JS - THE PORTFOLIO: July 2007

I’ve realized that I am incapable of resisting the urge to post until the fall.

I’m adding two previously published articles from the GTA Business News – the ‘regional business journal’ I had the interesting experience of working for in the spring.

The first article focuses on Loblaws Co.’s impending development of Maple Leaf Gardens into a retail outlet and museum.

The second is on the online retailing evolution of Canada’s largest aquatic retailer. Yup, you guessed right. None other than Woodbridge's own Big Al’s Aquatic Services, Ltd.

Game on for Gardens makeover
By James Sturgeon, GTA Business News

April, 23, 2007 -- It seems that Loblaw Cos. Ltd. finally has a game plan in place to redevelop Maple Leaf Gardens.

After years of lying vacant aside from the occasional movie shoot, the historic arena at the corner Carleton and Gerrard Streets will begin it’s transformation in the coming months, according to Loblaw spokesperson Elizabeth Margles.

Margles confirmed last week that the grocery store chain plans to begin preparing the site for redevelopment this summer.

From there, the current plan would see the doors open on a 150,000 sq. ft. Loblaw retail venue, parking facility and museum sometime in 2009.

Questions surrounding the future of the iconic landmark began to surface again in late February when Loblaw’s held its annual investors meeting there.

Although no formal announcement was made by the company at the meeting, it was intended to make a point.

“We held the event there to reinforce our commitment to developing the site,” Margles said.

“They’re moving forward, that’s for sure,” said David Crombie, the president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute, the organization Loblaw’s is consulting with on the cultural preservation of the site.

“There was lots of work that needed to be done. There were many planning issues that had to be dealt with by the city.”

“It’s a lot better to do it right the first time around,” Crombie added.

The company acquired the building from Maple Leaf Sport and Entertainment in 2004.

That same year, Toronto city council approved a plan to designate and renovate the site into a retail location under Loblaw’s design.

But while there has been a flurry of speculations and proposals regarding a possible project ever since, there has been no significant activity there.

Yet Crombie said that delays were inherent in a project of this magnitude.

“People think this is instant and it’s not,” he said. “(Loblaw) had to go through the normal city hall mill of making sure everything is consistent with the city’s policies.”

“It’s major adaptive reuse of a cultural icon in this city.”

“I don’t think there have been any hindrances in the development of the site from our perspective,” Margles added.

“Its people that are outside of the process that feel that we aren’t doing things when and the way they would want to see them done.”

Critics of the plan have bemoaned the idea of transforming the hockey shrine that housed the Maple Leafs for over 68 years into what is essentially a grocery store.

However, Margles was adamant that Loblaw’s was devoted to ensuring the building’s history is preserved.

“What we want people to understand is that we are absolutely committed to maintaining the legacy of Maple Leaf Gardens.

“We’re as much invested in the building as everyone else," she said.

"We’re Canadians, we grew up here too.”

According to Crombie, a critical component of the latest project is a proposed museum in the southeast corner of the building that would enshrine the history and grandeur of the Gardens into the future of the building.

“It’s a great story, and certainly Loblaw’s is dedicated to ensuring that story is perpetuated,” Crombie said.

Crombie also made clear that Loblaw’s plans to keep the complete external architecture of the building intact.

With a tangible plan set to get underway, Crombie said he anticipates that Loblaw’s will begin spreading the message about the development.

“They’ll probably start some drumbeat [next year] to let people know that the opening is coming,” he said.

“This is a big deal. The plan is to make it a magnificent store.”

Big Al's online move pays off big
by James Sturgeon, GTA Business News

May 5, 2007 -- Way back in 1999, Big Al’s Aquatic Services Ltd., a Woodbridge-based pet and hobby retailer took a gamble and began plying its wares through a burgeoning new medium in the Internet.

Today, the simplest of web searches on Google will provide all the evidence needed to see how that gamble has paid off.

Type ‘Big Al’s’ into any search engine and you’ll quickly find yourself at the homepage of Big Al’s, now Canada’s largest aquatic retailer.

Big Al’s operates 20 retail stores across Canada and the U.S., with five in the Greater Toronto Area.

However, perhaps the most tantalizing success of the company comes from its move into Web-retailing—which accounts for 15 per cent of overall sales now, making the 30-year-old company the largest online retailer in its field in Canada.

“Back in the early part of 1999 we realized online was growing tremendously,” said Dan Hamilton, the company’s director of Internet sales, and the mastermind behind the move.

