Walmart Canada now offers free delivery on walmart.ca for products such as health, beauty, household, and grocery items. This comes as another move by a Canadian retailer to grow their e-commerce sales, following Amazon’s recently launched free delivery service.  According to a report by Retail Net Group, Canada’s e-commerce market is currently underdeveloped compared to rival markets, as non-store sales make up only 2.3 per cent of total retail sales.

“It is possible that Canada could be serving as a test market for [Walmart’s] new free shipping policy on consumables. If this proves to increase sales and remain profitable, it could develop into a new industry standard,” states Retail Net Group’s report.

The service that Walmart Canada offers ships to most locations in Canada with standard shipping. The website states that some purchases might have shipping costs, which are charged based on the item’s size and weight, the shipping method, and the delivery address. Customers can also choose between the options of picking up the delivery from the nearest Canada Post location or have the order delivered to their home.

Walmart Canada finalized a deal to purchase two privately held Canadian logistics companies on July 1. The companies in question are trucking company Translogic Express Dedicated Inc. and SCM, a distribution centre operator.
Both companies have worked with Walmart Canada for 20 years. According to Andrew Pelletier, vice president of corporate affairs and sustainability at Walmart Canada, company employees will be unaffected by the deal, although they will now be considered employees of Walmart.
Walmart Canada is in the works to complete 35 supercentres in 2014, though Pelletier is using these acquisitions to focus on distribution and transportation growth.
“What it’s really going to allow us to do, by having this in-house as part of Walmart, is to take the best practices these two great companies have already helped us master and shore those with the rest of our international operation and make it easier for us to take best practices from our international operations around the world and bring them to Canada,” says Pelletier. “By bringing them in-house, it just makes this process easier to do.”

According to a study in the journal PLOS ONE, the occurrence of testosterone replacement therapy use in men in Ontario aged 66 and older rose 310 per cent between 1997 and 2012, despite a lack of evidence stating that the treatment is safe or effective.

“In 2012, we found that approximately one of every 90 older men in Ontario was being treated with a testosterone product, which is very high,” says Tara Gomes, lead author of the study and a scientist at the Institute for Clinical and Evaluative Sciences and St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, where the study was conducted.

Since 2006, the only instance in which testosterone treatments are reimbursed by Ontario’s drug plan is in patients diagnosed with hypogonadism, a condition where the body does not produce enough testosterone due to a problem in the testes or the pituitary gland, although only six per cent of men who were taking testosterone had been diagnosed with the condition.

“We did see an initial drop in the use of the products, four to six months after this policy came into place, but it quickly changed direction after that time, and by 2010 the rates had far exceeded what they were at any other previous point in the study period,” says Gomes.

Drug companies have promoted testosterone products as a way to keep hormone levels up during the aging process. Low testosterone levels can cause a loss of libido, lack of energy, reduced muscle mass, mood swings and disturbed sleep.

Meanwhile, evidence suggests that testosterone replacement therapies could raise the risk of heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular problems in some men. Health Canada has responded by issuing an advisory alerting the public that it is updating safety information about the testosterone products available for sale in Canada, although the studies remain inconclusive.

The Vitamin Shoppe has announced plans to submit all its product labels to the National Institutes of Health Dietary Supplement Label Database in order to provide transparency. The dietary supplement vendors will submit the product labels to the DSLD by the end of next year and request certification.

“I think any time a company is doing something that is making their processes and ingredients more transparent to the consumer and making it easier for consumers to negotiate the industry, that is a good thing,” the Council of Responsible Nutrition CEO Steve Mister says.

The database, a collaboration between the Office of Dietary Supplements and National Library of Medicine, currently has data on approximately 30,000 products. This number increases by 1,000 every month.

“Consumers desire and value product transparency, and the Vitamin Shoppe is leading the initiative to provide consumers with the information they want,” says Vitamin Shoppe CEO Tony Truesdale.

Nutrition labels may be changing in Edmonton after Minister of Health Rona Ambrose presented a proposal to ensure grocery members will make labels an effective tool to help Canadians make the best food choices. The Retail Council of Canada supports the initiative.
According to Health Canada, changes include indicating both total sugars and added sugars on nutrition tables. Suggested serving sizes would also be more consistent.
“Retail Council of Canada welcomes the national review of nutrition labeling policy announced today by Minister of Health Rona Ambrose and looks forward to participating in upcoming consultation,” says David Wilkes, Retail Council of Canada senior VP of government relations and grocery division. “RCC and its members believe that it is important to provide Canadian consumers with relevant, consistent and meaningful information to help make informed food choices. The Canadian Nutrition Facts table has been a key tool in providing this information to Canadians and the government’s commitment to updating Nutrition Facts information is an important and vital initiative.”
According to Ambrose, there will be a series of online, public consultations available on the proposals, which are set to run until September 11.

