Buy Canadian movement sours sales at one Edmonton candy store

Globe and Mail

16 hours ago

The business model for Laurie Radostits's Edmonton candy store made sense when it opened a little more than a decade ago: bring the city products that were rarely seen in Canada.
It is also part of the reason that, in March, she nearly had to close down.
Sweet Convenience's shelves are a colourful garden of treats, cereals and sodas: PayDay candy bars, chocolate chip pancake Pop-Tarts, vanilla Coke. The common denominator? They're American.
Before President Donald Trump initiated a trade war with Canada, Sweet Convenience fed a craving for American products that were difficult to find elsewhere.
Since Mr. Trump introduced the tariffs that have targeted Canadian products, those cravings have been overtaken by a patriotic desire to spend money on more Canadian-produced goods.
But Ms. Radostits soon learned that, to some, 'Buy Canadian' did not necessarily mean support Canadian businesses, particularly if their products didn't bear a Canadian flag.
When the one-two punch of tariffs and 'Buy Canadian' landed against Sweet Convenience in February and March, Ms. Radostits said she felt 'lots of panic.'
She had only felt that worried during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, when she faced problems sourcing cross-border products.
'We've been through COVID. Okay. Can we get through Trump?'
In the past, customers had requested Ms. Radostits special order their favourite American treats. But in late February and March, some were asking her to remove U.S. products from her store shelves. If she did cut her American products, she estimated 90 per cent of her stock would be eliminated.
Trying to get a step ahead of tariffs, Ms. Radostits stockpiled inventory to maintain pretariff prices for as long as possible. In hindsight, it was a bad business move.
She was met with an unexpected 'Buy Canadian' boom. Her sales dwindled and she could not pay the rent, although she was able to make a deal with the landlord to keep the store open. The small Canadian business was, ironically, suffering from an unofficial campaign to support Canadian businesses.
'Support Canadian and Buy Canadian are very different,' she argues.
At her most dire moment, Ms. Radostits made an online plea for customers to buy from the shop in April, suggesting the store would otherwise have to close.
The candy shop's fan base and former patrons returned and carried the business through Easter. While that wave has since ebbed, it hasn't disappeared. She's not as worried about having to close, but the fear remains.
Sweet Convenience is enduring a 'double squeeze,' said Melise Panetta, a marketing lecturer at the Lazaridis School of Business at Wilfrid Laurier University who has also held senior positions at large consumer companies like PepsiCo. and S.C. Johnson.
The candy store is dealing with the rising cost of operations and goods that other retailers are facing, but is also losing out to the Buy Canadian consumer sentiment that other Canadian retailers are seeing as a benefit.
'Even if it's a local business owned by local individuals – and even if it's cherished – they could still be at risk of having the negative perception of the products that they carry over to their overall retail image,' Ms. Panetta said.
There are other stores dotted across Canada that, like Sweet Convenience, carry American treats. At Snack Passport, in Barrie, Ont., owner Jenna MacIsaac said U.S. products made up about 80 per cent of the store's revenue. That has since dropped to less than 20 per cent, she said.
Ms. MacIsaac said the store rarely brings in American products now.
An analysis from the Angus Reid Institute in February found 48 per cent of Canadians had already replaced, or planned to replace, U.S. products with Canadian alternatives.
Sweet Convenience's unique situation is also a test of consumers' tolerance for American products though, Ms. Panetta warned, that shunning a domestic retailer has negative effects on the Canadian economy.
'That's still people that are working in our local economy. They are contributing to the local economy, and they're Canadians.'
Ms. Radostits defends stocking American products by saying her profits stay in Canada because most of her orders come through Canadian third-party importers.
The prices for some of her products have risen, but she has also tried a new strategy to make the price changes seem more subtle.
Instead of raising prices on familiar items, where customers may visibly notice a price spike, she has chosen to order products she hasn't stocked before. That way, customers won't feel inclined to compare prices even if the new items are also subject to tariffs. It's a more subtle sticker shock.
Ms. Radostits has also started labelling U.S.-licensed items to show if they had been made elsewhere, like Mexico or the Netherlands. She is also considering ordering a wider variety of foreign items, including from places in Europe.
'I don't want to go that route, so I'm kind of hoping something will change soon,' Ms. Radostits said. European products are a niche, she said, that has already been taken.
Ms. Panetta, however, said choosing other countries might be the safer option and recommends the store could also start marking tariffed items with a 'T' like grocery retailer Loblaws has done.