The RONA Foundation, which held its new Home Sweet Home campaign from Sept. 1 to Oct. 9, has announced that the event raised more than $730,000. The proceeds will go towards housing access and improved living environments for survivors of domestic violence and their children, low-income families, and people with special needs or mental health issues. The 175 organizations were selected separately by each local team, including the one at the RONA+ store in Nepean, Ont. (shown here).

Throwback Thursday is a weekly feature in which we dip into the Hardlines Weekly Report archives.

On Oct. 27, 2003, 20 years ago tomorrow, we ran a headline that said “Black & Decker faces threat from Home Depot’s power tool intro.”

In the story, we reported that the introduction of the Ridgid brand of corded and cordless professional tools by Home Depot was “the biggest tool launch in its history.” And we reported that it would put pressure on Black & Decker, “the number one preferred brand” at Home Depot [according to B&D’s then-CFO, Mike Mangan].

The Ridgid brand was—and continues to be—owned by Emerson Electric, which bought a majority share in the Ridge Tool Company 80 years ago, in 1943.

An employee at a San Rafael, Ca., Home Depot store was arrested last week after an internal investigation pointed to her as a suspect in the embezzlement of $1.2 million over the past year. The allegations have not been proven in court.

The suspect, who has not been named, is accused of taking various amounts out of the store’s cash registers—ranging from $25,000 in a month up to almost $174,000 in August of this year. Lieutenant Scott Eberle of the San Rafael Police Department was quoted in various media sources as saying, “She was basically just manipulating the books on how much she was depositing.” The woman worked in finance at the store. Police said that her house contained “an exorbitant amount of luxury clothing and handbags.”

Discount department store banner Zellers has brought back its mascot, a stuffed teddy bear named Zeddy. The plush toy, which stands about 15 inches high, will be available for purchase in-store starting Oct. 27 and online beginning Oct. 30.

The retailer has committed to donating $5 out of every $15 sale to support Campfire Circle, a charitable organization that supports children with cancer or serious illness and their families. Hudson’s Bay Co. revived the banner as a store-within-a-store concept earlier this year, following a pop-up pilot at a Toronto-area location in 2021.

Kent Building Supplies in Antigonish, N.S., is taking an additional order on deck chairs that support adults with intellectual disabilities. Kent partners with CACL Antigonish to the sell the chairs, which are made by staff and clients of the non-profit. The Antigonish store had excess inventory this year. Jeff Teasdale, executive director of CACL, told local CJFX-FM that Kent has been supportive in marketing the product and in employing its clients.

BMR Group held an inaugural event last weekend for the BMR Matériaux Magog store, owned by Groupe Anctil, to mark its transition to the BMR banner, first announced in September. Strongman and BMR ambassador Hugo Girard hosted an array of customers, colleagues, friends and company representatives.

Founded in 1935, Groupe Anctil now operates two renovation centers in St-Denis-de-Brompton and Magog, and is a co-owner of a prefabricated wood structures manufacturing plant also located in Magog. They also operate a Granby-based company specializing in wastewater, sewage, and water treatment.

York Supplies, a hardware store in Birmingham, England, had been serving its customers for 75 years. Recently, it fell on hard times. The UK has been struggling with post-Brexit and post-Covid economic woes that make Canada’s economic challenges seem minor in comparison.

In what the BBC called the “first time in England a hardware shop had been saved in this way,” local residents were invited to invest in the business and form a single store co-operative. The equivalent of $588,000 in funding was raised in just six weeks. Naomi Standen, chair of the York Supplies Action Group, said members had been “astounded and delighted” by the level of support.

IKEA Canada CEO Selwyn Crittendon says the company will dramatically overhaul its omnichannel and fulfilment processes in the coming years. Speaking to Retail Insider about two months into his role, Crittendon said that “the minute our stores get turned into fulfilment units, we’re supporting with pickup locations, we have some units that are doing their entire [omnichannel] process all on their own. So they’re not connected to a central hub or a central DC [distribution centre].”

In the future, the executive says, “you’ll see more of these smaller pickup points like our partnership with Penguin Pickup happening across Canada. You’ll see us really tapping into the smaller format stores like Plan and Order points.”

Canada has 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs than it did 20 years ago, says a report from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) using StatCan data. That’s despite the population growing by 10 million people over the same period.

BDC, a crown corporation which provides loans for small and medium-sized businesses, produced the report for Small Business Week. It defines an entrepreneur as a self-employed job creator. Pierre Cléroux, BDC’s chief economist, said that 20 years ago there were three Canadians in every 1,000 becoming entrepreneurs each year. That is now down to 1.3, BDC says.

The premiers of all 13 of Canada’s provinces and territories have written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling for the repayment deadline for Canada Emergency Business Account loans to be extended. By the end of last June, only a fifth of the some 900,000 businesses who took out loans under the program had repaid in full.

“The same loan that was once a lifeline during the pandemic is now threatening to sink the small businesses that are only just getting by,” the premiers wrote. The federal government recently added a few weeks to the deadline, moving it from this coming December to Jan. 18, 2024. The letter endorses calls from many small businesses for a full year’s extension.