NAICS 458320Canadian industry · 6-digitlocal market

Luggage and leather goods retailers

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in retailing luggage, briefcases, trunks and related products, and establishments engaged in retailing a line of leather items. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 299
Under 10 employeesA: 89%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–47023%

5–919666%

10–19238%

20–4993%

50–9910%

100–1990—

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 299 Canadian establishments with employees, 89% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario11639%

Quebec7525%

British Columbia4013%

Alberta3712%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Retail Trade, US · opened 2020

88%

1 year

72.3%

3 years

59.8%

5 years

44.2%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 458, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

local competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 458 Clothing, clothing accessories, shoes, jewelry, luggage and leather goods retailers

Fashion inventory risk meets rising rents and brands selling direct. Survivors curate tightly or own a local niche.

Who sets the price: Brands' suggested retail, then markdowns.
The software it runs on: Apparel point of sale with size-colour matrix and e-commerce sync.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 4583 Jewellery, luggage and leather goods retailers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4583

Independent Jewellery StoreExecution decides

binding constraint: distribution

The pre-screen made this a candidate: a real independent tier with repair and custom work attached. The StatCan shape supports the first half — 97% of the 2,899 Canadian establishments employ fewer than twenty people and one alone employs over five hundred. The test is what the best-known Canadian name earns. Birks Group ran 31 stores and took fiscal 2026 net sales of $205.4M, up 15.5% — but $19.5M of that $27.6M increase was four European Boutique stores bought in July 2025, and comparable sales grew 2.6% [A]. Gross margin reached 38.5%, and operating income of $3.1M was consumed by $8.8M of interest and financing cost, for a net loss of $3.4M [A]. Look at what moves the comparable line in either direction and it is always someone else's brand: a third-party timepiece brand leaving one store held fiscal 2026 back; a third-party jewellery brand leaving two stores took fiscal 2025 comparables to -3.4%, against +6.9% without it [A]. At the top of Canadian jewellery retail the revenue that matters belongs to watch and jewellery houses that grant a retailer the right to sell them, set the price, and can withdraw the line or take the location for their own boutique; the retailer supplies the lease, the staff and the financed inventory. That is a distribution cut: a new store cannot obtain the brands that draw the customer, and a store that has them does not control them. It is a cut on the branded, fine-jewellery end only. The bench jeweller — custom design, repair, remounting, appraisals, selling under his own name — is not touched by this argument, and nothing found here kills it. A full study would have to test what that shop earns from labour against goods, and what lab-grown stones are doing to the ticket. The luggage and leather goods half of the code was not examined.

NAICS 45835 vendors named13 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 458 Clothing, clothing accessories, shoes, jewelry, luggage and leather goods retailers

Independent Clothing RetailOne thing must be true

binding constraint: growth quality

Inventory is bought months ahead against a guess, marked down when the guess is wrong, and compared in the customer's hand to an online price. Rent for the foot traffic that justifies a store is the second fixed cost. This is included because it remains one of the most commonly attempted entries and one of the least forgiving; the specialty POS software serving it is screened separately at 4591.

NAICS 4586 vendors named13 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Apparel point of sale with size-colour matrix and e-commerce sync.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Retail trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail sales supervisors One industry 84.7%

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 80.1%

Cashiers and other sales support occupations One industry 80%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 69.7%

Pharmacists and dietitians Mostly one sector 61%

Medical technologists and technicians One industry 23.6%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 18.7%

Cooks, butchers and bakers Mostly one sector 15.7%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 12.2%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 11.2%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 13.5%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 8.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 8.2%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 6.7%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 6.6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 6%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 5.7%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5.4%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 5.3%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. But note the shape of this industry: 89% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →