CANADIAN TIRE, PUTMAN INVESTMENTS ACQUIRE LEASES FROM BANKRUPT BED, BATH & BEYOND

Earlier this year, Bed, Bath & Beyond (BB&B) sought bankruptcy protection—on both sides of the border—and closed its 54 stores in Canada. Canadian Tire Corp. made a deal in April to acquire the real estate leases of 10 former BB&B locations, representing 242,000 square feet of retail space, for $1.6 million. CTC will turn six of the sites into Mark’s stores. These will be relocations of existing Mark’s stores in Grande Prairie, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, and Strathcona County, Alta.; Langley, B.C.; and Oakville, Ont. CTC says the new sites represent larger, more convenient locations.

Ancaster, Ont. Putman intends to launch a new brand: rooms + spaces. It will be led by Greg Dyer, the former general manager of Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Putman Investments already owns Toys “R” Us, Sunrise Records, FYE (For Your Entertainment), HMV UK, and T. Kettle (formerly Davids Tea). Hardlines interviewed the 39-year-old Putman and found him bullish on the future of—not just his rooms + spaces brand—but bricks and mortar retail in Canada in general.

Putman Investments is all family money, Putman said, with sales from the 25 companies it owns approaching $4 billion.

The remaining four BB&B sites acquired by CTC will become home to four new Pro Hockey Life stores, a brand that Canadian Tire purchased in 2013. This move will bring the Pro Hockey Life store count up to 20.

“Following our 10th consecutive quarter of growth in Q4 2022, Mark’s is continuing to build on its incredible momentum in the Canadian market by strategically relocating six retail spaces to more convenient and larger sites,” said PJ Czank, president, Mark’s. “These relocated stores will feature more products and deeper assortments of our best brands to meet the needs of our customers in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario.”

Meanwhile, at least 21 more locations of the bankrupt BB&B have been acquired by Doug Putman, head of his family’s company, Putman Investments, based in

In addition to its flagship retailers, the company owns distribution, manufacturing, and real estate. “We take no outside investment, so everything we buy, we own 100 percent.”

Putman has earned a reputation for being a retail turnaround specialist. He buys troubled retailers at a discount. “They are just companies that are out of fashion, or not doing well, and they’re just kind of at the end of their life,” Putman said. “People say to me, why did you get into the distressed [retailer] business? The answer was simple, I didn’t have enough money to buy a good business!”

Putman’s first retail investment was troubled Sunrise Records. He became a significant global player in the recorded music bricks-and-mortar space when he subsequently bought HMV UK. He has confounded sceptics who thought that online

“They are unfashionable businesses, for sure, but they do fantastically well,” Putman says. “We hit it perfectly with vinyl… and with an explosion in pop culture products in general, whether it’s T-shirts or paraphernalia.”

Putman once said that he didn’t want to invest in anything that didn’t have “unlimited upside.” Does rooms + spaces have that upside? To Putman it does: “I think we’ve got this potential. Are we going to have a large market share in certain areas? No. But I think we can have a good share.”