Bye bye Target Canada: Last bits of inventory go to auction

It’s the last stop for unsold Target merchandise.

Northern Auction Service, based in Milton, Ont., is the kind of place that represents the end of a long road for the mountains of forsaken bras, kids clothing, pet food and kitchenware that have gone unsold during Target Canada’s liquidation sales.

Owner Ken Vierimaa has served as the overseer of this retail outpost for more than a decade, auctioning off inventory for store owners who are moving locations, need cash for fresher product or have gone bust.

Target’s brief two-year foray into Canada has provided a rare and sustained windfall. The U.S. retailer’s persistent operational troubles has produced a steady stream of fresh merchandise for Canada’s liquidation market place – where national retailers turn to consign stale or dated products that have sat on store shelves a touch too long.

“The whole market is flooded with their stuff,” Vierimaa, 40, said. “Ever since they’ve been here they’ve been doing it, and now since they’ve closed, there’s really an abundance of their stuff.”

Outside of the legal wrangling of Target Canada’s court proceedings, auctions like the kind Vierimaa holds each Thursday afternoon represent the end-game for the U.S. retailer’s historic collapse north of the border. The final touch-point between shoppers and the remnants of the failed Canadian chain.

Get weekly money news

Get expert insights, Q&A on markets, housing, inflation, and personal finance information delivered to you every Saturday.

Sign up for weekly money newsletter Sign Up

By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Ramping up?

As Target’s legal wind-up moves forward, the retailer’s liquidation partners, Gordon Brothers Group, Hilco Global and Great American Group appear to be quickening the pace of merchandise disposal, looking to squeeze whatever they can from what’s left.

Reports this week suggest that a defunct “national retailer” has delivered a sizable amount of unsold merchandise — hundreds of pallets (or skids), carrying everything from new appliances to tools to bed linens — to a liquidation auction house in Langley, B.C.

Back in southern Ontario, Vierimaa says there’s rumblings of a similar sale forthcoming for roughly 400 pallets, or 20 trailers worth of goods. That kind of volume is too much for Northern Auction Service and its 5,000-square-foot sales floor, and whoever is handling the sale isn’t being overt about it.

MORE: Complete coverage of Target’s collapse in Canada

Tail end

Some suggest the sales are small potatoes, with most of Target’s merchandise selling out during liquidation sales held across all 133 stores between February and mid-April.

“My understanding is that they’re winding up the tail end of their inventory,” said Rob Roberts, head of Channel Control Merchants LLC, a company that has helped sell Target Canada’s unsold merchandise.

Roberts suggested the Langley auction, which is scheduled to take place on May 23, is for merchandise that may have never seen a store, products that were originally intended for Target but are now “stuck at port.”

While Target may have been the original recipient, it’s just as likely that the “national retailer” being advertised is actually “Company XYZ” from China who now wants to sell off the product and move on, Roberts said.

Suggestions that it’s Target behind the sale have helped garner media attention, Roberts said, raising the profile of a routine auction that otherwise “would be a yawner.”