, and was operating 133 locations by January 2015. Its main competition included Walmart Canada and the local Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart chains and Canadian Tire to some extent. Target Canada was ultimately unsuccessful, with an overly-aggressive expansion initiative, in addition to higher prices and a limited selection of products compared to Target stores in the United States and its Canadian rivals, particularly Walmart. The retail chain racked up losses of $2.1 billion in its lifespan, and was widely viewed as a failure, termed a "spectacular failure" by Amanda Lang of CBC News, "an unmitigated disaster" by Maclean's magazine and "a gold standard case study in what retailers should not do when they enter a new market" by the Financial Post. Target Canada commenced Court-supervised restructuring proceedings in January 2015, and finally shut down all of their stores by April 12, 2015. Various other businesses since then occupy the spaces originally occupied by Target Canada.