Business Assignment

The Hudson’s Bay Company:
Four Centuries of Business

The Hudson’s Bay Company, which was started in 1670, is still operating strong four centuries later. Starting out small with the fur trade, HBC has expanded into 5 different branches including The Bay, Zellers, Designer Depot, Home Outfitters and Fields. HBC has over 500 stores in Canada and employees 70,000 Canadians.

The Hudson’s Bay Company was started two centuries before Confederation, meaning that this company is older than Canada itself. Two Frenchmen named Radisson and des Groseilliers, who found some money in fur located north and West of the Great Lakes, started it. In 1821 the company merged with their most successful rival the North West Company. This was an important merge for the company because now they didn’t have too much competition, and they got all the business the North West Company was taking away from them.

In 1912 HBC went through an aggressive modernization program. They created the 6 original Hudson’s Bay Company stores that are still around today.

Unfortunately, in 1921 fur was losing its importance. The Gold Rush however, brought in many new clients. After the Gold Rush people with money started to bring business to HBC, so rather than trading fur, they brought in real money. Because HBC now had wealth in money and not just fur, they began to open up saleshops instead of fur trading posts.

Now, HBC started to go commercial, and selling everything that was in high demand. Best sellers for the company were liquor, canned salmon, coffee, tea and tobacco. In the 1980’s there was a large economic downturn however, and this forced the company to go back to its original roots, and return to prior business plans, such as clothing and other things that you would find in an HBC outlet today.

After finding their original roots, The Hudson’s Bay Company started to expand. All of the non-retail businesses that they owned were being sold off. Also, many of their commercial stores (the ones that carried liquor and other substances that were in demand at the time) were sold too. They did this so that they could take over other small businesses and open up many new stores.

The Hudson’s Bay Company has always had pretty good business and business strategies, but there are always going to be some unexpected factors that affect every business. In 2001 HBC went through a profit plunge. There had been a recent ice storm and it was stated that they were suffering from difficult retail climate. HBC however was not the only company to falter from this ice storm. Many retailing businesses suffered simply because customers were not out shopping. This profit plunge did not last long however, causing the company to be once again back on track and doing fine.

HBC is an importing company. At the present time our Canadian Dollar is very strong, and as a result of this HBC is doing quite well as are most importing businesses.

Other factors affecting HBC’s sales are their public image. HBC works hard to make sure that they keep a good public image, as they do not want to hurt the business that has been so strong for such a long period of time.

To keep up with their strong public image the Hudson’s Bay Company puts out Corporate Social Responsibility Reports (CSR) that they have posted on their website. In these reports they include things like what they are doing with their business that is environmentally safe, information about their human resources policies, a community investment, Ethical Sourcing, and Global Reporting Initiative.

HBC takes pride in being environmentally safe. They do this by starting programs such as the Green program. This means that they are working hard to control their energy consumption in factories, as well as making all their packaging safe for the environment and recycling.
Another factor of their yearly CSR include A Community Investment. What this means is that the Hudson’s Bay Company supports many charities and other ways of giving back to the community. All their associates and other employees are all involved in their Community Investment and are constantly looking for new ways to help support Canadians.

A negative factor affecting HBC is some labour issues. The Hudson’s Bay Company is currently considering selling their Designer Depot division, which means that some employees of the store may lose their jobs.

Designer Depot did not get the sales over the holidays that they hoped it would get, and the company is trying to decide if it is worth it to keep it. HBC had to lay off about 100 employees when they did not get the business they needed, and that has affected the company. Now with the decision to possibly sell it coming forward, HBC has to decide what will happen to all the employees currently working in Designer Depot. Trying to keep this as a light situation, H BC is saying that they will find the current employees other jobs in other divisions, but will they really?

Although HBC is currently going through this employee cut, the future looks very bright. After surviving over 300 years of business, nobody thinks that HBC is going down anytime soon.

This is my In-Depth business report, that is very in depth. My original plan was to do the 600 word option and put in a timeline, but then I realized that this company is way to old and has way to much stuff to write about. So the first thing I learned is, the Bay = Old. Very old. I also learned they have a huge website that is easy to find information. Basically what we had to do was research a company and write a report on it, based like a magazine or something. It was to be formatted in coloumns, full justification, and in Georgia font, which, I will agree with Mr. Smith, looked pretty sweet. Another thing I learned in this assignment: Georgia font is my favourite, and full justification is cool. Hmm.. what else did I learn? I learned the fur trade was important, and that french people started the Bay. This assignment took a long time. It probably shouldn't have taken so long, but in the beginning I was bored and didn't want to do a lot of research, but once I eventually decided I should actually finish this assignment, it wasn't so bad, so I guess I kind of liked it.