Canadian Retailer - Store 2013 - 86

RCC 5OTH ANNIVERSARY TIMELINE

50 YEARS STRONG: MOMENTOUS
MOMENTS IN RECENT CANADIAN
RETAILING HISTORY
The retail industry in Canada has changed significantly over the past 50
years—we take a look at some of the events and happenings that have
shaped the industry as we know it today.
BY DAVID MCPHERSON
AS RETAIL COUNCIL OF CANADA (RCC) celebrates its

50th anniversary, Canadian Retailer takes a look back at
some of the major milestones and industry innovations
over the past half century. These momentous moments
are broken down by decade. For each development, we
examine its impact on both customers and the broader re-

1960s
Shoppers Drug Mart is born

Flash back to 1962. Murray Koffler
envisioned a model for a new pharmacy. When the Shoppers World
shopping centre was opened on
Danforth Avenue at Victoria Park
in Toronto, Koffler opened a 4,000
square-foot pharmacy and named it
Shoppers Drug Mart. The entrepreneur took the name “Shoppers” from
the designation of “Shoppers World”
and adopted “Mart” from the grocery
store located in the centre.

tail industry. We also look ahead. How did these developments pave the way for future innovations and changes
still to come? What does the future hold? One thing is
certain: the retail industry is a leader and will continue
to evolve and adapt to technological advancements and
ever-changing customer demands.

Paul Clark, EVP of Brand Activation,
Jackman. “It also introduced a retail
brand, with consistent offerings found
in each location, versus the draw of
the pharmacist as personality.”
As Clark references, the pharmacy
made another key innovation in 1962
when it introduced its private label—
Life Brand. Faced with a lack of selection of men’s toiletries, Koffler decided
to create his own. Dominion Bottlers
designed a bottle, and then he obtained
cologne, after-shave lotion and talc
from a fragrance supplier. He adopted
the name Life for his new brand after

1963: Retail Council of Canada is established to form a voice for
the industry and to consolidate knowledge to support advocacy
concerning issues that affect the entire industry.
Shoppers Drug Mart was the first
store in Canada to introduce mass
merchandising and self-service to
retail pharmacy; it became the prototype on which the Shoppers Drug
Mart concept was further developed.
“Shoppers innovated the transition
from pure-play Pharmacy to Drugstore where beauty and other lifestyle products were introduced,” says

86 |

the popular Life magazine. By 1978,
sales of the Life Brand had already surpassed $20 million.
A few other key milestones in Shoppers’ history include: rolling out automated dispensing systems in a number of high-volume stores in 2008, and
in 2010, introducing a mobile application enabling patients to refill their
prescriptions anytime, anywhere, as

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well as providing them with access
to product information, the flyer and
their Shoppers Optimum account.
Customer loyalty: the optimum
choice

In 2001, the pharmacy chain
launched The Shoppers Optimum
loyalty card program. Just one year
after its inception, it had already
become one of the most successful
loyalty programs ever in Canada
with more than six million members,
including one in every three women.
“Their ability to create one of the
most successful customer loyalty
programs in retail in Canada is something they’ve added to our retail environment that others have attempted
to copy,” comments Elizabeth Evans,
Associate Dean, Academic Undergraduate Programs at Ryerson’s Ted
Rogers School of Management. “No
one has been quite as successful as
them in terms of branding it, marketing it, and using it very effectively to
maintain customer loyalty and build
out the size of purchases.”
Evans says if Shoppers had not
started to think differently about

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