Brand loyalty

Attention Incline readers

It was late in November of 1928, and the city was abuzz.

There was a lot to hold the attention of Hamiltonians. The sentencing of three young men convicted of violently robbing a Hungarian immigrant at an illegal “drinking house” was announced as a “decisive step towards cleaning up” a section of Caroline Street between Cannon and Barton that a crown attorney called “a cesspool of iniquity” (the “cesspool” no longer exists; it’s now Central Park). The installation of newfangled “overhead traffic signals” to manage the growing number of cars in the city was the subject of much fascination and another accomplishment for the ambitious Conservative alderman Herbert Wilton (his bringing stop lights to the city was not enough to get him elected to the Board of Control that year, though he would be elected mayor in 1933). And the city was still in mourning after a local woman passed away a few days after delivering triplets at the General Hospital.

In the midst of all that, a keen-eyed reporter from the Spec stumbled upon a big scoop. Looking through the Ontario Gazette - the provincial publication where new legislation, statutes, and notices needed to (and still need to be) published - the reporter noticed a small announcement about the issuance of a business licence. The licence to do business in this province had been granted to one “S. S. Kresge” of Troy, Michigan. The reporter did a little digging and found that Mr. Kresge, the undisputed king of the “five and dime” store in the United States, had retained the services of Toronto-based accountant Charles Magee. This set off a flurry of speculation in Hamilton, as the same Mr. Magee had been negotiating for the purchase of a huge parcel of land - the Clyde Block - at King East and Hughson, directly across from Gore Park.

By the new year, the rumours were confirmed: Hamilton would be getting an S. S. Kresge Department Store, right across the street from the Right House. The Spec reported this as “evidence of the great faith which United States financiers have in the future of Canada and particularly in the future of this city.”¹ The American company would bulldoze the original structures on the Clyde Block and put up their own modest two-storey structure with art deco embellishments (many of which were lost in a 1947 update to the building). The project came together with record speed and, on Saturday, April 5, 1930, the new S. S. Kresge store was open. The Spec was glowing in its assessment of the new store:

***

For decades, the S. S. Kresge store was a beloved part of Hamilton’s downtown shopping scene. A post by the Facebook group “Vintage Hamilton” about the store in 2020 elicited over 1,000 reactions and some 200-odd comments from people sharing their stories about the lunch counter, candy selection, and record listening booths (along with heaps of general nostalgia and a few jabs at the “kids these days” thrown in for good measure).

By the 1960’s, Kresge himself was in his 90’s and had handed almost all responsibility for the company over to Harry Cunningham, a corporate executive who could tell consumer tastes were changing. After a brief visit to a fascinating new retail operation called a “big box store” in 1961, Cunningham made the decision to modernize Kresge’s. A year later, he unveiled the new chapter in the retail chain’s story: an oversized, car-oriented, dizzying new store called “Kmart”. The company would be subdivided between Kresge’s and Kmart, along with a few other bargain and food-related ventures.

Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, Kmart stores began popping up in suburban shopping centres across America. With its gimmicks, like the “blue light special” (an impromptu sale announced only to customers in store) and its refocusing on car traffic, rather than the foot traffic many Kresge’s stores relied on, Kmart took off. By 1976, Kmart hit peak store openings in the United States. In the early 80’s, there were thousands of Kmarts in cities and towns everywhere, while Hamilton’s downtown Kresge’s store began to languish.

And then came the inevitable. The small-format Kresge’s that opened in the Centre Mall (or the “Greater Hamilton Shopping Centre as it was called when the store opened) in November of 1955 was getting an upgrade. In 1983, as part of the Centre Mall’s almost permanent cycle of renovations, Hamilton got its first Kmart. The mid-October grand opening extravaganza included a “Lucky Draw” for a grand prize 14” colour television, a massive sale on the latest electronics, like the new Atari 2600 (for $97 - $260 today), and a guest appearance by Miss Canada 1983, Jodi Rutledge.²

The dynamic retailer made it seem like nothing could stop them. The company opened a Kmart in Lime Ridge Mall in November of 1986 and had eyes on the prime West Mountain real estate that was rumoured to be the site of Hamilton’s newest shopping experience to be called the “Ancaster Meadowlands”. All the while, downtown’s Kresge’s deteriorated further and further as the megacorporation looked elsewhere.

