Canadian Tire preparing revival of Hudson’s Bay trademarks for later this year: CEO

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Shoppers will get their first peek at what the Hudson’s Bay brand looks like under Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd. ownership later this year.

Canadian Tire CEO Greg Hicks says his company will release “some updates and fun initiatives” linked to the fallen department store starting in the fourth quarter of this year but will leave the launch of a more “meaningful product presence” for the back half of 2026.

“I can’t overstate how excited we are to continue the HBC story,” he told analysts on a call.

HBC, which filed for creditor protection and closed all of its stores earlier this year, sold its intellectual property to Canadian Tire for $30 million in May.

The sale included HBC’s iconic stripes motif, its coat of arms, its Distinctly Home housewares brand, its Hudson North apparel line, as well as catchphrases like “Bay Days” and the Zellers slogan “the lowest price is the law.”

Canadian Tire beat out 13 other bidders, including B.C. mall owner Ruby Liu and Toronto investment manager Urbana Corp., who wanted the intellectual property belonging to what was the country’s oldest company.

The retailer has yet to reveal what exactly it will do with the trademarks it bought but Hicks indicated Thursday that his company is feeling the weight of keeping the 355-year-old retailer’s legacy alive.

“As we push forward with our commercial plans, we remind ourselves daily of both the opportunities and the expectations of stewardship that are on our shoulders,” he said.

“Our teams are determined to be considered and careful. When it comes to stewarding the stripes, we’d rather be right than fast.”

As it prepares for an eventual launch, he said his company has seen an outpouring of support.

“While we felt good about our plan, we never imagined the response from Canadians would be so overwhelmingly positive,” he said. “It was more than support for our strategy; it felt personal, a reminder of the place Canadian companies hold in Canadians’ hearts.”

The remarks from Hicks came as his company reported its second-quarter profit fell compared with a year ago as its revenue increased by about five per cent.

The Toronto-based retailer said its net income attributable to shareholders totalled $168.2 million or $2.04 per diluted share for the quarter ended June 28 compared with $207.7 million or $3.56 per diluted share a year ago.

Its net income attributable to shareholders from discontinued operations amounted to a loss of $56.1 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its latest quarter compared with a loss of $8.9 million or 16 cents per diluted share in the same quarter last year.

On a normalized basis, Canadian Tire says it earned $3.57 per diluted share from continuing operations compared with $3.72 per diluted share a year earlier.

The company, which also owns SportChek, Party City, Mark’s and Pro Hockey Life, blamed the drops on the completion of its Helly Hansen sale and expenses related to its True North transformation program.

Helly Hansen, a sportswear business, was sold for almost $1.3 billion to Kontoor Brands, the U.S. owner of clothing labels Wrangler, Lee and Rock & Republic.

The True North transformation program will see Canadian Tire spend $2 billion over four years to restructure the company for growth.

The restructuring will involve modernizing the company’s retail experience, uncovering ways to more productively use customer data, developing technology to make the business more agile and boosting the impact of its Triangle Rewards loyalty program.

Earlier stages of the plan have seen Canadian Tire identify and address “inefficiencies” across its teams, processes and technology that hinder its speed and agility, Hicks said.

“We’ve already seen a difference,” he said.

Some of its progress materialized in the company’s second-quarter revenue, which totalled $4.2 billion, up from $4 billion in the same period last year.

Sales at the company’s flagship Canadian Tire banner were up 6.4 per cent over the same period and increased by 3.3 per cent at SportChek and 1.8 per cent at Mark’s.

Hicks said the data reveals there’s a recovery in consumer confidence taking shape after March’s lows, even as new tariffs come into effect and U.S. Donald Trump continues to threaten more on their way.

“We like what we see in the customer data,” he said, indicating that loyalty spend is up across every income level the retailer trains.

“Canadians are spending more of their discretionary dollars with us, our value perception is up and we are gaining market share.”

Some of the gains have come because of the increased interest in buying Canada.

“While it’s tough to quantify, we have no doubt that patriotic purchasing is real and working in our favour,” Hicks said.

“Simply put, Canadians are visiting us more.”