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Eaton's was a department store chain in Canada. At one point, it was one of the most popular stores in all of Canada, after many years of decline throughout the late 20th century, they were bought by Sears Canada in 1999, the last Eaton's location closed in 2002.
History[]
The history of Eaton's started in 1869 when Timothy Eaton bought a dry-goods shop on Younge Street in Toronto, ON. Timothy was responsible for buying all of the products to be sold at the store and all operations. The store quickly succeeded.
In 1884, the first Eaton's catalogue was introduced, which brought even more people to the store.
In 1888, following the success of the original store, a new store was built at 178 Younge Street. This was a state of the art department store at the time, there was three floors with many different departments. This was also the first department store in Canada to have electricity. A year later, the store got a telephone installed, the phone number was 370. A year after that, an elevator was installed, this was the first elevator in a store in Toronto.
Across the street from this store was Simpson's department store. This became their number one competitor in the market. People would frequently cross the street to go to ether one of the stores, for a time, this crosswalk became the busiest in all of Canada.
The Eaton's store was expanded to facilitate their mail order business. At one point Eaton's sold house kits within their catalogue, which contained everything you needed to build a house.
By the early 1900s, Tim Eaton's son; John Craig Eaton, had talked his father into opening a second location in Winnipeg, MB. Originally, Tim just wanted to build a building to facilitate their catalogue business in Western Canada, but along with this, a five story Eaton's store was built. This second location became very popular and Eaton's decided to open more stores in Canada.
In 1907, Timothy Eaton passed away. His son, John Craig Eaton took his place.
In 1919, a Mail Order catalogue facility opened in Moncton, NB. This helped with the back log of orders coming from Atlantic Canada. Because of the popularity of the catalogue in Atlantic Canada, in 1928, Eaton's decided to open a store on Barrington St in Halifax, NS. This store eventually closed in 1962 and moved to a much larger store in the Halifax Shopping Centre.
Eaton's at the Toronto Eaton Centre in 1978.
In 1977, the Toronto Eaton Centre was built in the location of the main Toronto location. The anchor of the new mall was a very large 9 story Eaton's location.
Demise[]
In the 1980s and 1990s, Eaton's began to decline. This was because they couldn't compete with major discount stores like Zellers, Woolco and, Kmart Canada that were dominating the Canadian market.
In the 1990s, Eaton's started closing some of their underperforming stores such as the location at Mic Mac Mall in Dartmouth, NS. In 1997, Eaton's filed for bankruptcy protection and closed about a third of their stores. In 1999, Eaton's was bought by Sears Canada. 10 Eaton's locations were retained by Sears Canada and the rest were liquidated and permanently closed. 7 stores kept the Eaton's name until 2002, and the others were turned into Sears locations or turned into other department stores.
As previously stated, 7 stores kept the Eaton's name, many things were going to be done to these stores, but Hudson's Bay publicly warned vendors to not supply items to these new Eaton's stores. Because of this, stocking was an issue, and in 2002, Sears Canada pulled the plug on the Eaton's name.
Horizon Stores[]
In 1972, Eaton's tried their hand at the discount department store market with Horizon. It was meant to compete with stores like Zellers, Woolco, Towers, and Kmart Canada. Stores were opened throughout Ontario and Quebec. The first test location opened in August 1972 in Scarborough, Ontario. Eaton's wanted to open 122 locations in total, but they never reached that number.
With these stores, Eaton's made a bar code system for their products, they also implemented computers at their checkouts, this level of automation wasn't found in most stores at this time.
Over the next few years, Horizon never did as well as Eaton's thought they would, because of this, Eaton's started to slow down with new stores in 1976.
In October 1978, Eaton's announced that they would be discontinuing the Horizon brand. By January 1979, all stores were rebranded to Eaton's or closed.