Hudson’s Bay Company’s Collaboration With First Nations

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Our Background

The Hudson’s Bay Company is the world’s oldest trading company and the largest Canadian retail corporation. We are a huge multinational retailer with over 480 stores and 66,000 employees across the globe. The Company has a market cap of $ 1.5 billion, placing it on the Forbes Top Multinational Retailers list (Bryce 12). Today, our brand, renowned for its clothing, footwear, and homeware, plans to collaborate with Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), the local representational organization for the wellbeing of Inuits in Canada, to highlight Indigenous designers and craftsmanship (Wilkinson 107). We will expand this initiative through our new project that aims to promote the sustainable development of the Indigenous peoples.

Our Project

For several generations, we have tried to maintain human interest in natural unique landscapes and lifestyles in the natural environment. Now we are offering collaboration with the Inuit community in Canada through Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK). We plan to collaborate with this Nation since it is known for its art of sewing. In this case, they are guided by practical considerations to skillfully sew clothes. Inuits have passed these skills from mothers to daughters for millennia. In the 60s of the XX century, the traditional craftsmanship of women in sewing was first applied to the creation of decorative products in the village of Baker Lake in the northern Canadian territory of Nunavut (Wilkinson 110). Centuries of experience passed into the modern art of embroidery and applique on fabrics. Tailors embody their character and craftsmanship in the modern art of wall hangings, displaying the wildlife of the Arctic, scenes from the life of the Inuit people, and the spiritual perception of the world inherent in ancestors.

Thus, in the framework of our new project in partnership with the Inuit Nation, an ethnic collection of unique clothes will be created. We will scope out the project and potential issues, starting with a draft. First, we plan to create a capsule collection for sale. This project will be oriented to the Canadian market and will become part of the distinctive culture of the Northern peoples. We plan to use our chain of stores to share Inuit craftsmanship and create opportunities for social entrepreneurship in Aboriginal communities in Canada (Wilkinson 112). Our Company has a goal of a long-term partnership with ITK to support the First Nations and for the mutual benefit.

Our partners must be prepared to commit to reasonable timelines and deliverables. Contract arrangements will be mutually beneficial if ITK provides good employees, and the Inuit designers get jobs and training (Nelson 3). We will review the interests of all parties concerning the Benefit Sharing Agreement. In addition to revenue-sharing, our partners will sign service contracts, perhaps with preferred bidding. We will also take into account Freedom of Information laws and First Nation laws about protecting culture and knowledge.

Our Structure

We will organize our collaboration as a Joint Venture on the principle of paid provision of services under the contract. Our principle of free, prior, and informed consent will ensure a partnership between the Company and the local community. Transparency will be a priority maintained for the duration of our collaboration. The Joint Venture will have its independent legal and accounting services (Nelson 5). The partners will participate in meetings and the whole process of decision-making. Therefore, the time allocated for discussions with the partners, the conformity of the way information is presented to their cultural traditions, and the participation of the community in this process, is important for the Company. The competent organization of the process will contribute to ensuring the right of everyone to self-determination since it allows our partners to participate in making decisions that affect their interests.

Our Process

Our collaboration will become an integral part of our business growth. Choosing a strategic partnership with Indigenous people is critical to creating a competitive advantage. It starts with two basic prerequisites: both parties will receive meaningful market benefits and profits from working together. Our partners have key skills that we will leverage that can both drive profitability and build scalable partnerships.

The organization of our partnership will go through a number of mandatory steps:

the development of communication strategy with our future partners;
the clarification of joint tasks of future partners;
the agreement on mutual goals;
the development of action plan;
the assessment of needed resources;
economic analysis of a potential contractual Joint Venture: the calculation of costs and possible profits, calculation of profitability, payback period of financial investments;
the identification of risk factors for the collaboration;
signing a contract with our partners;
the development of constituent documents of the Joint Venture being created;
the registration of a Joint Venture in accordance with the law.

Our Opportunities

For our new collection of ethnic clothes, we will develop a design of unique costumes in collaboration with Inuit craftswomen and tailors. Our new project will be focused on mutual interest and mutual desire of partners for effective and long-term cooperation. Our main opportunity will be an increase in the competitiveness of our products. Attracting additional human resources, the ability to use the resources of our partners at relatively low prices will be beneficial for the Company. During this collaboration, we will share knowledge, experience, connections, customer base, image, etc. The Company will have the opportunity to deeply study the new market and gain the experience necessary to expand its activities in it in the long term.

Moreover, this exclusive collection will be designed to create social entrepreneurship opportunities for the Inuit people. Our partners will use our global platform to showcase their exceptional craftsmanship and unique designs. In many ways, this new collaboration will celebrate the craft traditions of the Inuits and the rich cultural heritage of their community. We will join forces to create a long-term profitable business. The establishment of a Joint Venture will be based on a Benefit Sharing Agreement that will define the rights and obligations of partners in relation to each other. An important sign of our cooperation will be the joint ownership for the final product.