Galen Weston is replacing Vicente Trius as Loblaw president effective immediately, in a move to shake up the company’s management structure. Weston, currently the executive chairman of Loblaw, will continue in that role while adding new responsibilities as president.

Trius is reportedly returning to Brazil for family reasons. He was a former executive at Walmart Brazil and Asia and moved to Loblaw in 2012.

“For eight years, Galen has been the executive chairman of the company. In that role, he is the architect of the company’s strategic vision. Now, adding the president role to his responsibilities, he is stepping closer to the execution of the strategy. Galen is not only deeply knowledgeable about all aspects of the business, he is surrounded by seasoned retail executives,” says Kevin Groh, vice president, corporate affairs and communications at Loblaw. “Loblaw Companies is a large and complex company. We are now a bank, a real estate business, and a retailer with presence in discount supermarket, full-service supermarket, drug store, wholesale, emerging categories and apparel options. The business has evolved and, with this announcement, so too has our executive team.”

In other Loblaw Companies news, Shoppers Drug Mart president Domenic Pilla will leave his post by the end of this year. Mike Motz, who is currently Loblaw’s executive vice-president and chief merchandising officer, will succeed him in the role.

“Domenic is leaving as he would like to continue his career by pursuing opportunities to lead a widely-held public company, and we are respectful of his decision,” says Weston in a statement.

Cincinnati-based grocery chain Kroger announced price reductions on 10,000 items, investing millions of dollars to ensure prices are dropped in stores. The price cuts started being implemented on June 11 and have continued over the following weeks. The products with newly reduced costs were chosen based on customer demand so that all customers benefit from the reductions. The retailer released a statement that the price-reduction “includes a significant number of lower prices in produce, natural foods and organics, reinforcing a rapid increase in natural foods sales over the last decade.”

“With the economic downturn in 2008, the Kroger Co. responded by reducing prices throughout our stores, benefiting both our customers and associates,” says Kroger spokesman Tim McGurk. “We continue to leverage our scale as one of the largest retailers in the world to work with suppliers to reduce costs, and in turn pass those savings along to our customers.”

Despite common belief that giant retailers are bad for independent and small local retailers, a new study suggests that big retailers and small business actually help each other.

The study was conducted by Raffaekka Sadun, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, and looked into circumstances in British retail where big-box stores were closed or banned in certain communities, causing small businesses to suffer. This was credited to the giant retail chains opening smaller stores, similar to Canadian Tire’s “Express” stores, in downtown neighbourhoods where independent stores are usually located, instead of a big store located on the outskirts of town.

“In the areas with the big stores you see employment growth,” says Sadun. “You don’t see this killing effect on the small shops.”

Janet Jacks of Hamilton, ON, opened Goodness Me when her husband Scott was diagnosed with diabetes and was unable to find natural organic food in the area.

After the first store opened in 1981, new stores in Hamilton and Burlington followed in the late 1990s, followed recently by two more in Waterdown and Brantford. The sixth store in Mississauga, along with Guelph and Barrie stores this fall is planned to bring in greater success, with a Waterloo store to open in 2015.

“It is probably our most beautiful store yet,” says Katie Mitton, marketing director at the Mississauga location. “When you walk in, you just feel like you’re engulfed by this wonderful, natural atmosphere.” The 24,000 square foot store is the chain’s largest so far.

“We had a lot of customers who came from Mississauga to our Burlington store, so we decided to go there to help serve the community and be part of the customer base, because we were being asked for it,” says Mitton.

Goodness Me offers a large variety of products, from organic produce, baked goods, snacks and pet food to cleaning supplies and makeup, as well as an eatery and a classroom for healthy eating classes. The Mississauga location opened on July 10.

The Canadian Environmental Law Association found that two antibacterial chemicals found in consumer products might need to be banned in Canada. The two chemicals, called triclosan and triclocarban, are used in products such as hand soap, plastic food containers, toothpaste, body wash and more, as there are approximately 1,600 products containing triclosan sold in Canada. The report condemned the chemicals, suggesting that Canada and the U.S as well as provinces and states bordering the Great Lakes should ban the chemicals found extensively in the waterway. The study looked at the chemicals’ impact on 18 different human health and environmental factors, including toxicity, endocrine activity, eye irritation and skin sensitivity.

Canadian federal government released a preliminary report on triclosan two years ago, stating that the chemical is not harmful to human health but can harm the environment when used in significant amounts.