Independent Retail’s New Reality

Special from BDO

Canada’s retail market is transforming rapidly, as changing customers and competition affect independent retailers’ top and bottom lines. Despite perceived threats, this new reality presents great opportunities for reinvention and repositioning by facing these issues head on. It’s an exciting time to be a retailer in Canada. Independent business owners certainly have their challenges, including the increasing sophistication and importance of e-commerce, and a dramatic shift in what customers expect from the instore experience. To keep their business healthy and thriving, retailers of all sizes must be more efficient, agile, and customer-friendly. For some business owners, this is easier said than done. The good news is that this period of change is also a period of tremendous opportunity for independent retailers. While the “retail apocalypse” (where no one goes to stores and everything is ordered and delivered) is an interesting fiction, the numbers don’t support it. Both average mall sales in Canada and total location-based retail sales have increased since 2015, according to data released by the International Council of Shopping Centres and by Statistics Canada.