Wholesale Sports to close Dec. 28

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/09/2017 (3120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The new year will signal the end of Wholesale Sports’ 14-year run in Winnipeg.

The outdoor outfitter specialist at 1225 St. James St. is one of 12 stores in the Western Canada retail chain now undergoing an “orderly wind down” and inventory liquidation.

All stores will close Dec. 28, Wholesale’s parent company, the United Farmers of Alberta Co-operative Ltd. (UFA), announced Thursday.

The shuttering of the entire chain will impact some 545 employees, with an unspecified number located in Winnipeg.

“We are not commenting on individual locations because each employee was a unique situation,” Tracey Feist, manager of corporate affairs for UFA, said Friday from Calgary.

The Winnipeg location’s main phone goes straight to a recorded message regarding the liquidation sale, which began Friday.

Established in Alberta in the mid-1970s by brothers Russ and Brad Butler, as of late 2017, Wholesale Sports Canada Ltd. had 12 stores offering 440,000 square feet of retail space across Western Canada (five locations in both B.C. and Alberta, one in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan).

All 12 locations are leased, UFA said.

Wholesale Sports first came to Winnipeg in 2003, operating out of a location on Nairn Avenue.

It relocated to St. James Street in August 2006, opening a 31,000-sq.-ft. store.

UFA purchased Wholesale Sports in 2008, and while it was profitable over the last decade, shuttering the chain “was an all-inclusive business decision that, while difficult, was made in the best interest of UFA on behalf of our members,” UFA president and chief executive officer Carol Kitchen said in a news release.

News of the shutdown and sale spread quickly, Kitchen said Friday in a phone interview.

“In Alberta, we’ve seen fantastic support from our customers,” she said.

“It is bittersweet, I guess, we wish they had come in droves in the past… The feedback from customers has been they understand why we are doing what we are doing.

“They are sad we are leaving the marketplace because we are one of the few Canadian-owned organizations in this (retail) space.”

The decision was made amid the pressure of increased market competition, the further drift toward online consumerism, and UFA refocusing on its core business of petroleum and agriculture.

The rise of large-scale competitors such as Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s Inc. weighed heavily on Wholesale’s bottom line, Kitchen said. (Springfield, Mo.-based Bass Pro is in the final regulatory stages of its $5.5 billion takeover of Nebraska-based Cabela’s.)

“Those players were not in the marketplace (in 2008).

“Wholesale Sports was considered a pretty big player at that time in the markets it operated in. Over time, we have seen Cabela’s and Bass Pro basically build their footprint out over top of ours… it is tough to compete in those markets.”

With the start of the liquidation of inventory, Wholesale Sports has stopped accepting online purchases, however, all current open online orders will be fulfilled, the company said.

And stores will honour all gift cards currently held by customers, but no further gift cards will be offered, the company said, adding after Dec. 28, any outstanding gift cards will be worthless.

scott.emmerson@freepress.mb.ca