For the now-defunct chain of department stores in the Midwestern United States, see Marshall Field's

Marshall Field's

Marshall Field & Company was a department store in Chicago, Illinois that grew to become a major chain before being acquired by Macy's Inc...

Fields is a brand of Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 discount stores owned by Hudson's Bay Company

Hudson's Bay Company

The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...

, with 165 locations in British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

, Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

, Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

, Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Yukon

Yukon

Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....

, and Northwest Territories

Northwest Territories

The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...

.

History

The first Fields store was established in Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

 in 1950 by the chain's founder, Joseph Segal. From there, Fields grew to eight stores by the time it opened a store at Capilano Mall

Capilano Mall

Capilano Mall is a shopping mall in the City of North Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. It is located on Marine Drive, near the city's western border with the District of North Vancouver...

 in North Vancouver in 1968, continuing to expand across British Columbia into the 1970s with the acquisitions of several regional retailers (including several small HBC stores in smaller towns). In 1972, Fields purchased a subsidiary chain of hardware stores called Marshall Wells, and after further expansion into Alberta and Saskatchewan, it acquired majority ownership of the Zellers

Zellers

Zellers Inc. is Canada's second-largest chain of mass merchandise discount stores, with locations in communities across Canada. A subsidiary of the Hudson's Bay Company , it has 273 locations across the country....

chain in 1976. Zellers would reverse the takeover a few months later and make Fields and Marshall Wells into its subsidiaries, all of which were partly acquired by HBC in 1978, and fully owned by 1981. Marshall Wells was sold by HBC in 1985, and Fields was moved from a Zellers subsidiary into a full division of HBC in 1988.

Current operations

In contrast with the much larger Zellers stores, the Fields division is intended to be a small format, extreme value retail chain for rural and urban Canadian communities. Hudson's Bay Company has announced an aggressive expansion strategy for Fields, adding 53 new stores in 2006-2007, with another 35 locations planned for 2008. Over the next several years, HBC plans on opening around 800 new stores across Canada. New locations feature the successful Field's "Mini Mart" concept, a new format that will also be rolled out to existing stores.

External links

• Fields website
• Fields History at HBC Corporate website
• http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/business/story.html?id=c2d90912-d90e-4288-82a8-f89063c93e46&k=24611&p=2
• http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/692961/