Canadian Tire, Marks get a facelift

Shannon LeClair   

Times Reporter

 

People driving past, or heading into, Canadian Tire in the past month may have noticed it has been undergoing a facelift. 

The store will have its grand re-opening four-day sale on Oct. 13. 

Randy Orford took over the store this past January, coming here after owning and operating a store in Toronto for four years. 

“We liked the town, we’re from B.C. originally, so we wanted to be back out west. There wasn’t many communities that have the growth potential that Strathmore has, that was what drew us here for sure,” said Orford. 

“Certainly we’ve been excited about coming in here, and then to redo the store. We’re looking forward to kind of showing it off at the of the project.”

Hockey Hall of Famer Lanny McDonald will be at the store on Oct. 15 signing autographs, and a number of other events will be taking place at the location during the four days. 

The store has undergone a major facelift inside, which Orford said would make people feel like it has expanded even though they haven’t actually added square footage. 

“We’ll have a bunch of stations where customers can access Canadian Tire’s website or Google, or whatever they want. It can be used by staff and customers, but our staff will have more opportunity to access information and customer queries,” said Orford. 

He said the idea is to create a better customer experience, something Canadian Tire stores across the country have been working on. 

Marks Work Warehouse is also undergoing a facelift, which should be done later this week. 

“We’re remarketing ourselves, a little bit of a rebranding going on. We’re not going to be Marks Work Warehouse any longer, we’re going to be known as just Marks,” said Rebecca Hines, store operator of the Strathmore Marks

“So it’s something similar that’s been happening with our Calgary locations and we were lucky enough with the renovations at Canadian Tire to have them happen to our location as well.”

She said the experience itself in the store is going to change, and though they are already customer oriented, it will be taken to a new level.

The store carries ladies wear and casual men’s wear and while workers are still the main focus, they have a little bit of something for everybody now and want to be able to promote it better.