Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 04, 2014, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE B6 BUSINESS EDITOR: SHANE MINKIN 204- 697- 7308 business@ freepress. mb. ca I MARKET DETAILS B7 I winnipegfreepress. com TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2014 B 6 THE northwestern Ontario community of Sioux Lookout lost one of its biggest boosters and leading businessmen on the weekend with the unexpected death of longtime Bearskin Airlines president Harvey Friesen. Friesen died while on vacation in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 65. His death came just one month after he and his brother, Cliff, who had helped him build Bearskin from a small, northern float- plane operation into one of the country's most successful regional commuter airlines, had retired from their executive positions with the company. Although the brothers sold the airline to Winnipeg's Exchange Income Corp. in late 2010 for $ 32.5 million, they and their management team continued to run it on behalf of Exchange Income until the end of last December. Although Harvey Friesen was best known as the co- owner and president of Bearskin, his business and community activities in northwestern Ontario went far beyond that. Hotel owner, residential developer, community sports leader, philanthropist and fundraiser extraordinaire were some of the other hats he wore during his 30- plus years in the community, Sioux Lookout Mayor Dennis Leney said Monday. " There is nobody in this town that wasn't touched by what Harvey has done in all the time he's been here," Leney said, noting Friesen played a leading role in the local fundraising efforts that led to the construction three years ago of the community's new $ 140- million, 60- bed hospital - the Meno Ya Win Health Centre. Friesen was also a strong supporter of local sports teams and the local curling club, Leney said. And he and Cliff were active supporters of Hope Air, the national charity dedicated to arranging free air transportation for Canadians who are in financial need and require medical care outside their community. " Thousands have flown on Bearskin for nothing. You couldn't count them all." The mayor and Exchange Income Corp. president and CEO Mike Pyle said Friesen's death from an apparent heart attack came as a total surprise. " I've never known him to have health problems," Leney said. " He was a very active man." Pyle described Friesen as " very much a big part of the small- airline business. He sat on various industry associations and those kinds of things." A native of Warman, Sask., Friesen joined Bearskin as a pilot in 1970, bought a 50 per cent share in the company two years later and became majority owner and president in 1977 - the same year Bearskin added its first scheduled route. Cliff became a part owner and company executive vice- president the following year, and the two began expanding their air service west into Manitoba and as far east as Ottawa. At its peak in 2003, the airline had more than 430 employees and operated over 200 flights daily to more than 40 destinations in the two provinces. murray. mcneill@ freepress. mb. ca OBITUARY HARVEY FRIESEN Bearskin president boosted his region By Murray McNeill TORONTO - Canadian retailers are taking steps to counteract what they see as the ultimate betrayal - customers who browse and inspect items in their stores before they buy online from a competitor for less. It's a practice called " showrooming," and analysts expect the industry to shift more energy this year toward reshaping the role that bricks- and- mortar stores play in getting customers to spend money. " This is the year of action," said Jim Danahy, chief executive at CustomerLab, a retail advisory firm, and a veteran retailer himself. " All these retailers are now struggling to hit that balance." Danahy has watched the traditional retail space fall out of favour with some customers and says executives have been searching for new ways to keep people both walking into their stores and walking out with product. A survey released last fall by consulting firm Accenture found nearly two- thirds of respondents planned to visit traditional stores to browse gifts over the Christmas shopping season but then ultimately buy them online. What retailers want is to stop those shoppers in their tracks and ease them toward the cash register with incentives. One of this year's first steps comes from telecom giant Rogers, which will unveil a partnership today with mall operator RioCan that uses locationbased smartphone technology to send customers special offers. The Mobile Shopper application marks an early step in the process of intercepting customers during the shopping process. The voluntary program lets customers sign up to receive targeted offers and gives them the ability to pay for products directly from the device. " Down to an individual section in the store, we can trigger something different," said Mansell Nelson, vicepresident of advanced business solutions at Rogers. " It's about how we give retail businesses in Canada a platform to better communicate with their customers when they're in- store and out of the store." Mobile Shopper will launch at select RioCan malls in Ontario by the middle of this year, Nelson said. The perception of exclusive offers and discounts now is expected by shoppers, who have grown accustomed to chasing the lowest price amid the deep discounts at big- box stores and constant sales at overstocked clothing