Stedmans V&S
Stedmans V&S (or V&S for short) is a Canadian variety discount department store chain.
| Discount store chain | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1907 |
| Headquarters | Winnipeg, Manitoba |
| Products | Clothing, grocery, footwear, bedding, beauty products, and housewares. |
| Parent | Tru Serv Canada Inc./Rona |
| Website | http://www.truserv.ca/ |
Stedmans operates its stores mainly in smaller towns and cities in Canada. The chain's stores today are comparable in size and merchandise offered to similar chains such as Fields, SAAN (now defunct) and The Bargain! Shop, with a number of stores also offering such services as photo finishing, laminating, faxing and photocopying, and dry cleaning drop-off.
The first store, in Toronto Ontario, started as a stationery store in 1907. During the 1950s and 1960s, there were over 1000 Stedmans and affiliated stores in Canada. The affiliated stores were privately owned variety stores operating under different names, though purchasing through Stedmans. During the late 1960s through the 1970s, there were several stores across Canada that were "combination" stores (that is, Stedmans and its sister chain Macleods Hardware) in operation. Some stores today still contain a restaurant named The Copper Grill.
From about the 1960s into the 1980s, though, many Stedmans stores were also located in larger cities. Those stores were similar in size to those of the K-Mart and Woolco chains, with a large selection of merchandise; those locations often served as anchor tenants for suburban shopping centers and malls.
Stedmans was purchased by Gamble-Skogmo in 1962 from Stedmans Brothers Ltd. Wickes Corporation in 1980, later becoming a wholly owned division of Macleod-Stedmans Inc. and is now a member of the Tru Serv group of companies. Tru Serv Canada was purchased by Rona Hardware in 2011.