In 1987, the last Kresge’s in the United States were sold off and Canada’s stores were told their time was nearly up. In early ‘94, the timer was set, and the end date was scheduled. Wednesday, July 27, 1994 would be the last day for the S. S. Kresge store at King and Hughson. For its service to the people of Hamilton and its fiercely dedicated group of customers, it was given the honour of being the last operating Kresge’s store in Canada. The Spec’s editorial board was blunt: “For too long, people have expressed concern about the deterioration of downtown Hamilton…The latest setback to hit downtown, east of James - the announced closing of the landmark S. S. Kresge department store - has at least acted as a wake-up call,” before detailing a task-force established by downtown businesses to try and stop the decline of the core.³ The editorial served as a stark contrast to their assessment from 64 years prior, when the opening of the store was heralded as a sign of “faith” in Hamilton.

On the last day, the Spec sent a reporter to cover the closing ceremonies, which consisted of a massive discount sale and tearful goodbyes from long-time employees. The reporter remarked that the switch to Kmart was the beginning of the end and that, even if the downtown location had stalwart regulars, it was no match for the suburban shopping experience the company prioritized. An interview with a corporate executive confirmed the shift: “All our resources are now going into the Kmart division and will continue to go in that direction.”⁴

And they did. For four years.

The appearance of Kmart’s success was, in reality, an illusion. In the dying days of the twentieth century, despite all their outward bluster, the company was hemorrhaging money. Shortly after shuttering the last Kresge’s, the decision was made to start closing select Kmart stores.

But it wasn’t enough. Kmart’s Canadian division, which had opened to incredible fanfare just two decades prior, was a money-losing disaster and, in 1998, the entirety of Kmart Canada was sold to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Lime Ridge Kmart became a Hudson’s Bay Home Outlet. The Meadowlands branch became a Zellers. But the Centre Mall Kmart, which helped pull business away from the King and Hughson Kresge’s, was unceremoniously closed at the end of May so as to not compete with the existing Zellers there. After just 15 years, the Centre Mall Kmart was sent off with another Spec story about tearful employees comforting each other and reminiscing while deal hunters ransacked what little remained.⁵

Thirteen years later, the Zellers at the Centre Mall (by then the “Centre on Barton”) was one of the locations handed over to Target as part of the Bay’s downsizing. That lasted all of three years before Target fled the Canadian market in disgrace by 2015.

The remnants of the Kresge’s legacy in Hamilton are symbolic of the times. The Centre on Barton great-grandchild of the Centre Mall Kresge’s is now half PetSmart and half Dollarama. The Kresge’s in University Plaza became a BiWay after 1994 and is today (if my spatial estimates are correct), another Dollarama. The Meadowlands Kmart has been carved into a series of stores, including a HomeSense and a now-closed Bad Boy furniture store. The Lime Ridge location, once a glittering hunk of cubic zirconia in the mall’s crown, has recently been converted into a Tesla showroom.

The inaugural location - at King and Hughson - sat vacant until 1998 when Delta Bingo relocated from a few doors down into the cavernous space. In 2014, Delta closed, and the building was vacant once more. In 2017, demolition began to make way for what was originally slated to be the LiUNA-backed “Cobalt Condos” but is now the “King William Urban Rentals” building, managed by DMS. Units range from $1,995/month for a 611 square foot 1-bedroom to $4,090/month for a 920 square foot 3-bedroom - prices that would have been incomprehensible to the frugal shoppers lured in by Kresge’s discounts on that very site 90 years ago.

***

There are a few theories about why Kmart collapsed the way it did. Among a more nostalgic segment of the population, there’s a belief that the rebrand away from “Kresge’s” and toward “Kmart” sank the business. That isn’t strictly the case.

A more evidence-based analysis was done by the newsletter Startup Stumbles, which posited that the company was actually thriving after Cunningham launched the Kmart division of the company. When Cunningham retired, he was replaced with Kmart CAO Robert Dewar, who started a “special strategy group” after Kmart’s peak in 1976 that decided the American “general” retail market was saturated. Rather than focus on what they did best, the new strategy group decided to buy up other companies to “diversify” their portfolio. While they were gobbling up companies like Walden Books and OfficeMax, companies like WalMart and Target were honing their skills and capturing more and more of the general retail market. The other companies Kmart acquired ended up all failing and the lack of focus on their primary product meant that, at the end of the day, all the company really had was real estate.

