By Robert Frank
www.thesuburban.com
With a promise to deliver “the best prices in the entire marketplace”, Target Canada ceo Tony Fisher heralded the long-awaited opening yesterday of its wide-aisled 121,000 sq.ft. Sainte Dorothée store on Highway 13.
The American retail giant has hired 160 staff to serve the shopping needs of Laval residents.
“We’re working on breaking consumer shopping routines,” Fisher told reporters whom he escorted on a tour of the facility, which it renovated at a cost of $12 million and still has a new-store smell.
“Besides matching other retailers advertised prices, customers who sign up for our five-percent-off [loyalty] program will pay less than anywhere else,” he explained. To get the extra discount, clients can either sign up for Royal Bank’s Target MasterCard or register their existing debit card with the retailer.
Fisher added that the company has learned a great deal through extensive research on the Quebec market, where it is partnering with the Métro grocery chain to open Brunet pharmacies in many of its locations in 2014.
“I needed to be educated on language in Quebec,” quipped Fisher, a Minnesota native who has been with Target for 16 years, as he showed reporters “an entire alley of French greeting cards alongside an entire alley of English greeting cards.”
“We were surprised at how much English actually was here.”
Fisher underscored that his firm has invested heavily in “getting [the Quebec] market right.”
Although the chain has long offered customer service in Spanish in heavily Hispanic markets in the United States, “in-store communication and packaging there is still mostly in English.”
Target is also offering many Quebec firms’s products in its merchandise and grocery sections.
“Through Target’s merchant designer award, we will be featuring fashion products by Montrealer Melissa Nepton,” Fisher said. The store will also be selling Philip Lim clothing and handbags that he expects will not remain in stock for very long.
“We have the best prices in the entire marketplace,” Target Canada ceo Tony Fisher vowed to news media, prior to the American retail giant’s opening of its 160-employee Sainte Dorothée store, yesterday.
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