Sears Canada Inc. is a retailer, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, that operates in all provinces and territories across Canada with 123 department stores, 43 Sears Home stores, 143 Dealer stores, 15 Outlet stores and a general merchandise catalogue, employing 50,000 employees throughout the company.
Today, Sears of the United States owns 55% of Sears Canada.
Sears Canada began its operations as Simpsons-Sears Limited, a catalogue retailer, in 1952. The company was formed as a joint operation of Simpsons Limited and Sears. In 1971 the company changed its banner to Sears and in 1978 Simpsons-Sears was split into two different companies. The Hudson's Bay Company acquired all of Simpsons Limited by 1980, and renamed all of those stores as The Bay by 1991.
In 1995 Sears Canada opened Sears Whole Home furniture stores located in power centres, and ranamed them Sears Furniture and Appliance stores in 1999, to reflect the addition of major appliances.
In 1999 Sears Canada acquired The T. Eaton Company Limited (Eaton's). With this acquisition Sears Canada gained Eaton's stores and the trademark name, among other things.
Eaton's was relaunched as eatons in November, 2000, with seven upscale stores located in Canada's major cities. This operation was unsuccessful, however, and in 2002, the stores were put under the Sears name. Many said that the stores were too upscale and too thinly scattered across the country for it to have ever been profitable and worthwhile.