People assumed that the company’s focus on Kmart was what led to the deterioration of the original Kresge’s stores. But, it turns out, they even abandoned their Kmart stores shortly after opening them. Almost all the corporation’s focus was on new locations, meaning that, in a few short years, a once glittering new store would look grubby and outdated. Anyone who remembers Kmart from back in the day can attest to the overall shabbiness of a store that was only a few years old (a similar feel to a Zellers in the twilight of their days).

Kmart’s Canadian exit was an attempt to slim down operations, but their closure in the United States came about because of massive corporate greed, catastrophic mismanagement, and their eventual sale to a predatory hedge fund that stripped the once-reliable company for parts.

So there’s a clear reason why people think the rebrand is what killed Kresge’s/Kmart. Their decline began right around the time that the Kmart division eclipsed the original Kresge’s core. But their decline was because of a change in corporate philosophy. Blaming it all on the rebrand was like determining cause of death based on the victim’s style choice. There were deeper problems caused by a realignment of the company’s philosophy that just so happened to coincide with the company’s expansion in Canada.

As is always the case, it was the customers, the communities served, and the employees who suffered because of these corporate decisions. Hamiltonians lost an iconic downtown store that had served the community for over six decades thanks, in large part, to the poor decisions of executives hundreds of kilometres away. It’s a pattern that has repeated, and will continue to repeat, so long as giant corporations control the basic provision of goods.

A fresh coat of paint

That long meander through local/retail history is my (very me) way of saying the newsletter rebrand is going…okay.

My first real edition as The Incline came out on Valentine’s Day. In the immediate aftermath of publishing, I saw the single largest one-day drop in subscribers since I started newslettering a few years back. That was momentarily demoralizing, until I started getting emails (and Reddit posts) about how some folks weren’t entirely aware of the rebrand.

I get it and honestly can’t blame anyone for the confusion. The edition announcing the rebrand came out on January 27 - nearly a full month after my last edition of 2024 - and the pace of my work has slowed to a crawl because…well…you know…sad. I completely understand how, with only modest promotion and with everything that’s been going on in the world, the change might have come as a surprise to folks.

So I’m working to better promote the change and let people know that your beloved Sewer Socialists is now the shiny new Incline. And, in that spirit, here are some updates about the newsletter:

• I’ve set up an account for The Incline on Bluesky (which you can follow here for regular updates).

• I’ve made an announcement over on Substack that I’ve shifted everything over here.

  • On that note: part of the rebrand meant moving from Substack over here to Beehiiv. When I went to change my URL in Substack, the whole site broke for a few days. It was a complete mess. I had already been considering a switch away from Substack because of their sometimes weird politics and the general trend away from the platform toward other alternatives. I opted to check out Beehiiv because a) great reviews from other newsletterers and b) lots of customizability. I’ve been able to adapt and change aspects of the newsletter to better match a The Incline’s new style.

  • For a while, I’ll keep an archive of my Substack available until I can migrate all the links over.

• I still have my ko-fi account active if anyone wants to leave a tip (always appreciated, but never feel obligated).

• I have a few longer pieces planned over the next while. I can’t say for certain if I’ll retire some of the old Sewer Socialists segments like “Trustee time” or “Cool facts for cool people” because they might come in handy every once and a while, but they won’t be regular staples of the newsletter under the rebrand.

• Unlike Kmart, I’m going to stick to what I’m good at and work on perfecting that, rather than run off and start a trillion little new ventures. That means focusing on long-form essays on local issues, deep dives into local history, and analysis of current affairs in Hamilton and the surrounding area.

So thanks for sticking it out with me as I rebrand and refocus. Your support - through subscriptions, telling your friends, and even just reading on occasion - means the world to me.

I’ll be back next week with a something I’ve been working on for a bit that I think is very relevant to the current political situation here in Hamilton.

1  _{“Chain store firm takes lease here” Hamilton Spectator, February 13, 1929 (Spec archive link)}

2  _{“Open Second Kresge Store Here Nov. 16” Hamilton Spectator, November 9, 1955 (Spec archive link); “Kmart ads” Hamilton Spectator, October 12 & 13, 1983 (Spec archive links one, two, and three)}

3  _{“Time to act” Hamilton Spectator, January 6, 1994 (Spec archive link)}

4  _{Shaun Herron. “Doors close on the last Kresge store - and era” Hamilton Spectator, July 28, 1994 (Spec archive link)}

5  _{“Tears fall as Kmart closes doors” Hamilton Spectator, June 1, 1998 (Spec archive link)}