Bloomingdale’s may set up shop in Bay stores

RETAIL: ‘Win-win’ situation for everyone, analysts say of deal

— Should Hudson’s Bay Co. bring New York-based Bloomingdale’s to Canada, it could be a “win-win” deal for both iconic retailers, analysts suggest.

A newspaper report said Tuesday the two companies are in talks that could see Bloomingdale’s set up shop in some Bay stores, including Vancouver.

“It’s an incredible deal for the Bay if they can make it all happen,” Maureen Atkinson, senior partner with J.C. Williams Group, said from her Toronto office.

“And it would obviously help Bloomingdale’s because it would then have good real estate in [key urban centres] in Canada,” Atkinson added.

Among the “huge challenges” to any deal between the two companies is that each has strong brands that each would want to protect and promote, she said.

“Bloomingdale’s is used to calling its own shots,” she said.

“Running your own real estate and your own stores is very different from being a store-within-a-store, something that works better for smaller, specialty stores.”

The “buzz” in industry circles is that the Bay and Bloomingdale’s are in the final stages of negotiations, Jeffrey Berkowitz, president of Aurora Realty Consultants, said from his Montreal office.

While American retailers are keen to set up shop in Canada, they are hardpressed to find well-priced real estate in Canadian cities, he said. But the Bay owns some very large chunks of property in urban shopping districts,

It’s an incredible deal for the Bay if they can make it all happen . . . And it would obviously help Bloomingdale’s

— Maureen Atkinson

in some cases, buildings with more than one million square feet, Berkowitz said.

“That’s more than what any modern department store in North America uses,” Berkowitz said.

That raises the possibility of Bloomingdale’s operating under the same roof as the Bay, talking one-half or one-third of a building under the control of the Bay, he said.