The GCBI Retail Industry Report covers 22 brands across home improvement, sporting goods, beauty, apparel, drugstores, furniture, dollar stores, and convenience retail—excluding FMCG brands, which are covered in a separate report. This is the largest and most diverse category in the GCBI series. The report also examines Hudson's Bay Company, which filed for creditor protection and closed all remaining stores in 2026. Data reflects national consumer perception surveys conducted in both 2025 and 2026.

• The retail category average held virtually flat (+0.001 points)—not because every brand held steady, but because large gains and losses cancelled each other out almost perfectly.

• Indigo posted the largest score gain in the category (+1.18 points) and rose to 2nd nationally. Canadian Tire gained 1.15 points and rose to 5th nationally.

• Umbra suffered the steepest national rank drop of any brand in any GCBI industry: −42 positions in a single year.

• Hudson's Bay ranked dead last among high-income Canadians in both 2025 and 2026—the very consumer segment a premium department store depends on.

• CCM Hockey carries the largest gender gap of any brand in the entire GCBI dataset: 4.15 points, with men rating it substantially higher than women.

The retail category's flat average is a statistical coincidence, not a strategic signal. Beneath it lies the most volatile brand-level movement of any GCBI industry in 2026. Indigo and Canadian Tire are pulling away from the competition. Umbra, La Maison Simons, and CCM Hockey are declining sharply. The gap between the category's top performer (Indigo, 68.56) and its bottom performer (The Brick, 61.79) is 6.77 points—the widest intra-category spread in the GCBI.

Hudson's Bay is the most analytically significant brand in this report. The GCBI data offers a striking retrospective on its closure: in both 2025 and 2026, HBC ranked dead last among all 22 retail brands among high-income Canadians. Its Gen X rank deteriorated sharply. Its Sustainability rank was near-last. Its overall score improved marginally in 2026—but only because other brands declined around it. A rising rank in a falling market is not the same as a strengthening brand.

The full report includes a dedicated section on what the GCBI data reveals about Hudson's Bay in the years leading up to its closure—a case study in how segment-level perception data can surface structural brand vulnerabilities that aggregate scores conceal.

• Complete brand rankings table—all 22 brands, 2025 vs. 2026.

• Special Focus section: Hudson's Bay—what the GCBI data reveals (dedicated segment analysis table with national rank signals).

• Dimension profiles for all 22 brands.

• Regional breakdown across six Canadian regions.

• Demographic breakdown: the female-skewing brands, the Boomer decline, the income inversion, and Shoppers Drug Mart's political gap.

• Five strategic implications including a framework for identifying which brands have perception-commercial mismatches.