Eatons LLC

Description

On December 8, 1869, just two years after Confederation, an advertisment appeared in The Globe newspaper in Toronto announcing the opening of T. Eaton & Company a dry goods store and haberdashery with “sound goods, good styles and good value ”. This first store, located at 178 Yonge Street, was only 7.3 by 18.3 metres in size (24 by 60 feet) with two shop windows and a small staff of two men, a woman, and a boy. Timothy Eaton had made his first foray into the retail business that was to earn him a place as one of Canada's greatest businessmen, and earn his company a place in the history of the nation. Mr Eaton was born in 1834 in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, of Protestant Scottish ancestry. He sailed to Canada at the age of 20 and settled in southern Ontario. After several unsucessful business ventures, he bought the store in Toronto in 1869 and never looked back. Eaton's store prospered and grew rapidly in the ensuing decades. Eaton ’s company soon outgrew its orginal location, so in August 1883 Eaton moved the business one block north into much larger premises at 190 Yonge Street. The new store had three full floors of retail space featuring 35 departments. It had the largest plate-glass windows in Toronto, the first electric lights in any Canadian store, and in 1886, the first elevator in a retail establishment in Toronto was installed. In 1884, Timothy Eaton introduced his mail-order catalogue to Canada. This type of retailing was eminently suitable for the vast expanse that was Canada, which remained a largely rural country until later in the 20th century. The catalogue offered everything from clothing and furniture to farming equipment and even pre-fabricated houses. In the rural settlements, isolated communities and small towns that dotted the Canadian landscape, the arrival of Eaton's catalogue was a major event and allowed people to avail themselves of the opportunity to purchase an array of products that were otherwise unattainable. John Craig Eaton, the son and eventual heir of Timothy Eaton, was largely responsible for expanding the Eaton ’s business from its Toronto birthplace and the of building a combined store and mail order operation in Winnipeg in 1907. The landmark red brick store, known as “the Big Store ” to Winnipegers, became an overwhelming success almost overnight. Within a few weeks of the store ’s opening, the staff grew from 750 to 1200. By 1919, the Eaton ’s complex in Winnipeg covered 21 acres and employed 8000 people. For many years, the Winnipeg Eaton ’s store was considered the most successful department store in the world. It was a true forerunner of modern mega-shopping malls, and the deparment store could boast its own hospital clinic, fire department, water supply, library, and restaurants. “As late as the 1960s, Canadian Magazine estimated that Winnipegers spent more than 50 cents of every shopping dollar (excluding groceries) at Eaton ’s, and that on a busy day, one out of every ten Winnipegers would visit the Portage Avenue store.

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