Hudson's Bay, the oldest corporation in North America. Founded in 1670, what began as a fur trading business grew into a high-end fashion retail conglomerate with numerous stores in Canada, the United States and Europe. HBC controls and operates numerous other retail companies such as: Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Home Outfitters - Sacks Of Fifth Lord & Taylor - Gilt (recently sold) Galeria Kaufhof (German retailer) Timeline: HBC was bought by an American businessman Richard Baker in 2006 for 1.1 billion of dollars. In 2008 NRDC Equity Partners, an American private investment fund acquired HBC Hudson Bay and currently operates under CEO Helena Foulkes, a Harvard graduate and previously served as vice president of CVS Pharmacy. It is currently headquartered in Toronto, Ontario and operates 480 stores worldwide. It mainly focuses on selling high-end designer clothing such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Guess, Coach etc. They also sell appliances, household items, jewelry and cosmetics (depending on the location of the store). The retail industry is a very competitive industry where many companies try to become big, but few succeed. Some of HBC's major competitors are Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Macy's, and Sears (no longer in operation). HBC operates primarily in Canada, the United States and Europe, with the majority of sales in the United States, Europe and Canada, respectively. HBC is aggressively seeking to expand into different markets and geographic regions, especially in Europe. Hudson's Bay offers hundreds of high-end fashion brands, but one of the most popular brands that sells really well is Polo Ralph Lauren. The price of Polo Ralph Lauren usually ranges from $70 to $300+ and to maintain the value and image of the Polo brand it is almost always excluded from most in-store sales and very few of them are marked down. Polo has its own separate section in the store with its own brand logo and furniture, for example; they have special wooden hangers and their own shelves to maintain the value and exclusivity of the brand. Value Package, revolves around three aspects of a company: features, benefits and function. These help company officials determine where they lack and where they excel. Function: HBC functions as a retailer of clothing, household items, jewelry and cosmetics. They do a great job providing retail stores in most major cities and an online site that provides shipping across Canada. Features: Most HBC stores have a very nice and refined decor especially during seasonal sales, for example: Christmas, most stores ask a marketing team to come in and decorate the store accordingly. Another of its most interesting features is the HBC rewards card and the HBC Capital One Mastercard, customers can collect points on every dollar spent in store and when you collect 2000 points you can redeem a $10 gift card. By being members of the rewards program /mastercard, customers also get exclusive access to advance sales and gift cards by mail. Features like these create a base of loyal customers who keep coming back to shop because of the features HBC offers. Advantage: Thanks to HBC's long history rooted in Canadian culture, most of its customers feel proud to shop at HBC and contribute to one of the oldest companies in North America. HBC does a great job of maintaining its reputation as a retail storehigh-end by providing exclusive brands and excellent customer service to their customers, they not only provide high-end brands but provide good quality products, which is also one of the reasons why people shop at HBC. As a large-scale retail store, it needs to keep up with changing trends. HBC needs to offer exciting new lineups for them to retain their current customers and stay in business. HBC updates its inventory and clothing line every year, adding new brands or adding a new clothing line. For example, this year's new line-up is called "The Fall 50 - New brands, New Trends, New Items". This particular line-up features the top 50 trending items sold by The Hudson's Bay, keeping up with the trends and the season. Another very "Canadian" clothing line is their official Olympic line as they are the official partner of the Canadian Olympic team which helps build on its deep Canadian roots and helps maintain the image of Canada's oldest company. HBC's recent financial statements show that they are having financial problems especially in the last 2 years. Total sales/revenue for the year end 2014 was $5.223 billion, in 2015 revenue grew 56.40% to $8.169 billion, in 2016 sales grew 36.4% to $11.162 billion dollars, in 2017 they grew by almost 30% to 14.455 billion dollars and in 2018, the sales decreased by 0.73% to 14.349 billion dollars. HBC experienced exponential sales growth in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, but sales growth stopped in 2018. An excellent track record of sales growth does not always mean higher profits, in fact in 2017 HBC experienced an net loss of $516 million and in 2018 it reported a net loss of $581 million, but before that it was profitable. HBC's surge in sales growth between 2015 and 2017 can be linked to the fact that one of its direct competitors, Sears, was going bankrupt and closing its stores, which allowed HBC to capture a decent level of targeted sales at Sears. This meant that HBC was one of the very few high-end retail giants operating in Canada as one of their major competitors left the market, sales also increased because of this. Profit is the most important figure or aspect of a company, which determines whether the company is doing well financially or not, unfortunately for HBC it has suffered heavy losses in the last 2 years. The retail sector in general has seen a decline in the market as most consumers can simply order their clothes, etc. from your couch and will arrive at your doorstep, so declining sales in the general market have negatively impacted HBC's revenue over the past year. The US Department of Commerce estimates the overall retail sector is at an 11-month low (as of early 2018). Retail apocalypse is a term given to this general decline of the retail industry. Many of the losses are mainly due to the fact that operating expenses are disproportionate. Many investors buy stores with little or no retail experience, in locations with few shoppers, and in dilapidated malls. One of the main reasons why investors are still willing to invest and put money into HBC is due to its huge portfolio of valuable real estate, their real estate assets are estimated to be worth around $6.4 billion, instead of investors and owners of chains.