I visited this store before the demise of Party City, but just like Toys R Us, Party City Canada has outlived its American counterpart. Canadian Tire bought the Canadian operations of Party City back in 2019, and it now mostly exists as a store-within-a-store, but there are still some standalone Party City stores. Interestingly, Canadian Tire announced a few days ago that they were buying the Hudson's Bay brand, so I wonder if they're going to do a similar store-within-a-store arrangement there. (If Canadian Tire starts selling clothes, they'll really be like the Sears of old!)
This reminds me quite a bit of Party City's extremely short lived store-within-a-store partnership with Winn-Dixie, which only made it into one Winn-Dixie as far as I'm aware (the new Apopka store): https://shorturl.at/eQNLe
ReplyDeleteOther than that deal with Winn-Dixie, I can't think of any other similar examples of a store-within-a-store partnership with the US Party City chain. Interestingly, I was back in the Apopka area during the time of the US Party City's liquidation, and stopped by that Winn-Dixie. Its Party City department, like the parent chain, was having a department-wide liquidation at 50% off during my visit, so that went down with the parent company too. I haven't been back since then, but I wonder what Winn-Dixie will end up doing what that space now that Party City is gone (the Apopka store is a go-forward location for WD too, so hopefully it will become something more than empty space).
There's something fitting about two struggling chains partnering like that! It will be interesting to see what C&S does with the remaining Winn-Dixies, and how much they're willing to invest in stores like that.
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