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Giant Tiger Stores Limited is a Canadian discount store chain which operates over 260 stores across Canada. The company's stores operate under the Giant Tiger banner in Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan; under the GTExpress and Scott's Discount banners in Ontario and under the Tigre Géant banner in Quebec.
As of 2021, the chain reported annual sales of roughly $2 billion and employed about 10,000 people."Giant Tiger discount chain growing". Toronto Star. May 11, 2021, p. B2. Its headquarters are located on Walkley Road in Ottawa. In 2018, the company opened a distribution centre in Johnstown, halfway between Montreal and Toronto, at the intersection of Ontario's Highway 401 and Highway 416.
It is a participant in the voluntary Scanner Price Accuracy Code managed by the Retail Council of Canada.
Reid reports that he was also inspired by Frank Woolworth’s continent-wide success, half a century earlier, in creating hundreds of profitable Five-and-Dime stores. Reid’s own retail experience, dating back to his first job as a teenager, had been in department stores rather than in discount,"Profiting from the bargain basement," in The Enterpriser, (Ottawa), vol. 4, no. 5 (1981). but his mother had worked behind the luncheon counter at a Woolworth’s in downtown Montreal.Vito Pilieci, "New CEO grabs Tiger by the tail", Ottawa Citizen, October 15, 2010.
Reid stated, four decades later, that he had believed, even at this early stage, that it would be possible to build a Canada-wide chain based on this model. Asked by a reporter whether he had ever imagined that Giant Tiger would eventually have the success it was then enjoying, Reid stated, "Yes. That was the original intention. The idea for the business came when I was a travelling salesman. I saw the discounters growing. My original inspiration was the F. W. Woolworth Co., obviously that was a big chain. So this was always the plan.""Giant Tiger founder shares secrets of 38-year success" (interview with Gordon Reid). Ottawa Business Journal. September 20, 1999, p. 7.
Because the chain most often has been shoehorned into existing spaces now too small for the major big-box store or hypermarket chains, individual store managers are given wide leeway in ordering decisions and are free to devote their limited floor space to items which sell well in their local market. This flexibility, and a distribution system in which stores are restocked daily, allows stores to "pull" only the inventory they immediately need and facilitates greater turnover per square foot of scarce retail space.
In 2010, Reid reported that the issuing of no-cost franchises to experienced retailers "was a great way to get experienced people. Over the years we had a lot come from Woolworth, Kresge, Kmart and later Zellers." In the same interview, Reid stated that over twenty Giant Tiger franchises are now run by former Walmart employees, most of whom had been attracted by the same franchise system that he had introduced decades earlier.
Although the store survived, expansion was slow. A second location, in the small town of Brockville, was not opened until 1965. By the time, of the company's tenth anniversary, in 1971, it still had only six stores.
As of 2018, there are 230 stores, the most recent three being opened on October 12, 2018, in Saskatoon, Windsor and Hamilton. The 2015, withdrawal of Target Canada from the marketplace presented an expansion opportunity for Giant Tiger. Its first acquisition of a Target store occurred in Fergus, Ontario, where of an approximately large Target store was acquired by Giant Tiger. This location opened in the spring of 2016.
The chain has undertaken a major expansion in the Greater Toronto Area since 2005. It has opened seven stores in Bradford, Brampton, Markham (now closed), Newmarket, Scarborough and Etobicoke.
The 200th Giant Tiger store opened in Nova Scotia in October 2010.
In 2004, Giant Tiger opened a single store in Potsdam, New York, its first (and only) in the United States. This store closed during the Great Recession in 2009.
Between 2001 and 2020, The North West Company operated all of Giant Tiger's locations in western Canada under a single master franchise agreement. In March 2020, The North West Company announced that it would sell 34 of its 46 franchises to Giant Tiger, while closing six underperforming locations, maintaining five in northern markets, and converting one (Prince Albert) to a different banner.
In 1996, the Scott's Discount brand was launched as an alternative format for smaller stores.
In 2008, Giant Tiger opened its first GT Xpress outlet at a former Giant Tiger location in Ottawa's Hintonburg neighbourhood. GT Xpress stores are intended to service less mobile residents of densely populated neighbourhoods, so that residents will not have to leave the neighbourhood to shop at a big-box store. Because larger retail spaces are unavailable in such inner-city neighbourhoods, the merchandise selection at GTXpress stores is more limited than at a full-size Giant Tiger, let alone a big-box store. Traditional lines of Giant Tiger merchandise are further restricted to free up space for an expanded produce, dairy, deli and bakery section. Effectively, a GTXpress store is a discount version of a convenience store, characterized by a "focus on what the customer needs today, as opposed to carrying what the customer wants." As the ethnic makeup of individual inner-city neighbourhoods is likely to differ substantially, franchise owner at each GTXpress outlet will have the authority to tailor "product lines to cater to ethnic diversity in the area."" Giant Tiger reopens community hub". Archived Ottawa Citizen, March 15, 2008.
On May 31, 1996, Giant Tiger purchased and took possession of a distribution centre on Walkley Road in Ottawa, previously occupied by Sears Canada. The company's headquarters moved to this location later the same year.
In December 2005, Giant Tiger opened a new distribution centre for frozen and refrigerated products in Brockville, Ontario.
In 2018, the company opened a distribution centre in Johnstown, halfway between Montreal and Toronto, at the intersection of Ontario's Highway 401 and Highway 416.
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