People are talking about Bonnie Brooks’ voice.
The chief executive officer of the Bay is a regular fixture on radio, shilling for her department store. Her voice has become as familiar to many listeners as that of regular announcers.
This fall she gave it a break, handing over the task to designers whose products are featured at the Bay. But she’ll be back on air for the make-or-break holiday shopping season.
“A couple of people think that my voice is low and raspy,” Ms. Brooks says with a deep laugh over lunch at a packed Great Cooks on Eight, on the eighth floor of the downtown Toronto building that houses the Bay’s flagship store. “Other people think it’s quite sexy. It depends on the listener. … The more you put yourself out in front of the public, the more you open yourself up to opinions.”
She’s front and centre in the race to breathe new life into the tired retailer, the country’s oldest. Handpicked for the top job more than two years ago by the Bay’s new U.S. owner, she’s focused on raising the Bay’s cool quotient.
The early signs are encouraging. Wrapping herself in the Canadian flag, she’s riding the Olympics wave that parent Hudson’s Bay Co. enjoyed as the official sponsor of the Canadian team, drawing customers back into the stores. They’re shelling out 10 to 15 per cent more on purchases this year compared with last, and the retailer’s estimated $2.2-billion of annual sales could rise 10 per cent in 2010, she says. Now HBC has snared international trademark rights to its multicoloured stripes to sell its signature blankets and other merchandise abroad.
Last month, the Room, an upscale fashion boutique within the flagship outlet, caught the attention of the influential Huffington Post. It enthused about star designers, including Erdem Moralioglu, who were among the 800 guests at a lavish British-themed event. This week, Thakoon Panichgul, a favourite of style-setter Michelle Obama, held court at the Room, which Ms. Brooks steered through a $5-million facelift.
But Ms. Brooks still faces daunting challenges in an age of a declining traditional department-store segment and a wobbly economy.
On this day at Great Cooks, she strides into the eatery and settles in at her reserved corner table by the floor-to-ceiling windows with a stunning view of Old City Hall.
A globe-trotting foodie, she’s got designs to beef up food offerings and all things culinary in her stores. This restaurant, which multitasks as a cooking school, is a symbol of how she envisions the Bay evolving into a trendy hot-spot for professional and business types who can afford to shop at her stores.
As she mulls over what to order, she tells the story of a Bay Street lawyer who took cooking classes this summer at Great Cooks. He then dashed downstairs to the department store and dropped $90,000 on high-end Wolf kitchen appliances. “It was the biggest single appliance purchase we ever had.”
Ms. Brooks is used to thinking big. She climbed quickly in the corporate world, moving from clothing retailer Fairweather to luxury chain Holt Renfrew before leaving the country to head another staid department store, Hong Kong-based Lane Crawford Joyce Group. There, she used some of the same tactics that she’s applying at the Bay to turn it around: introducing an array of with-it brands, ditching old ones and putting a spotlight on high-margin shoes and handbags.
“I’ve been lucky in my career,” she says, as she savours her roasted-pear salad with arugula, pumpkin and Piave cheese. “I’ve never asked for the next job, the next level. It always happened, kind of naturally.”
She asks the waiter to replace her cranberry juice with one diluted with sparkling water, as she had ordered, just a slight reflection of her doggedness in getting things done her way. “I always have a game plan in mind. I always knew where I wanted to end up. … I really only knew I could have a quest to be the best.”
Fashion was a natural fit, having inherited a flair for it from her mother in London, Ont, where she and her two older sisters were raised. Her mother sewed their clothes, sparking Ms. Brooks to follow suit.
