J. Crew Coming to Canada. Reitmans, Le Chateau, and Others Beware... Consumers are Fickle.

American clothing retailer J. Crew will be opening its first Canadian store this August. The new location will be in Toronto at the Yorkdale Shopping Centre. In addition to Target, there is going to be a slew of U.S. retailers heading north to take advantage of a more stable and seemingly robust consumer base.

Other Canadian clothing retailers like Reitmans, Joe Fresh, (TSE: RET) and Le Chateau (TSE: CTU.A) are really going to start feeling the pinch as there is only so much consumer spending power to go around in a country of 33 or so million people. Both stocks have been hammered as of late and could pose a potential buying opportunity to any adventuresome investors who dare to enter the clothing space, which is notorious for being fickle and difficult for investment consultants like myself to predict. To be sure, Reitmans has a large dividend of about 5 percent, but a clothing company can burn through money very quickly with advertising and price wars a constant threat.

So Intelligent Investors beware, another competitor in the clothing space means more hands in the consumers' pockets.

Happy investing, and for more info go to:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/06/24/j-crew-toronto.html