Our Strategy

Indigenous Business Strategy will be part of the Company’s sustainable development strategy. Our project aims to provide long-term strategy and operations support for Indigenous businesses, enabling them to significantly expand their operations over 5 years. First, we will create and facilitate tailored capacity-building programs for Indigenous people. Second, we will link the Indigenous business to networks of advisors, contacts, governance support, and functional experts. Third, we will provide mentorship to the Inuits and help to commercialize Indigenous knowledge, to create a larger economy of Indigenous services (Reed et al. 1284). It will help to incorporate collaboration into the design and implementation of projects and programs, ensuring that the rights of indigenous peoples are properly respected.

Our Verification

The Company’s obligations are included in the Corporate Sustainable Development Policy. We make a significant contribution to the sustainable development of Canada, including programs to support environmental, social, and cultural projects (Reed et al. 1284). We pay special attention to the development of strategic partnerships. Our goal is to develop sustainable and mutually beneficial cooperation with the Indigenous people within the framework of the Joint Venture Agreement. According to the Company’s Human Rights Policy, priority is given to issues related to vulnerable groups, which include, in particular, the Inuit people.

We are committed to respecting the rights of Indigenous people and their participation in economic development. We will pay particular attention to preventing any potential negative impact on culture, peculiarities of the way of life, and customs. To ensure we are respectful, collaborative, and inclusive, we will keep minutes of all meetings, record the results of discussions, and make them available to all parties (Reed et al. 1284). The institutions and individuals chosen by the Inuit people for decision-making may differ from the institutions and individuals involved in the preliminary negotiations, so documenting each meeting will help maintain consistency in all the discussions throughout the project, even if the composition of the participants changes.

Our Risks

The creation of a Joint Venture with the Indigenous community not only provides various benefits but also increases the risks of losing part of the likely income due to limited freedom of action. The most important risks for the Company may include the risks associated with the new business environment, which can be ranked as financial, reputational, and operational. These risks lead to issues with access to capital (high risk), damage to the brand, license to operate (medium risk), and the threat of litigation and increased regulation (law risk).

Ignoring the rights of Indigenous people and failing to get free, prior, and informed consent can be costly to the Company due to delays and disruptions in operations, as well as reputational and operational damage that can drive away customers. In general, the strategic implications of Joint Venture activities go beyond the reached cooperative agreements (La Salle et al. 21). As a rule, the benefits of this business organization exceed the direct and indirect costs of its functioning, in particular, the costs associated with the strengthening of the competitive position of one of the partners at the expense of the other.

Our Relationship

The company is committed to ensuring constructive, effective, and informed stakeholder participation in the design and implementation of the project. Stakeholders are the communities affected by the project, national, and local authorities, and, as appropriate, other stakeholders. We will consult with all community representatives, groups, and civil society representatives whose interests may be affected. Stakeholder engagement is an ongoing process that, to varying degrees, involves disclosing information and creating a mechanism through which people can comment on project proposals and results (La Salle et al. 42). We will ensure that the Inuit people concerned are properly informed about the project that the Company would like to implement. This will be done openly and publicly so that they have the freedom to make a decision. We will organize effective communication with them at all stages of the process to ensure that there is a full awareness of the Agreement.

Conclusion

The Hudson’s Bay Company has interacted with the First Nations since its inception. For many years, we have been working with the Indigenous people in Canada and taking their views into account in our programs. Now is the time to take the Indigenous Collaboration one step further with a more systematic approach. Through this collaboration, we must develop a common approach to the inclusion of the Inuit collaborators. In this case, the Company will apply a structured and systematic approach to managing corporate social responsibility and sustainable development issues. This process will increase the chances of getting a successful outcome. In its turn, the Company will meet the requirements of the new opportunity without compromising the existing business.

Works Cited

Bryce, George. The Remarkable History of the Hudson’s Bay Company. BoD–Books on Demand, 2020.

La Salle, Marina, et al. ‘What Could Be More Reasonable?’ Collaboration in Colonial Contexts. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Nelson, Rodney. “Beyond Dependency: Economic Development, Capacity Building, and Generational Sustainability for Indigenous People in Canada.” SAGE Open, vol. 9, no. 3, 2019, pp. 1-8.

Reed, Graeme, Nicolas D. Brunet, and David C. Natcher. “Can Indigenous Community-Based Monitoring Act as a Tool for Sustainable Self-Determination?.” The Extractive Industries and Society, vol. 7, no. 4, 2020, pp. 1283-1291.

Wilkinson, Lori. “A Demographic Overview of Ethnic Diversity in Canada.” Immigration, Racial and Ethnic Studies in 150 Years of Canada. Brill Sense, 2018, 103-128.

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