T. Eaton Company

T. Eaton Company Ltd.

Trading name	Eaton's
Former type	Private (1869-1998), Public (1998-1999)
Industry	Retail (Department store)
Fate	Filed for bankruptcy; assets were purchased by Sears Canada in 1999. Several stores were re-opened by Sears under the eatons brand but all were converted to Sears stores or shut down in 2002.
Founded	1869
Defunct	1999 as an entity, 2002 as a brand
Headquarters	Toronto, Ontario (with stores across Canada)
Key people	Timothy Eaton, John Craig Eaton, Flora McCrea Eaton (Lady Eaton)
Products	Everything from clothing to farming implements
Number of employees	70,000

T. Eaton Company Ltd. was a Canadian department store retailer, and once Canada's largest. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, a Presbyterian Ulster Scot immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton's grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying offices around the globe, and a catalogue that was found in the homes of most Canadians. A changing economic and retail environment in the late 20th century and mismanagement culminated in the chain's bankruptcy in 1999.

Eaton's pioneered several retail innovations. In an era when haggling for goods was the norm, the chain proclaimed "We propose to sell our goods for CASH ONLY – In selling goods, to have only one price." In addition it had the long-standing slogan "Goods Satisfactory or Money Refunded."

In 1869 Timothy Eaton sold his interest in a small dry-goods store in the market town of St. Marys, Ontario and bought a dry-goods and haberdashery business at 178 Yonge Street in the city of Toronto.

The first store was only 24 by 60 feet (7.3 m × 18.3 m), with two shop windows, and was located a fair distance from Toronto's then fashionable shopping district of King Street West. In its first year of operation, with Timothy Eaton responsible for buying the goods to stock the store, and a staff of four, expectations were low that a store with a no-credit and no-haggling policy would succeed.

The business prospered, and Eaton moved the store one block north in August 1883 into much larger premises at 190 Yonge Street. The new store boasted the biggest plate-glass windows in Toronto, the first electric lights in any Canadian store, three full floors of retail space featuring 35 departments, and a lightwell that ran the full-length of the store. The store’s first telephone, with phone number 370, was installed in 1885. In 1886, the first elevator in a retail establishment in Toronto was installed in the Eaton store (although only customers going up were invited to use the elevator, thus requiring them to pass by the various store displays on their walk down).