Pushing back against online shopping
Stores such as new Bad Boy have an edge selling goods that customers want to eyeball in person
At Lastman’s Bad Boy — the latest megastore to open in Ancaster’s Meadowlands shopping area — couches, dressers, beds and appliances fill the vast showroom floor as far as the eye can see.
Competing for attention with wall-mounted flat-screen televisions are massive posters of the Lastman family, including former Toronto mayor Mel Lastman, adorned with slogans such as “Three generations of savings!”
The store opened with a soft launch May 26 but celebrated its grand opening June 15 at 6 a.m. Ahead of both events, employees eagerly waited in their respective areas of the store, keenly greeting the rare shopper dropping in. At nearly 32,000 square feet, the Ancaster store is one of the biggest yet in the Bad Boy empire.
“We believe that area demands (a store of that size),” company chairman and CEO Blayne Lastman said in a recent interview. “We believe it’s going to be one of our flagship stores.”
In advance of committing to the Meadowlands location, Bad Boy sent people to track traffic there on a few different weekends, Lastman said. “The cars are lined up.”
Bad Boy is the right type of store for a big-box development like the Meadowlands, selling goods that shoppers would want to see or try out before buying, says retail expert Manish Kacker.
“Furniture is one of those things that most people typically want to see in person,” he told The Spectator. “You might not capture all aspects of the design online. It’s an area where physical stores can offer a better solution.”
An associate professor of marketing at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, Kacker says that power centres used to compete against smaller strip malls or downtown businesses but that has shifted to online retailers such as Amazon, which can offer a limitless assortment of products.
To lure customers through their doors, power centres must offer products that are less desirable to buy online and provide customers with special in-person experiences such as cooking classes or booksignings. Price-matching programs, and services such as furniture assembly also help stores like Bad Boy gain an advantage over their online counterparts.
“How well they do (these things) will ultimately dictate their success,” Kacker said, adding that a store’s neighbours within the power centre also go a long way to attracting customers.
A large, high-end grocer with lots of fresh and prepared foods is a common tool that property managers use to get shoppers into the parking lot, he said.
The retail area commonly known as the Meadowlands stretches along the north side of Golf Links Road for nearly two kilometres, between the Lincoln Alexander Parkway and Highway 403. It includes a movie theatre, dozens of big box and smaller retailers, some medical offices and numerous restaurants, and contributes more than $4 million annually in municipal taxes.
Designer Shoe Warehouse and Marshalls recently opened stores there, and HomeSense moved to a larger unit. The former HomeSense unit is being renovated to house a larger Michael’s craft store, according to a worker at the renovation site.
The area was just fields and a few houses until 1995, when the first big box store — then a Price Club, now a Costco — was built there, says Jeremy Parsons, whose 2015 geography master’s thesis at McMaster was titled “The Making of the Meadowlands: How Ancaster’s Fields Became Hamilton’s Suburbs.”
The second retailer in the area was Sobeys, followed by the Scarborough-based Aikenhead’s Home Improvement Centre, which was later purchased by Home Depot.
Parsons says there was discontentment among downtown merchants when the big box stores were proposed but, for the most part, the citizens of Ancaster “wanted their share of the conveniences and savings that came with these mega stores.”
There was not much discussion of whether the Meadowlands should stay meadowed.
“By the time that the power centre was in the works, (Ancaster residents were) well past fighting the idea that these lands would be developed, the only protest was what type of development,” said Parsons, now a heritage planner with the City of Hamilton.
Craig Patterson, editor-in-chief of Retail Insider, says the initial Meadowlands building boom may not be the last. As real estate takes off in a particular area, he says, shopping centres often give way to high-density housing.
“One of the positive things about these centres being built (is that) it’s not as difficult to demolish a big box centre,” said Patterson, also the director of applied research at University of Alberta’s School of Retailing. “There is that possibility in the future to remove a few retail tenants and repurpose the real estate to a higher and better use.
“Hamilton’s a hot city now. A lot of millennials want to be there. At some point ... real estate prices will explode and you’ll see these properties become hotbeds for development.”
We believe it’s going to be one of our flagship stores. BLAYNE LASTMAN