It’s undoubtedly not the most popular take, but Gino DiGioacchino is a big fan of the commute from Toronto to Ottawa. It isn’t the drive on the 401 itself that gets DiGioacchino, who was named president and CEO of Giant Tiger on Monday, revved up. It’s the stops along the way. “We have 270 stores […]
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It’s undoubtedly not the most popular take, but Gino DiGioacchino is a big fan of the commute from Toronto to Ottawa.
It isn’t the drive on the 401 itself that gets DiGioacchino, who was named president and CEO of Giant Tiger on Monday, revved up. It’s the stops along the way.
“We have 270 stores across Canada, and my mission is to get to every single store as much as I possibly can,” the 57-year-old executive, who still lives in the Greater Toronto Area and regularly travels back and forth to Giant Tiger’s home base in Ottawa, told OBJ on Tuesday.
“Between the GTA and Ottawa, there’s more than one Giant Tiger. It gives me an opportunity to stop in, say hello to local owners and see what’s happening in the community. It’s fantastic.”
DiGioacchino took over leadership of the venerable Canadian retailer on an interim basis last November after previous chief executive Paul Wood left the company. He had already spent five years on Giant Tiger’s board of directors, working closely with founder Gordon Reid.
DiGioacchino says Reid, who died in July at age 89, left a legacy that won’t soon be forgotten.
“The opportunity to take on a permanent role (at Giant Tiger) was beyond a privilege and an honour,” he says. “By no stretch of the imagination am I Mr. Reid, but fundamentally I get the brand, I understand the grassroots of it. It has a great opportunity in Canada.”
In more than three decades in retail, Giant Tiger’s new CEO has had a hand in almost every aspect of the industry.
DiGioacchino’s career includes stints at two of the best-known brands on the planet.
In 2000, he joined The Home Depot, where he held several senior executive roles on both sides of the border, including chief merchandising officer for the home improvement giant’s Canadian operations.
DiGioacchino later moved to Walmart, where he led the big-box behemoth’s Canadian e-commerce division and spearheaded the launch of its grocery home shopping service.
Now, he’s the boss of Giant Tiger, the discount chain whose black and yellow signage has become a familiar sight in neighbourhoods from the Prairies to the Atlantic coast.
Catering to budget-minded customers, the retail operation that got its start with a single shop in the ByWard Market in 1961 has become famous for offering a wider selection of goods than dollar stores in smaller, more intimate layouts than the big-box chains.
The store has an “interesting price point that is above Dollarama but below Walmart,” retail analyst Bruce Winder explained when the company turned 60 in 2021.
But DiGioacchino bristles at the suggestion that Giant Tiger is “sandwiched” between ultra-low-price retailers like Dollarama and discount department stores such as Walmart.
“If you’re going to force me into a hierarchy, I would say put us in the hard-discount realm, which Dollarama sort of isn’t because they’re in the dollar store business,” he says. “Walmart, they’re just too big to be in the core hard-discount (space).”
