Zellers is making a comeback — again.
The discount retailer that’s died and been revived several times since its 1928 beginnings will get another relaunch Thursday at Londonderry Mall in Edmonton.
The latest iteration will stick with the original’s emphasis on affordable family offerings but will pare back the kinds of merchandise sold and rethink the hulking properties Zellers once occupied.
The new retailer will take over much smaller spaces and be stocked with men’s, women’s and kids’ apparel, as well as home goods, luggage and seasonal items, but ditch other Zellers categories like toys and pharmaceuticals.
At the heart of the operation will be value because “that’s the one thing that never goes out of style,” said Joey Benitah, Zellers’ chief operating officer, in an interview with The Canadian Press ahead of the brand’s relaunch.
His family has been a fixture in Canada’s retail market for the last 50 years. It’s owned clothing chains like Fairweather and International Clothiers as well as houseware brands Bombay and Bowring.
In 2019, Joey and his sister Rachel launched Wyrth, a home decor store targeted at millennials with locations in the Greater Toronto Area.
Les Ailes de la Mode Inc., a company the family owns that shares its name with a department store they once ran, acquired the Zellers name, its logo and the rights to mascot bear Zeddy, loyalty program Club Z and the Zellers portrait studio in August.
Benitah wouldn’t confirm what his family paid for the rights, but court documents have suggested it could have been $100,000.
The trademarks were bought from Hudson’s Bay, which had owned the trademarks and operated sections dedicated to the brand in its stores before HBC collapsed under the weight of $1.1 billion in debt in March.
The chance to add Zellers to the family’s collection of brands felt like a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Benitah said.
“We’ve always loved the brand,” he said. “We’ve always understood the value and the storied history that the brand has.”
The family’s connections and experience in the retail world helped it move from idea to reality within three months, though the Londonderry location will be more of a teaser than final concept because Benitah is taking a phased approach to the relaunch.
That means he will start with a few key brands and product categories and keep adding as the chain grows.
While he hasn’t revealed how many stores he hopes to open, he said he “absolutely plans on bringing Zellers back to every major market across Canada in a relatively short time.”
He has initially targeted former HBC properties and has been signing leases with landlords for single floors or portions of the space the department store once held that measure no more than 50,000 square feet.
“We don’t need 250,000 square feet, 200,000 square feet. That’s not our vision for the future of Zellers,” Benitah said. “There’s a lot of space in these former Hudson’s Bay stores that we’re not going to be occupying.”
Court documents have shown the Benitahs want to take over HBC’s former Yorkdale Shopping Centre digs in Toronto and several other sites once used by the brand to relaunch the Les Ailes de la Mode department store. Joey Benitah would not comment on whether the Yorkdale space could possibly be used for Zellers.
The version of Zellers he will launch will include products from familiar brands like Reebok, Spyder, Chaps, DKNY, Disney, Marvel and Nickelodeon. More brands and other categories like footwear will follow.
A teddy bear version of the popular Zeddy character and an area where the stuffed animals can be customized will be introduced next year.
The company is also in talks to eventually develop a Zeddy-themed partnership supporting camps for kids affected by cancer. (HBC gave the Zeddy character to an Ontario camp for young people affected by cancer in 2012.)
Yet a few parts of Zellers’ history won’t be revived.
Toys and pharmaceuticals — past Zellers fixtures — will likely be omitted because “they are so overwhelmingly dominated by the likes of Amazon and Walmart.”
“If we don’t feel that we can offer very competitive or ideally, the best value in the Canadian market on any one particular department, I would rather stay away and let others focus on it,” Benitah said.
The Zellers diner also won’t make it into stores but “from a food and beverage standpoint, we are working on a number of very exciting, fun, interactive concepts and ideas that we’re going to be introducing in the near future,” he said.
HBC had previously toyed with the diner concept when it brought back Zellers in 2023 as a pop-up and then permanent fixture in HBC locations. It mostly sold home goods and toys from Australian brand Anko but at times, promoted the venture with a food truck selling diner favourites.
The 2023 version of Zellers was more scaled back than the original concept developed by Waterloo, Ont., entrepreneur Walter Philip Zeller, who opened several Ontario stores in the early 1920s.
He was quickly bought out by American firm Schulte-United Ltd., but when it went bankrupt, Zeller bought back his original properties and revived the chain again in 1931.
HBC bought a majority stake in the company in 1978 and picked up the remaining interest in 1981.
There were 350 Zellers stores at the company’s peak, but most were closed by 2013, when the chain determined they weren’t viable.
Two remained in Toronto and Ottawa but were shuttered in 2020.
