{"id":66736,"date":"2025-11-19T11:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2025\/11\/19\/the-successes-and-setbacks-of-the-canadian-retail-magnate-who-built-his-career-on-fixing-broken-businesses\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T11:00:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T11:00:20","slug":"the-successes-and-setbacks-of-the-canadian-retail-magnate-who-built-his-career-on-fixing-broken-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2025\/11\/19\/the-successes-and-setbacks-of-the-canadian-retail-magnate-who-built-his-career-on-fixing-broken-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"The successes and setbacks of the Canadian retail magnate who built his career on fixing broken businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<br \/><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Meet the woman who wrote the Toys &quot;R&quot; Us jingle\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rWZTXsvg3oU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/iframe><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"1\" data-license-id=\"\" data-portal-copyright=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/financialpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/toy-store-banner.jpg\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p> <em>Doug Putman is a self-described collector of businesses. Over the past decade, he has built a conglomerate of retailers that sell everything from vinyl records to teas and toys. Reporting from the Financial Post Western Bureau shows his Toys \u201cR\u201d Us empire is shrinking significantly. After closing dozens of stores \u2014 at least 38 of them this year alone \u2014 the chain is now running less than half of the locations it operated four years ago. So, who is Putman, why does he collect struggling retailers and how are his other businesses doing now? The Financial Post explains.<\/em> <\/p>\n<h2>Why Doug Putman\u2019s name might sound familiar<\/h2>\n<p> Putman first attracted national attention in 2017 when he converted dozens of shuttered HMV Canada locations into Sunrise Records stores. <\/p>\n<p> HMV had launched in the country 31 years earlier, when Peter Gabriel\u2019s \u201cSledgehammer\u201d and Berlin\u2019s \u201cTake My Breath Away\u201d were topping the charts. At its peak, the chain was the country\u2019s largest music retailer. But by the time that the \u201cDespacito\u201d remix from Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber landed on the hit list, the business had collapsed as customers started moving away from buying CDs and into streaming tunes on Spotify, Google Play, Apple Music and the like. <\/p>\n<p> HMV Canada had been losing $100,000 a day.\u00a0And, yet, in all of the carnage, Putman saw opportunity. He bought the chain and moved his own Sunrise Records stores into 70 or so of HMV\u2019s locations. At the time, he told The Canadian Press he was able to \u201cmitigate\u201d HMV\u2019s financial challenges by \u201cworking with our landlords and our suppliers very closely.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\" A Sunrise Records store in Toronto in 2017.\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"1\" data-license-id=\"3965096\" data-portal-copyright=\"Ernest Doroszuk\/Toronto Sun\/Postmedia Network\" src=\"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/financialpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/sunrise-records-1119-ph.jpg\" title=\" A Sunrise Records store in Toronto in 2017.\" \/><\/p>\n<p> He would use this same strategy several times in his career, with varying degrees of success. He\u2019s an entrepreneur \u201cwho sees opportunities to invest where others divest or, worse, go bankrupt,\u201d said Canadian marketing specialist Tony Chapman on his podcast, Chatter That Matters, when introducing Putman as a guest in 2021. <\/p>\n<p> \u201cHe will tell you that he was a failure in university,\u201d Chapman continued, but \u201che\u2019s succeeding where others have failed.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> Putman did not respond to requests for comment. The Financial Post has pieced his story together from previous reporting and Putman\u2019s own comments in a number of podcasts in recent years. <\/p>\n<h2>What is Putman\u2019s back story?<\/h2>\n<p> The story Putman often tells is that his dad was a steel worker and his mom a bank teller in southern Ontario. Later in their careers, they remortgaged their house for $50,000 to start a business, Putman <\/p>\n<p>                        said on the Power Kid Podcast<\/p>\n<p>                        , hosted by Phil Albritton, in 2021. <\/p>\n<p> In the beginning, the Putmans were selling sports cards, but they later expanded into boardgames and toys. They would call their business Everest Toys, which became one of the largest toy distributors in North America. Doug started working there in the early 2000s after he dropped out of university \u2014 he had been taking a business degree but didn\u2019t like it \u2014 and his parents warned him the job wasn\u2019t a big opportunity. <\/p>\n<p> \u201cI still remember my mom telling me, \u2018There\u2019s not much of a career here. You\u2019ll make minimum wage, but we wish you the best of luck and come on in,&#8217;\u201d Putman told Albritton. <\/p>\n<p> Putman said he started in the warehouse, but in his spare time he made sales calls and realized he was good at it. One of Everest\u2019s customers was Sunrise Records, then a small music retailer that was also looking to sell its business. <\/p>\n<p> \u201cI just thought this would be something really interesting to do,\u201d he told Albritton. \u201cI like the business. I like<\/p>\n<p>                        <strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>                        the guy who was running it; he was a good friend, and so we bought the five stores. And, really, within two years of that one, I realized how tough retail is. I got a rude awakening.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> Given all of the challenges he discovered, Putman made a bet that Sunrise would be more successful if it was bigger. After the failure of HMV Canada in 2017, he expanded. When he bought HMV\u2019s U.K. division two years later, <\/p>\n<p>                        he told CBC News<\/p>\n<p>                         the Sunrise venture was profitable. <\/p>\n<p> At some point during this stage of his career, Putman appears to have realized that he liked fixing up struggling businesses. <\/p>\n<h2>Why buy a failing retailer?