Canadian Tire

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Canadian Tire is a Hardware Store and Automotive Retailer founded in 1922 by Alfred Jackson Billes and John William Billes.

History[]

In 1922, John and Alfred Billes opened a Hamilton Tire and Garage store in Toronto, Ontario, these stores sold tires for discount prices.

In 1927, the two incorporated "Canadian Tire Corporation Limited" and they re-named their store to Canadian Tire. The next year, they started distributing catalogues for their businesses to help sales.

In 1934, Canadian Tire opened their first associate store, An associate store is very similar to a franchise store, it's when a person owns and operates their own Canadian Tire store. The company still uses this practice today.

10 years later, Canadian Tire officially became a public company. They originally sold 100 000 shares. By this time, Canadian Tire had 110 stores across Canada.

In 1958, Canadian Tire opened their first Canadian Tire Gas Bar location in Toronto, this is also when they introduced Canadian Tire money.

In the 1970s, Canadian Tire started opening larger stores with more than just tires and hardware, these stores had sports equipment, toys, appliances, and more.

In 1982, Canadian Tire bought out the Texas based White's Hardware Stores. They used their successful associate store concept by getting current Canadian owners to move to Texas to run these stores. The issue was that these stores usually were in bad, rundown locations, and White's had no brand loyalty with their customers like Canadian Tire does in Canada. Eventually, the owners who moved down to Texas to run these stores filed a lawsuit against Canadian Tire. There is no information on the result of the lawsuit. After losing millions of dollars, Canadian Tire pulled out of the American market in 1986.

In 1991, Canadian Tire tried again at the American market, instead of buying out a store, they decided to make their own and expand slower. These stores were called Auto Source. These were auto parts stores that sold over 25 000 different auto parts at each store. They had 10 locations before they decided to pull the plug on Auto Source and sell the chain to Pep Boys. Later on, Canadian Tire decided to make a scaled down version of Auto Source for the Canadian market called PartSource which are still in operation today.

In the late 1990s, the founder and former CEO of Bi Way stores suggested to the CEO of Canadian Tire to invest and buy Mark's, which is a Canadian retail store. At first, they were wary, but after some persuading, Canadian Tire bought the Mark's chain in 2001 and began putting Mark's stores within some newer Canadian Tire stores.

In 2000 - 2001, Canadian Tire introduced a new much larger store format with more selection and departments. These stores have a large white facade, white walls, tall ceilings, and a full garden centre. Some un-renovated stores still use this design.

In 2003, Canadian Tire introduced the Canadian Tire Bank, in 2014, 20% of the bank was sold to Scotiabank.

In 2011, Canadian Tire bought the Forzani Group which owned Sport Chek, Sports Experts, Hockey Experts, Atmosphere and more

In 2018, Canadian Tire made the digital Triangle Rewards app to phase out physical Canadian Tire Money. Triangle Rewards is still in use today, although most stores still accept and use physical Canadian Tire Money. In the same year, CT bought out the Helly Hansen brand, which they sell in Canadian Tire stores.

In 2019, Canadian Tire bought the Canadian division of Party City, later on, Canadian Tire introduced Party City sections within some of their stores.

Canadian Tire

History[]

Store Designs[]

See Also[]