Prince Albert Canadian Tire. (paNOW Staff/ Ronald Quaroni)

By Ronald Quaroni

Local Business

P.A. retailer adjusts to changing times

Apr 2, 2020 | 12:03 PM

COVID-19 is affecting the shopping habits of many residents and one of Prince Albert’s biggest retailers is adjusting to recent changes.

“This has obviously come out of left field. It’s unexpected. You can’t refer back to the rule book of 1918 and say, ‘oh here’s what they did, and it worked.’ There is no such thing,” Canadian Tire Store Owner, Malcolm Jenkins told paNOW.

Store changes

“We’re getting good guidance from our head office. We’ve got good people that have come up with overall plans for the store. Traffic layouts and things such as that. We’re not having too much difficulty with social distancing because there are not a lot of people coming into the store. It’s that time or year,” Jenkins noted.

In the coming weeks it could be more difficult to keep customers separated as Jenkins expects an uptick in traffic as the weather warms and customer take in the garden centre.

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According to Jenkins they may have to limit the number of customers who come into the store. Other options include making aisles one way to reduce the risk of customer interaction.

Despite the uncertainty around spring sales, Jenkins noted he is committed to accepting eight or nine supplier’s worth of bushes, plants, trees and perennials, that were previously ordered.

“These aren’t guys that can miss a year and survive. They would lose their people and probably lose their business. I feel a morale commitment to make sure these guys get through this year,” Jenkins explained. “We’ll take the crop same as previous year’s, so these people stay whole.”

Popular items

COVID-19 has also led to some unexpected purchases, according to Jenkins.

“The great toilet paper surge of 2020,” he chuckled. “We will talk about it for years in retail, in which a year’s worth of toilet paper went in two and half months.”

“Things are spasmodic. We have a lot of back order on stuff like paper towel, toilet tissue etc. It comes in and ‘voom,’ it’s gone in a day. For example, we just got a thousand jugs of bleach that came in on Friday and I think we still have about half of it but by the end of the week we won’t have it,” Jenkins explained.

According to Jenkins bottle water has also been popular along with guns.

Surprised, Jenkins noted gun sales have seen an increase. On a regular cold week in March, he mentioned one gun might be sold. In the last two weeks he approximated the store has sold 28.

Jenkins thinks his store provides important supplies to people during this time as they sell a wide-variety essential items from automotive to home-repair.

He looks forward to things getting back to normal though.

“The sooner this over, the better. That’s my opinion, but we’ll get through this,” Jenkins said.

–

Ron.quaroni@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @RonaldQuaroni