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Hudson's Bay (formerly and still commonly known as The Bay) is a chain of 90 department stores that operate across parts of Canada. It is the main brand of Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), North America's oldest company. It has its headquarters in the Simpson Tower in Toronto. In French, the chain is known as la Baie d'Hudson (formerly la Baie), short for "Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson". The chain uses both the English and French versions of the name in some parts of the country.
The stores are full-line department stores, with a focus on fashion apparel, accessories, and home goods. Most price points are mid- to upper-mid, with some high price points in the flagship store on Queen Street in Toronto; however, there is an assortment of everyday low-price merchandise. Hudson's Bay can be compared to U.S. retailers Macy's and Nordstrom. The average store size is 135,000 square feet (12,500 m2).
Flagship downtown stores exist in Canada's largest cities, including Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg, often being multi-storey, historic buildings and carry a much broader range and selection of goods than regular Hudson's Bay stores. The largest of the flagship stores is the Toronto store on Queen Street, at about 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2). Toronto has another smaller store on Bloor Street East and Yonge Street in the Hudson's Bay Centre.
History[]
Modern Hudson's Bay stores root from the Hudson's Bay company which was founded in 1670, making it the oldest company in modern day Canada. Originally, The Hudson Bay company operated fur trading posts in Canada. The Hudson's Bay company also was in the real estate business, once owning a part of Canada called Rupert's Land in Western Canada. But they now only run stores as their business.
The modern Hudson's Bay Department store idea the made in the 1800s when some of these trading posts started selling general merchandise. Throughout the 1800s, Hudson's Bay department stores were built throughout the western part of Canada. The Hudson's bay Company went into the oil and gas business during World War one, which halted the renovation of turning trading posts into proper department stores, but they got back on track after both world wars.
In 1960, they bought out the Morgan's Department store chain, which made their first expansion into Central Canada. In 1965, Hudson's Bay department stores were re-branded to "The Bay." They kept this name and logo until 2013.
Throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, The Hudson's Bay company bought out various department store chains, such as; Simpsons, Woodward's, and Zellers. This allowed the expansion of Hudson's Bay department stores, although Zellers were never rebranded, The Hudson's Bay company continues to use the Zellers name for various things, even though Target bought out and rebranded Zellers stores in 2013.
In the 2000s, Hudson's Bay began to decline, they started to close locations throughout Canada. In 2008, HBC was bought out by New York based NRDC Equity Partners. They started to turn around the chain of department stores, and Hudson's bay were doing better in the 2010s. In 2011, HBC sold off the Zellers chain to Target Canada so HBC could focus on Hudson's Bay stores.
In 2013, The Bay was rebranded to the current name, Hudson's Bay, with the name change, they also renovated many of their stores.
In 2023, Hudson's Bay introduced Zellers pop-up stores within some Hudson's Bay department stores.