retailers. Already, retail chains such as Best Buy and Target Canada have jumped on aggressive price strategies that not only match competitors, but also tack on an extra five to 10 per cent discount. While customers used to fumble to present ad flyers as evidence of a lower product prices, a growing number of retailers now accept a quick glimpse of a competitor's website by a staff member to match the price. Those types of discounts will only be part of the strategy. Other major changes will affect the design of stores and the number of employees who work at each location, said Daniel Baer, a retail analyst at Ernst and Young. " People who are buying online are not going to stores as much, and that means revisiting the business model," he said. " Retailers won't look at their store as a traditional bricks- and- mortar store, but as a distribution centre, or part and parcel of their e- commerce strategy." During the past few months, evidence of the changes has become apparent at big names such as Best Buy Canada and Canadian Tire Corp. Last week, Best Buy announced it would show 950 employees the door as it reduced its layers of management at Best Buy and Future Shop locations. The retailer has put more energy into its " reserve and pick up" strategy which allows customers to buy items online before they swing by the store. Meanwhile, after years of staying out of online retail all together, Canadian Tire Corp. plans to launch an ecommerce website later this year that allows customers to buy items on the Internet before they pick them up at the store. - The Canadian Press By David Friend Retailers target ' showrooming' by consumers T WO weeks after committing more than $ 1 million to a fiveyear, industry- led study on ways to improve the grain- transportation and logistics system, the federal agriculture minister was back in Winnipeg proposing some immediate measures. On Monday, Gerry Ritz announced a series of proposals that will make more timely information on the rail movement of grain available to the industry at large. " We are taking immediate action on early recommendations by the Crop Logistics Working Group ( CLWG)," said Ritz. " It has clearly identified the need for more fulsome measurement of the transportation system." The new measures will increase the frequency from quarterly to monthly reporting then broken down week by week. Earlier in the month, Ritz said his department would support a fiveyear, $ 3- million technical review led by Pulse Canada. Ritz's department also receives input from the CLWG, which gives industry players an opportunity to provide input into the Rail Freight Service Review implementation process. " This expanded monitoring will provide a much clearer picture for all the players, helping them improve planning and cut overall costs," said Ritz. " The railways have to be transport. When they're asked for 150 cars and they only spot 100, they may say historically that is what we have done. But that's not good enough in this new era of transparency." Although these proposals are being made at a time when farmers and grain handlers are experiencing all sorts of frustrations in trying to move an especially large crop in a timely way, these measures are not designed to create immediate relief. " Some of what has been announced today are the kinds of things we have been asking for," said Dan Maizer, vice- president of Keystone Agricultural Producers. " It basically boils down to transparency. Who's making the orders? How are they being completed? How many are being thrown to the side? These have been longstanding questions." Rightly or wrongly, many fingers have been pointed at the railways for being somewhere around 40,000 cars behind schedule. They say they have moved significantly more grain this year compared with the five- year average but Ritz said they acknowledge improvements can be made. Mark Hallman, a spokesman for Canadian National Railway, said CN is reviewing the proposed information- sharing measures announced on Monday. He said some of that information is already in the public domain. " CN currently makes public the car orders planned to be spotted at grain elevators during the current crop week and the week proceeding it, the outstanding orders at the end of the current crop week, as well as future weekly orders beyond the current crop week, Hallman said in an email exchange. " It also provides a monthly average of the grain hoppers spotted at elevators per week." Ritz said he had meetings planned with railway officials later Monday. A spokesman for Canadian Pacific said, " CP is prepared to work with the federal government and stakeholders at examining the entire supply- chain system in Canada at the same time recognizing in a year that the crop size was at extraordinary levels and a period of extreme weather, CP moved record carloads of grain." martin. cash@ freepress. mb. ca Ritz has grain- transport fixes THE proposed expanded range of metrics and reporting frequency would include: . Railway order fulfilment information: weekly car orders placed by all grain companies. . Weekly car orders accepted ( operating plan) by railways. . Weekly car orders actually placed by railways. . Weekly cancellations of orders. Changes to reporting Information on rail traffic to be shared more often By Martin Cash KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said the new transparency in rail- traffic information will allow for more efficient planning. 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