![]() He's still lighting the candles on the Menorah at his home in Los Angeles, "but we do have a pine garland that goes down the staircase and fills the house with the smell of Christmas."Īnd the star of the Hallmark Channel movie "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" has some strong ties to the Christmas holidays. So there was probably not a shot that I was going to (celebrate Christmas) in my home in New York City." "No, I celebrated Hanukkah," said the man best known for playing Fonzie on "Happy Days" three decades ago. “The impacts of the pandemic will continue to be felt for months and even years from now.As a kid growing up, Henry Winkler didn't celebrate Christmas. ![]() “Will there be others in the coming weeks and months? I anticipate so,” he said. River City’s announcement is unfortunate, but business closures aren’t unexpected, said Loren Remillard, the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce’s president. The online store will operate until stock runs out, he added. Winkler plans to keep the shop open until the end of July, at minimum, he said. “It’s too bad, because all the other sports stores, they don’t have quite the selection,” she said. now River City Sports’s only location - on Tuesday to buy her husband a birthday present. “We’re not involved in how it’s closing shop,” LeGall said. River City Sports officially defaulted on its debt proposal on April 4, according to Collin LeGall, an insolvency trustee with Lazer Grant LLP assigned to the case. January 2022 rolled around, and with it, time to repay old debts. Supply chain snarls don’t help, Winkler noted. “The last 10 days before Christmas are your best 10 days of the year, and once they announced Omicron, that was it for those sales,” Winkler said. Traffic was picking up during the 2021 holiday season - then Omicron arrived, and public health measures tightened. “All of a sudden, you have a store full of something that nobody wants.” “There was no fans in the stands, and most people weren’t allowed to dine in, so what’s the point of buying a shirt of your favourite team?” Winkler said. Business dropped roughly 75 per cent, Winkler said, and the company lost about $750,000. “We had to rehash the payment plan.”Ĭreditors agreed to postpone River City’s debt payments until January of 2022, when it’d start paying monthly again, Winkler said. “Obviously with no Christmas in 2020 and no sales, there’s no money,” Winkler said. The retailer had a $310,000 settlement with creditors under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act from 2016. Half of River City Sports’s revenue comes during November and December, he said. “We lost our Christmas in (2020),” Winkler said. However, $4 million to the Business Development Bank of Canada was owed by a holding company connected to River City Sports, Winkler said. In early 2016, the company shuttered several stores, keeping its Polo Park shop and one on Henderson Highway.Īt the time, paperwork showed it owed $6.8 million, including calculations for future rents, to more than 80 entities. Operations didn’t go as planned, and there was a significant legal dispute with a landlord, Winkler said. In 2013, River City Sports opened a store in Seasons of Tuxedo. “Basically the whole licensed sport business is run by Fanatics now,” Winkler said, referring to a retailer that’s officially partnered with the NHL, NFL, MLB and NBA. He said the number of wholesalers started to drop around 2014 - they began losing their licences. “The last few years, all of (my) smaller suppliers have been pushed out,” Winkler said. It had hubs in Regina, Saskatoon and Calgary. River City occupied the Eaton Centre in Toronto for four and a half years, beginning in 2000. Business was booming, and he kept opening shops - in St. ![]() “We tried to carry whatever sports teams we could get.”Īt the time, there were plenty of suppliers to buy licensed merchandise from, Winkler said. “We were known for carrying… all the NHL teams,” Winkler said. ![]() ![]() For two years prior, it was called Card City. The retailer first opened as River City Sports on Henderson Highway in 1993. “Omicron was the final nail in the coffin,” said Ron Winkler, president of River City Sports. Ron Winkler, president of River City Sports, is closing all of his locations after 31 years in business. To the right, baseball shirts claim 50 per cent price reductions. To the left, there’s a Blake Wheeler jersey with a $100 discount. Inside, signs advertise a minimum 25 per cent off everything. Letters spelling “closing sale” plaster the St. This article was published (358 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.Īfter 31 years, a pandemic and two iterations of the Winnipeg Jets, River City Sports is shutting down. Free Press 101: How we practise journalism. ![]()
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