<\/h2>\n<p> \u201cI used to say to my wife, when you buy a business that no one wants, there\u2019s zero pressure, because if it doesn\u2019t work, everyone is like, \u2018Well, he was an idiot to buy it anyway,&#8217;\u201d Putman <\/p>\n<p>                        said on the Behind Greatness podcast<\/p>\n<p>                        , hosted by Luciano Volpe, in 2022. <\/p>\n<p> By this time,\u00a0Putman had been on a retail shopping spree. He bought the U.S. entertainment chain FYE, the toy company Alex Brands and Toys \u201cR\u201d Us Canada. <\/p>\n<p> He had also taken over dozens of retail locations left vacant by DavidsTea, one of many companies that struggled during the pandemic. Using his Sunrise Records playbook, he took advantage of attractive leasing prices and converted the stores into a new brand called T. Kettle. <\/p>\n<p> \u201cMy wife asks me all the time, \u2018Why do you need another business?&#8217;\u201d he told Volpe. \u201cI just do. It\u2019s an innate thing that once I\u2019ve got a business, let\u2019s say, fixed, or it\u2019s in a good spot, it\u2019s got the right team, I just can\u2019t sit there and do nothing. I need to go on to the next thing. I want to fix another business.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> After <\/p>\n<p>                        <span>Bed Bath &amp; Beyond Canada Ltd. went under in 2023, Putman created a new housewares brand called rooms + spaces and opened 24 stores left vacant by the defunct retailer. In 2025, his Putman Investments Inc. added even more assets to the collection, acquiring Canadian clothing brands Northern Reflections, Ricki\u2019s and Cleo.<\/span> <\/p>\n<p> \u201cIn <\/p>\n<p>                        <strong><span>my heart of hearts, I\u2019m a collector,\u201d he told Volpe in 2022. \u201cI liked collecting sports cards when I was a kid. I like collecting art and watches now, and I like to collect businesses.\u201d<\/span><\/strong> <\/p>\n<h2>How are Putman\u2019s businesses doing now?<\/h2>\n<p> Putman\u2019s conglomerate of retail companies is privately held, so there\u2019s no way to independently verify its financial health. But there are some publicly available clues, which suggest some ventures have done better than others. <\/p>\n<p> On the positive side of the ledger, Sunrise Records lists <\/p>\n<p>                        83 locations on its website<\/p>\n<p>                        , though two of them are temporarily closed. It\u2019s a bigger footprint than the 70 or so stores that Putman said he had plans for when Sunrise moved into HMV locations in 2017. <\/p>\n<p> His other music business \u2014 HMV in the U.K. \u2014 was profitable in its most recent fiscal year, according to its <\/p>\n<p>                        filings with the British government<\/p>\n<p>                        . The company\u2019s take-home earnings hit $7.4 million, up slightly from a year earlier. <\/p>\n<p> Some of his other companies, however, have struggled. T. Kettle, the tea retailer, began in 2020 with 45 locations, but its website now lists a single store in Burlington, Ont. <\/p>\n<p> About a year ago, Putman said his most costly mistake was his foray into housewares. In a video hosted by HelpBnk, a U.K.-based social networking site for entrepreneurs, <\/p>\n<p>                        Putman answered a series of crowd-sourced questions<\/p>\n<p>                         about his career. One of them asked him about his most expensive setback. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Billionaire Answers Business Questions From The Internet\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/49cJSnh8knw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> He said it was his rooms + spaces venture, the chain that had quietly closed stores and shut down its website within two years of launching. <\/p>\n<p> \u201cVery quickly, it was very clear it was not going to work,\u201d Putman said. \u201cThat was an eight-figure loss for me.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> The next question he answered was how he handles business setbacks or failures. <\/p>\n<p> \u201cI used to hear people say, \u2018Oh, you know, failure is good,\u2019 and this and that. I always just thought it was crap,\u201d Putman said. \u201cBut I will say the learning that you get from it is fantastic. It really levels you, and I think it actually helps keep your ego in check and brings you back down to to Earth\u2026 <\/p>\n<p> \u201cYou try not to make that mistake again, and you just have to move forward. There\u2019s no sense in focusing too much on it, because it\u2019s just going to hurt your future.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> Putman now appears to be going through another setback with his national toy chain, Toys \u201cR\u201d Us Canada, which had as many as 103 locations by 2023. But the Financial Post Western Bureau has found at least 38 stores closed so far this year, with another 12 locations up for sale. <\/p>\n<p> The entrepreneur has not responded to requests for comment, nor has he explained why the chain\u2019s footprint is shrinking so dramatically. <\/p>\n<ul class=\"related_links\">\n<li>What happened to Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us? In just four years, Canadian chain shutters over half its stores<\/li>\n<li>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us used to be the &#8216;category killer.&#8217; Now it&#8217;s feeling the squeeze<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> <em>\u2022 Email: rsouthwick@postmedia.com <\/em> <\/p>\n\n<br \/>The successes and setbacks of the Canadian retail magnate who built his career on fixing broken businesses<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>2025-11-19 11:00:20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doug Putman is a self-described collector of businesses. Over the past decade, he has built a conglomerate of retailers that sell everything from vinyl records to teas and toys. Reporting&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-66736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/66738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}