“We had a basic website for the corporation but we realized that we had to take advantage of what is available online. It presented a big market for us to sell in.”

Hamilton set up a website that could offer store products to online customers, and established the delivery of ordered items through the Canada Post.

It was a move that “expanded (Big Al’s) reach beyond just the stores,” he said.

It was also a move that, in part, led the company to open up a colossal 106,000 square-foot distribution centre in Woodbridge in 2005 to handle Big Al’s store inventory as well as the growing number of online orders.

“It’s great,” Hamilton said. “We now have the ability to receive product, package and deliver direct to our online consumers.”

Yet Hamilton admits, the company wasn’t flooded with online orders at first, stating that the company received only about 26 in the first month.

That may have been a blessing in disguise according to Hamilton though, as the spectacular meltdown of Web-based retailing in 2000—the so-called Dot-com Crash— led to many major firms (mostly in the United States) dissolving.

“We got into it just before the bubble burst, but at the time we were just starting to grow. We didn’t have millions of dollars invested in development so we rode through it pretty much unscathed,” he said. “We came out the other side and have done pretty well.”

Hamilton went on to say though that the Dot-com Crash was important for Big Al’s in two ways.

The first was that despite the failure of some enormous companies south of the border, the concept of online shopping became imprinted on the mainstream consumer consciousness.

“People that maybe had never considered buying pet supplies online before said ‘Hey, let’s try that out,’” he said.

The second was that smaller players at the time, like Big Al’s, quickly filled the vacuum left by the departed giants like U.S.-based pets.com.

“In searching (for new suppliers), they saw there were other players out there. After the first year it really started to snowball.”

Hamilton said that over the last five years online sales have grown between 20 and 30 per cent annually, and that the company currently receives about 5,000 orders per month.

And while Hamilton did note that sales have begun to slightly plateau, the trend is still upward.

“The last year or two we have stabilized, but we’re still growing at a good rate. We’re just not seeing those double digit growth rates,” he said. “We’re finding the market in general, for everyone, is starting to flatten out just a bit.”

Part of that growth can be attributed to the growing list of products that Big Al’s carries at its Woodbridge distribution centre as a result, in part, of online feedback.

12,000 products are now listed in the company’s database, with about 2,000 items added in the last year alone.

“It opened the doors up on products that we didn’t have the demand for before, but now with the online (feedback) we do,” Hamilton said.

By tracking Web orders and receiving customer inquiries, the company is better able to get new products it knows its customers want without any guesswork.

“We get e-mails everyday from customers looking for products,” Hamilton said. “We can then offer a comparable product, or ask ourselves where is this product and why are we not carrying it?”

Another caveat of Big Al’s online presence is that it also helped build the company’s brand in areas where there was no brick-and-mortar retail store, and in turn, create the opportunity for the physical expansion there.

“We had customers that lived in Edmonton that would drive to our Calgary store to buy stuff, they then could go online, order it and didn’t have to drive three hours to get it to their house,” Hamilton said.

That was before Big Al’s opened up a store in Edmonton in 2002 though, a fact largely due to the company noticing through online orders that it was a market that could support a retail store.

Hamilton said that the same process—where Big Al’s brand presence online helped pave the way for a retail store—occurred in Montreal in 2004, and may do the same for Winnipeg in the near future if orders from the area continue to grow.

Hamilton went on to say that although Big Al’s has over 30 years of experience in the retail market, Web-retailing moves a lot quicker than conventional brick-and mortar operations.

“The online changes every year. What technology worked this year may not work the next. It’s always moving and you definitely need to stay out there—it doesn’t take long for you to be left behind,” he said.

“It means monitoring trends that are going on and getting out to conferences.”

It also means conducting—and paying for—research and technology as well as the manpower to keep pace.

With its latest hire of a Web marketing manager two weeks ago, Big Al’s currently employs over 20 full-time staff members in its online department, Hamilton said, to handle everything from order processing to marketing and site maintenance.

“I’m very happy with where we are right now,” he said, but added “there’s a lot more that we can do.”

While the success of the company over the last decade or so can not be wholly attributed to it’s online business—other areas, like expansion efforts, especially in the United States is a second factor—Big Al’s online plan was pivotal according to Hamilton.

“I wouldn’t say it is the single greatest business decision we’ve ever made, but it was a big, big decision for the company to make,” Hamilton said.

“There is still huge potential there.” he added. “We’ve only scratched the surface.”