Giant Tiger Stores Limited is a Canadian discount store chain which operates over 260 stores across Canada. The company's stores operate under the Giant Tiger banner in Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan; under the GTExpress and Scott's Discount banners in Ontario and under the Tigre Géant banner in Quebec.
As of 2021, the chain reported annual sales of roughly $2 billion and employed about 10,000 people. Its headquarters are located on Walkley Road in Ottawa. In 2018, the company opened a distribution centre in Johnstown, halfway between Montreal and Toronto, at the intersection of Ontario's Highway 401 and Highway 416.
It is a participant in the voluntary Scanner Price Accuracy Code managed by the Retail Council of Canada.
Business model
Inspiration
In the mid and late 1940s, Giant Tiger founder Gordon Reid, who was then in his early twenties, was a travelling salesman for an importer in the United States. In the American Midwest, Reid first saw discount stores. Discount stores were a new concept at the time. He was particularly impressed by Uncle Bill's, a chain headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, but his mother had worked behind the luncheon counter at a Woolworth’s in downtown Montreal.
Reid stated, four decades later, that he had believed, even at this early stage, that it would be possible to build a Canada-wide chain based on this model. Asked by a reporter whether he had ever imagined that Giant Tiger would eventually have the success it was then enjoying, Reid stated, "Yes. That was the original intention. The idea for the business came when I was a travelling salesman. I saw the discounters growing. My original inspiration was the F. W. Woolworth Co., obviously that was a big chain. So this was always the plan."
Ownership structure
Key head office personnel were co-owners of Giant Tiger Stores Limited. Initially, Giant Tiger’s head office was quite small; and ownership was therefore shared among a small number of people. By 1980, ownership had been shared between Reid and ten key employees. Gordon Reid has stated that Canada’s agricultural cooperative movement was his inspiration for this innovation.
Because the chain most often has been shoehorned into existing spaces now too small for the major big-box store or hypermarket chains, individual store managers are given wide leeway in ordering decisions and are free to devote their limited floor space to items which sell well in their local market. This flexibility, and a distribution system in which stores are restocked daily, allows stores to "pull" only the inventory they immediately need and facilitates greater turnover per square foot of scarce retail space.
In 2010, Reid reported that the issuing of no-cost franchises to experienced retailers "was a great way to get experienced people. Over the years we had a lot come from Woolworth, Kresge, Kmart and later Zellers." In the same interview, Reid stated that over twenty Giant Tiger franchises are now run by former Walmart employees, most of whom had been attracted by the same franchise system that he had introduced decades earlier.
History
Number of stores
Gordon Reid opened the first Giant Tiger store, on George Street in Ottawa’s Byward Market, on May 13, 1961, with a $15,000 investment. First year sales of $139,781 were far lower than Reid had anticipated, and by the end of 1962, he decided to close the store. Unexpectedly, the rush of customers attracted by his going out of business sale provided enough cash flow to keep the business afloat.
Although the store survived, expansion was slow. A second location, in the small town of Brockville, was not opened until 1965. Its first acquisition of a Target store occurred in Fergus, Ontario, where of an approximately large Target store was acquired by Giant Tiger. This location opened in the spring of 2016.
Geographic expansion
In 2001, Giant Tiger and The North West Company (NWC) signed a 30-year Master Franchise Agreement that grants NWC the exclusive right to open and operate 72 Giant Tiger stores in western Canada by 2032. In 2013, thirty-one of these stores were open and NWC was eyeing expansion into older city neighbourhoods and rural towns too small to support a Target or Walmart.
The chain has undertaken a major expansion in the Greater Toronto Area since 2005. It has opened seven stores in Bradford, Brampton, Markham (now closed), Newmarket, Scarborough and Etobicoke.
The 200th Giant Tiger store opened in Nova Scotia in October 2010.
Franchising
In 1968, Giant Tiger opened its first franchise stores, which now account for the majority of locations. The goal was to better serve the customer by having local owners in the stores.
Between 2001 and 2020, The North West Company operated all of Giant Tiger's locations in western Canada under a single master franchise agreement.
New brands/trade names
In 1977, Giant Tiger established Chez Tante Marie stores in Hull and Gatineau, Quebec. The Hull store closed in 2015. Another Chez Tante Marie store existed in Lachute, Quebec; this store has since been rebranded as Tigre Géant. In 2017, the last Chez Tante Marie store, in Gatineau, was rebranded as Tigre Géant.
Trucking/warehousing
In 1987, Giant Tiger launched its own trucking fleet (known internally as Tiger Trucking) to make regular shipments from the warehouse to stores. In 2001, Reid reported that deliveries were taking place daily: "We have the most efficient shipping and distribution system in the general merchandise field ... It is equivalent to the grocery stores. We deliver to stores five times per week. There is no one else in the general merchandise industry that does that and we do it with our own trucks." As of 2015, Reid retains the posts of chairman of the board and CEO. but soon abandoned.