Hudson’s Bay splitting stores from online marketplace to create two businesses
TORONTO – Hudson’s Bay Co. says it is separating its department stores from its online marketplace, creating two separate businesses and distinct leadership structures.
The company says its e-commerce business will operate as The Bay, while its group of 86 brick-and-mortar stores will operate as Hudson’s Bay.
HBC says the change will help accelerate the iconic retailer’s digital-first technology transformation and elevate the overall shopping experience for customers both online and in store.
Richard Baker, HBC’s executive chairman and CEO, says dividing the e-commerce and in-person stores enables each business to make “unencumbered strategic investments.”
He says the launch of the retailer’s expanded online marketplace earlier this year set in motion a rapid expansion of its e-commerce business, positioning the company to gain significant market share.
The company opened its website to third-party sellers in April, adding thousands of new brands and products to its online assortment.
Iain Nairn, president and CEO of The Bay, says the e-commerce business will focus on technology investment and innovation, with plans to launch technology hubs in Toronto and Seattle to improve fulfilment capabilities, expand marketing and extend vendor partnerships.
The retailer says its department stores will continue to play a critical role in the overall shopping experience.
Wayne Drummond, president of Hudson’s Bay, says the role of stores has never been more vital to the retailer’s success.
He says the department stores will become “discovery destinations” and serve as an important touchpoint for customers.
“With stores in major cities across the country, Hudson’s Bay provides Canadians access to the product they need and want, while offering high-touch services that many others cannot,” Drummond said in a statement.
The company says returns, exchanges, rewards points and credit cards will continue to be accepted both online and in stores.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 12, 2021
Hudson’s Bay splitting its department stores from online marketplace to create two businesses
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Kuujjuaraapik finds lost Hudson’s Bay trading post
Harpoon discovered on site of future parking lot for cultural centre
By Sarah Rogers
The Northern Village of Kuujjuaraapik was about to construct a parking lot next to its cultural centre this spring when a resident made a surprising find — a six-inch harpoon head.
“[It had] some ivory and a metal head,” said Kuujjuaraapik Mayor Anthony Ittoshat. “He brought it to my office because it was a particularly interesting find.”
The harpoon was discovered after a wind storm — known to kick up the dust and sand dunes for which Kuujjuaraapik is famous.
The municipality called in archeologists from Nunavik’s Avataq Cultural Institute to have a look at the site before the municipality went ahead with any work.
Avataq archeologist Elsa Cencig helped lead the fieldwork, considered a preventive dig, typically done before a major construction project.
Her team discovered other tools: ceramic pipe pieces and forged nails — the kinds of items that the Hudson’s Bay Company would have sold 100 years ago.
The harpoon head, made of metal and tusk, was most likely used for beluga hunting, she said.
Cencig believes the artifacts may point to a bigger discovery — the community’s historical Hudson’s Bay trading post, its exact location previously lost to history.
“The site corresponds to the Great Whale trading post, which first opened in the early 1800s, and through until the 1940s,” Cencig said.
“That site is documented in archives, but no one has ever recorded it.”
The Hudson’s Bay Company established one of its first trading posts in the region in the Richmond Gulf area in the early 1800s, roughly 100 kilometres north of Kuujjuaraapik. The HBC then moved that post to the current-day Kuujjuaraapik town site in 1878, which was then an established whaling station.
The municipality is already working with Avataq to restore Kuujjuaraapik’s historical Anglican church, a boarded-up building known simply as “the old church.” The community plans to turn it into an interpretation centre, Ittoshat said.
“We’re just going to extract all the things we can [from the site] and try and preserve them,” he said.
“Our goal is to move those artifacts to the interpretation centre, once it opens.”
The Hudson’s Bay Company played a role in the colonization of the region, Ittoshat said, and though that legacy isn’t always a positive one, he said it’s important for the community to be able to document its own past.
“It reignited our thirst for history, our desire to know where we came from,” he said. “And it reminded us that we were a whaling community.”
‘It really opens up the mind to the past occupation of that area’
Avataq archeologists led two other preventive archeology projects in Nunavik earlier this summer.
One was along the road to Innavik, the hydroelectric project currently under construction in Inukjuak.
Archeologists documented a few sites in the area, including a small Tuniit or Dorset camp, where they found tent rings, microblades, soapstone vessel fragments and end-scrapers.
Another project was in Kuujjuaq, on the site where the new Isuarsivik treatment centre will be constructed.
Evidence of historical occupation in that area came to light much the same way it did in Kuujjuaraapik —a resident discovered micro tools while walking through the site.
Allen Gordon, the executive director of the Nunavik Tourism Association, first flagged the area to Avataq in 2016 after a friend found a bunch of stone flakes in a spot previously used for picnics.
“We located about 11 concentrations of artifacts or finding spots,” said Avataq’s Cencig. “It’s an Archaic site, which is very interesting. It’s a very large timeline; its occupation is estimated between 5,000-3,500 BC, according to the elevation and the artifacts that we found.”
Documented Archaic sites in Quebec are mostly concentrated around the James Bay region, and farther south along the St. Lawrence River, but not very common to Nunavik, Cencig said. There have been some sites found northeast of Kuujjuaq, closer to Aupaluk.
In these cases, archeologists aren’t sure which peoples occupied the sites, Cencig said, but they would have been nomadic groups who lived part of the year in tents and used stone tools, similar to pre-Dorset peoples.
“We can’t say much about them — we don’t have much data,” she said.
The items found at the Isuarsivik site will be preserved and eventually put on display in the new treatment centre, which is slated to open in 2022.
Cencig said this summer’s preventive digs were all requested and led by the communities, which are the projects she enjoys the most.
Gordon said the sprawling expansion of communities like Kuujjuaq has prompted a need for local governments to check on sites before they go ahead with building new roadways, housing or gravel pits.
“I’m absolutely happy that it’s being done,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s gone forever. It really opens up the mind to the past occupation of that area.”