Won't miss Hudson's Bay

Re. Closure of all but six Hudson’s Bay stores in Canada

Sadly, we see the end of the oldest company in Canada.

As a young man in Regina, I used to shop at The Bay for personal items and Christmas shopping. There, The Bay had a separate standalone building with a cement parking garage where I used to park. It was attached to the main retail store so I had to go through the store to my car. That meant I bought a lot of stuff at The Bay.

My memories are pretty good of a store that had a reasonably priced buffet lunch, which a lot of downtown employees ate daily. We laughed and said we are going for lunch at “cafe de bay”

Surprisingly, the store decided to move to the Cornwall Centre Mall and destroy the parking garage, turning it into a flat parking lot that lost at least 200 parking stalls.

I was also decided to reduce the retail space by changing the third floor into a call centre.

The Bay executives then decided to move away from middle-of-the-road pricing to move upscale, with higher-priced brands. Did that work? They then said their customers must pay more for similar products that happened to have a brand name. How did that work out?

I walked through The Bay store in Kelowna several times recently. I never saw anyone buying anything. However, I thought maybe as a former customer, I should see how much they wanted for men’s slippers.

So, I decided to see if they had anything. I couldn’t see any men’s slippers, so I asked a (clerk) where I should look. She said there were only two slippers on the top shelf, neither of which were my size.

The demise of The Bay started a long time ago. It was very poor management decisions that turned customers like me off for a long time.

Will I miss The Bay? Not the current store but the 1970’s (version) which was one of the best.

Robert Hepting, Kelowna