I have been lived in Canada for only 3 or 4 years，Zellers is part of “Canadian life” in my head. One day I saw the red sign “closing sale” one the door, I really felt surprised. Most of the stores were replaced by Target Canada or Walmart Canada. What makes this well-known brand failed after it has already operated for more than 80 years?

Zellers is popular in Canada, but its market size did not grow much in the last 30 years, the volume of Zellers was floating up and down around $2.5 billion a year. Comparing to this, Walmart Canada has grown to about 16 billion a year.“ the lowest price is the law”, as a discount department retailer, this is Zellers always pursuit for. However, Walmart took this away by offering the lowest price. The Canadian market became more and more global and diversity, but Zellers did not  effectively adapt itself to that. Meanwhile, Target, as a famous U.S retail brand, has great ambitions for expanding to the north. As a result, Zellers was chose as a footstep for them.

Not only Zellers, think back to many other Canadian brands, such as ATI, Rona, even Tim hortons faced the risk of merger before. For the overall economics, taking over might be a good thing. However, since the U.S companies have an increasingly large occupation in Canadian market by either taking over or expanding, there is a huge challenge for the local brands to competitive with them.