E13: The Price Spreads Report Pt 3 - Department Stores

10/06/22 • 29 min

I'm continuing my deep dive into the Price Spreads report and it's look at the retail industry in the 1930's. This week's episode is all about department stores, specifically Eaton's, The Bay. In the 1930's Eaton's did 7% of all retail sales in Canada. Canada has a long, history with the Hudson's Bay company. I look back quickly on the history of HBC and how they used similar monopolistic tactics when they had the dominant position in the fur trading industry. And to connect back to today, I talk a lot about Amazon. I know Amazon wasn't around in the 1930's but Amazon has a lot of the same dominant characteristics and impacts today that the department stores had in the 1930's.

Links from today's episode:

Links from today's episode:

Previous Episode

E12: The Price Spreads Report, pt 2 - Retail as our Distribution System

In today's episode I dive into Chapter 7 of the Report of the Royal Commission on Price Spreads. This chapter is all about the 1934 Canadian retail scene and the impact of mass buyers, e.g. chain stores and department stores, on smaller retailers, producers and manufacturers. In case you couldn't guess - it wasn't good. This chapter is titled 'Distribution' and got me thinking of our retail system as the distribution network for our producers and manufacturers. Looking at our retailers as the national distribution network caused me to think of retail as essential infrastructure just like streets, railroads, water and sewer lines, and power lines. Allowing anyone to dominate any of these pieces of infrastructure allows them to extract excess fees and expenses from others. We've let a handful of companies dominate our retail scene again. We need to reform our competition laws to free our retail scene from these dominant players.

Links from today's episode: