The former Fields store in downtown Squamish will re-open under a new banner on Sept. 14.
Red Apple is a new brand being rolled out by Mississauga, Ont.-based The Bargain Shop!, the company that acquired the rights to the space formerly occupied by Fields in Squamish in July, The Bargain Shop spokesperson Tracy Mikita said on Thursday (Aug. 23).
The Squamish store is to be one of the first 10 stores to bear the Red Apple name and logo beginning Sept. 14. Twenty-one other stores in western Canada are to be re-branded as Red Apple stores by the end of September, she said. The plan is to eventually re-brand all of The Bargain Shop stores in western Canada as Red Apple stores.
"The focus from a merchandising perspective is to offer our customers newer products and more selection," Mikita said. "We're moving it up a notch in terms of what the customer can expect.
"Our goal is to eventually evolve [from The Bargain Shop!] to Red Apple in western Canada. This will continue to evolve over the next few years as we make that transition."
Hbc, which owned the Fields store chain, announced earlier this year that it was closing all of its stores across the country. A new Vancouver-based company, FHC, subsequently announced its acquisition of 57 of the stores in western Canada, with plans to keep them open under the Fields banner. The Squamish store was not among those, but was instead acquired by The Bargain Shop!
Squamish previously had a Bargain Shop in the Chieftain Mall. Though the Red Apple name is a new brand for its parent company, the Saan chain - which declared bankruptcy and went defunct in 2008 - operated a small chain called Red Apple Clearance Centres, according to Wikipedia.
The Squamish Red Apple store will likely employ between 12 and 15 people, Mikita said.
