Duane Hicks
While the loonie briefly rallied to the 77-cent (U.S.) mark last week, financial experts are projecting the Canadian dollar will stay low in 2016—dipping as low as 65 cents.
As a result, some residents have had to cut back on their cross-border shopping in the past year.
But are local merchants benefitting from residents staying north of the border? Many say yes.
Richard Boileau of McTaggarts said the benefit has been two-fold.
“We see people all the time, but maybe we see them a little bit more now,” he noted.
“Instead of maybe going down somewhere in the States and shopping, they’re obviously shopping here, whether it be for a big item or even just for a T-shirt to wear out to the beach last summer,” Boileau said.
“A lot more Christmas presents were bought locally, I think.
“We’re hearing the comment from a lot of people that haven’t been in our store before: ‘Oh, I didn’t know you guys have all this stuff! I don’t have to go out of town; I didn’t realize you had this stuff,’” Boileau added.
“That’s one of the biggest positives—we’re getting new people experiencing what we have to offer in the store.”
The second part is that Scott Street has been drawing more shoppers from International Falls.
“They’re coming into our store, actually coming into downtown Fort Frances, for the first time and saying, ‘I didn’t realize you had so many stores downtown,’” Boileau noted.
“It’s kind of amazing these people have never been in downtown Fort Frances before,” he added.
“They may drive through here to go fishing or something, but they take Church Street and never go down Scott Street.”
But now those shoppers are coming into McTaggarts and discovering they don’t have to go to Duluth to get quality clothing, noted Boileau.
“They’re discovering Fort Frances,” he enthused. “They’re discovering what we actually have to offer, they’re coming into the stores, they’re thinking, ‘I can everything I want here locally.’”
Shopping local not only keeps people employed, said Boileau, but it supports businesses which, in turn, support local charities and sports teams through donations and sponsorship.
There’s also the advantage of being able to return items and get customer service you can trust, he added.
Blair Anderson of Betty’s agreed the low loonie not only has helped retain Canadian shoppers, but drawn new U.S. ones who are enjoying more bang for their buck at Canadian stores.
Betty’s sells a wide array of merchandise from clothing to books to fabrics, with Anderson saying it’s hard to pinpoint what’s been selling the most.
But he did add that Betty’s will be expanding its quilting supplies in the near future.
“We started noticing it before September when the loonie started dropping,” echoed Canadian Tire owner John Malgo.
He noted local shoppers are buying more of everything at Canadian Tire.
“We’re surprisingly pretty even in our increase across the board,” Malgo remarked.
“No one area of the business is outpacing the other.”
Malgo also said it’s important that businesses do their best to build customer loyalty now so that shoppers think twice about outshopping in the future.
“My thoughts are if you have more footprints, you try to do a better job while they’re in your store so that next time they need something, it’s not automatic that they go to the States,” he reasoned.
The U.S. dollar being worth more has not resulted in more U.S. customers shopping at Canadian Tire, however.
“It’s been my experience U.S. customers just buy what they cannot legally bring into Canada and that’s it,” said Malgo.
“We’re definitely busier,” said Brad Houghton of North American Lumber, adding that change has occurred gradually over the past year as the loonie has declined in value vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar.
“More people are definitely getting prices here before they run across,” he noted.
There’s some people who will shop across no matter what the exchange rate was, admitted Houghton, but others now are taking the time to comparison shop before immediately going over the border.
Kevin Langford, store manager at Canada Safeway here, also said he’s “definitely” noticed a difference in the past year.
“I think there’s an increase in traffic,” he noted, adding the increase can be attributed to both Canadians who are “staying at home,” as well as new U.S. shoppers.
“It’s a good thing,” said Langford, who’s been here eight years and seen the loonie rise and fall again and again.
