‘Thank we for 74 years’: Ten Thousand Villages shutting Canadian corporate stores

January 22, 2020
Business

A long-standing fair-trade amicable craving in Canada will be shutting a doors this year.

Ten Thousand Villages announced Tuesday it will be shutting down a corporate operations in Canada this year, that includes a closure of a dual stores in Winnipeg.

In an refurbish on a website Tuesday, a Mennonite Central Committee — a Winnipeg-based gift that runs many of Canada’s Ten Thousand Villages stores — cited a “challenging sell environment” as a reason for a preference to shiver all remaining company stores in Canada.

The closure also includes Ten Thousand Villages Canada’s conduct bureau and placement centre in New Hamburg, Ont., as good as a online emporium and wholesale operations.

“It is with a heaviest of hearts we announce a closure of a corporate operations of Ten Thousand Villages Canada,” the stores pronounced on a website. “Thank we for 74 years.”

After embarking on what it called an “unsuccessful multi-year sustainability process,” the Mennonite Central Committee pronounced it was forced to announce a closure.

“With thespian changes in a Canadian sell landscape and consumer habits, a sell indication is no longer viable,” executive executive Rick Cober Bauman said in a Tuesday press release.

Ten Thousand Villages had attempted to emanate a marketplace in Canada for domestic products done by artisans in developing countries.

The pierce affects 10 remaining corporate-owned stores opposite Canada, including a dual now handling in Winnipeg. Stores in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick are also set to tighten by a finish of May.

Coffee done by general producers is seen for sale during a Ten Thousand Villages store in Winnipeg. The association stores that are shutting will be liquidating register in a entrance months. (Warren Kay/CBC)

However, a series of Ten Thousand Villages locations in Canada that are owned and operated by apart play — including Manitoba stores in Steinbach and Brandon — will sojourn open.

Ten Thousand Villages U.S. — that operates alone from a Canadian enterprise — is unblushing by a change, a Mennonite Central Committee pronounced in a news release.

The association stores that are shutting will be liquidating register in a entrance months, with a final store shutting by a finish of May.

The proclamation was unhappy news for volunteers and employees like Jobina Westman, who started with Ten Thousand Villages as a proffer 5 years ago and now fills in as acting manager during a Henderson Highway plcae in Winnipeg.

The store has been like a second home for her, she said.

“It’s been only smashing training about offered around a world, and what kind of a disproportion we can make with a dollar,” Westman said.

Acting manager Jobina Westman, who started with Ten Thousand Villages as a proffer 5 years ago, is sad dual Winnipeg locations are among a 10 stores shutting in Canada. (Warren Kay/CBC)

Many of a store’s handmade equipment come with information about who done a item, what materials they used and how purchasing a object supports tellurian satisfactory trade.

“That is only a pleasing square to be means to pass on to a customers,” pronounced Westman.

She pronounced she’s worried about a artisans around a universe who relied on sales during a stores, and hopes business will find other places to buy fair-trade products.

“I unequivocally wish that someone else picks adult a torch, and keeps running.”

The Henderson Highway store where she works will close a doors on Mar 31. The Plaza Drive location, in Winnipeg’s south end, is scheduled to close May 29.

The store’s sell website will also close down on May 29.

The Ten Thousand Villages chain’s origins widen behind to 1946, according to the organization’s website, when American MCC workman Edna Ruth Byler visited volunteers in Puerto Rico who were training sewing classes to assistance urge a lives of women vital in poverty. When she returned to her home in Pennsylvania, she filled her automobile with their elaboration and started offered pieces during churches, parties and sewing circles.

That work stretched to Canada in 1965, a MCC’s Tuesday press recover said, with a initial Ten Thousand Villages store (then famous as Selfhelp Crafts of a World) opening in Altona, Man., in 1972.

The Altona store announced a closure late final year. That followed a closure of 9 other Ten Thousand Villages stores opposite Canada in 2018.

“We’re beholden for a thousands of staff and volunteers who have poured their time and appetite into a method and prophesy of Ten Thousand Villages Canada,” a MCC’s Cober Bauman pronounced in Tuesday’s news release.

“Without these dedicated and ardent group and women, nothing of this would have been possible.”