165-year-old business closing down next year in Halton Hills, Ontario
Published October 30, 2024 at 11:19 am
A long-standing southern Ontario retailer with a storied history is closing down after 165 years in business.
The (Olde) Hide House, a leather goods store with well over 150 years of history, will close its Halton Hills (Acton, specifically) shop at the end of January. Beginning on Nov. 1, a liquidation sale will kick off, offering shoppers store-wide discounts of up to 50 per cent off all remaining inventory.
The store–which many remember as being advertised as “worth the drive to Acton”–is a family-run business known for selling leather and suede clothing, furniture and accessories such as handbags, gloves, wallets, hats, belts, slippers and more.
According to a news release by liquidation company Danbury Global and A.D. Hennick & Associates, the store is Canada’s largest and most popular leather goods store, and it has historically brought about 300,000 people a year to the small Halton Region community.
“For various factors, the Hide House has made the difficult decision to shut their doors,” the liquidation company said in a statement.
While the store as people know it opened in 1980, its history dates back almost two centuries.
According to the Hide House’s official website, the current shop began as a shipping and receiving warehouse for Acton’s Beardmore & Co., the largest tannery in the British Empire at the turn of the century.
The Acton community has been an integral part of the leather industry for even longer. In 1829, three brothers from New York State–Rufus, Zenas, and Ezra Adams–purchased farmland in modern-day Acton from the Canada Company. By 1842, they owned about 500 acres of land and began to transform it into a settlement called Adamsville. In 1844, the name was changed to Acton when a post office opened.
The town began growing again in 1856 when the Grand Trunk Railway ran a line through it and opened the Acton Train Station. The train spurred more development and that same year, George L. Beardmore purchased a small tannery which had been operating in the area since 1844.
The website says the buildings for the new Beardmore & Co. Tannery replaced the smaller and outdated plant of the earlier enterprise and were equipped with the most modern tannery machinery of the time, allowing the leather industry to flourish.
Eventually, the main Beardmore tanneries in Acton had a combined floor space of nearly a million square feet.
In 1899, Beardmore & Company built a large brick warehouse right next to the railway line and that warehouse became known as the Hide House because it was where raw hides were stored before being brought to the tannery. In 1933, the warehouse was sold, but it became part of the leather business again in 1969 when it was purchased by Frank Heller and Company, a firm specializing in the production of split leather.
In June of 1980, the company consolidated its three plants into one larger building, making the Hide House somewhat redundant. At that point, Fred Dawkins, Ron Heller and Don Dawkins decided to transform the historic building into a flagship showcasing Acton’s leather industry heritage.
The concept for the old Hide House was born then, and the store officially opened on Nov. 14 of that same year.
The website says that, depending on the season, the Hide House stocks between 6,000 and 10,000 leather, suede and shearling garments–the largest collection of quality leather garments under one roof anywhere in the world.
The store is also something of a tourist attraction. In one year, visitors from more than 40 countries signed the leather-bound guestbook in the store’s front foyer.
In a news release, Danbury Global said the staff and owners are looking forward to seeing both old and new faces one last time as they thank their customers with significant savings on $5 million worth of products.
“The Hide House has been a staple of premium quality leather goods for decades. It’s a great opportunity to stop in one last time and buy something that can be passed on for generations” said Alex Hennick, President of A.D. Hennick & Associates, in a statement.
The store will not be selling products online after it closes and custom orders are no longer being accepted with the early 2025 closure looming.