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All Carlton Cards and Papyrus stores closing within weeks – CTV News

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TORONTO —
The owner of greeting card retailers including Carlton Cards and Papyrus is closing all of its stores in North America, including 76 Canadian locations.

Most of the closures will take place over the next four to six weeks, Schurman Retail Group CEO Dominique Schurman told CTVNews.ca in a statement.

Another 178 locations will close in the U.S., bringing the total to 254 stores employing approximately 1,400 people.

Schurman said the closures were a “difficult decision” necessitated by the company being unable to “realign our … stores to fit today’s shopping environment.”

‘The closures will not affect the publishing of Carlton Cards or their sale in other stores. Those aspects of the business are handled by a separate company. The Carlton Cards and Papyrus online stores also remain open, although the Papyrus website has been modified to state that all sales are final.

Going-out-of-business sales are underway at physical stores in both Canada and the U.S. There are 59 Carlton Cards locations and 17 Papyrus outlets in Canada, encompassing all provinces except New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Anyone wishing to continue purchasing Carlton Cards can use the chain’s online store locator to find other retailers that sell them.

Carlton Cards and Papyrus are the latest in a seemingly never-ending series of Canadian retail closures. This week alone, fair-trade retailer Ten Thousand Villages announced plans to shutter many of its stores and the owner of apparel store Bench’s Canadian operations confirmed to BNN that all 24 locations will be closed. Things Engraved announced earlier this month that it plans to shut all of its stores.

The message that typically accompanies these closures is that even long-tenured chains are having trouble coping with the growth in online shopping, as consumers increasingly opt for convenience over familiar retail brands.

Craig Patterson, founder of industry website Retail Insider, said Wednesday in a telephone interview that he believes the recent announcements from Carlton Cards and others are just the “tip of the iceberg” in what he expects to be a dreadful year for Canadian retail.

“We’ve seen a real shift about consumer behaviour, and I don’t think a lot of retailers have been addressing that,” he said.

Patterson said he had recently walked into Carlton Cards and Papyrus stores in downtown Toronto for the first time in many years and found that they were virtually the same as his memories of them.

“A lot of these retailers really haven’t changed their retail concepts in the last 10 or 20 years – but society, if you think about it, we’ve changed a lot,” he said.

The Carlton Cards closures will leave Hallmark as the sole remaining dominant player in Canadian greeting card retail. It has 96 stores across the country.

According to market research firm IBISWorld, the Canadian greeting card and other publishing industry, which also includes such items as calendars and postcards, shrank by 4.4 per cent per year between 2014 and 2019.

“Operators in [this] industry have grappled with the advent of paperless substitutes, which have rendered some industry products obsolete,” reads an IBISWorld report. The report singles out electronic cards as a growing alternative to the traditional paper offerings; IBISWorld estimates that online greeting card sales in the U.S. rose by 9.3 per cent over the last five years and hit US$714 million in 2019.

The closures will also deal another blow to mid-range shopping malls across Canada. Many chains once ubiquitous in malls outside big cities have gone under in recent years, and replacing them has been a struggle for landlords.

With dozens of additional empty spots about to open up, Patterson said many will likely not be filled.

“New concepts will come in here and there, but there will be vacancies,” he said, suggesting that some malls could end up redeveloped or demolished.

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Japan’s SoftBank returns to profit after gains at Vision Fund and other investments

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TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.

Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.

Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).

SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.

The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.

WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.

SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.

SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.

SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.

The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.

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Yuri Kageyama is on X:

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Trump campaign promises unlikely to harm entrepreneurship: Shopify CFO

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Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.

“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.

“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”

Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.

On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.

If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.

These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.

If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.

However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.

He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.

“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.

Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.

The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.

Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.

Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.

Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.

Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.

Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”

In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.

“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:SHOP)

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RioCan cuts nearly 10 per cent staff in efficiency push as condo market slows

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TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.

The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.

The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.

RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.

The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.

RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:REI.UN)

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