Originally the Canadian department store chain business used to operate under the brand "The Bay" and for 50 years it remained until 2013, when it was rebranded to be called "Hudson Bay" with a modernized logo. Now in 2021, only the E-commerce business department will be rebranded as "The Bay".
The Hudson Bay's ultimate goal is to seperate its retail store business with its e-commerce and run them as two separate businesses entity. The 86 retail stores will remain under the "Hudson Bay" brand while the E-commerce business will run under "The Bay" brand.
There could be various reasons why the name change occurs and only those insiders will truly know the exact reason why. Whereas it is open for speculation as to why the name change has happened recently.
Probably Hudson Bay is trying to recreate it's once glorious image before the onslaught by newer and cheaper bigbox rivals such as Walmart, Sephora, Shoppers Drugmart, Macy's, Canadiantire, Nordstrom, Amazon, Home Depot and other businesses. Hudson Bay wants to stay relevant in the minds of the customers and updates its products and images as "keeping up with modernization". After all, this company had remained one of the oldest company and was in dire need of rebranding and reinventing itself to keep up with the change and taste of ever evolving customers.
Many other companies rebrand themselves too such as "Virgin mobile" is now called "Virgin Plus". Facebook is now called "Meta". It doesn't necessarily means that those companies are bringing in a new line of products. It could be that they are attempting to erase itself from its past bad image that could potentially harms its future.
So by rebranding its name, the customers could once again put their trust in the company. The main purpose is to minimise it's bad reputation past and build itself up for a better future brand. Even if the Hudson Bay doesn't have a bad past, it may be having weaker than expected sales due to the current tough retail competition and atmosphere.
It is becoming evident that "The Bay" had finally committed its resources into building a strong online E-commerce business. It has geared itself up to directly compete with online giants like Amazon, Walmart, Target to name a few. It could also have come to the realization that online businesses gives a better profit margin return compared to retail store business, because of lesser overhead costs and transportation costs.
