CLOSURE: After 165 years The Olde Hide House is closing in Acton, Ontario

The leather store that spawned the well-known advertising slogan “It’s worth the drive to Acton” is shutting its doors.

The (Olde) Hide House, a massive warehouse in Halton Hills filled with a vast array of leather goods, from coats and gloves to shoes and satchels to home furnishings, will start its final liquidation sales on Friday, Nov. 1.

First opened in 1980, the family-run shop capitalized on the history of Acton as a hub for leather manufacturing, becoming known as Canada’s Leathertown.

The catchy slogan and advertising campaign raised the profile of the store. At its peak, there were more than 300,000 visitors annually, helping the town of about 10,000 located 45 minutes outside Toronto become a tourist destination.

Acton was founded in the mid-1800s by the Adams brothers, Rufus, Zenas, and Ezra Adams. By 1856, it was home to one of the largest tanneries in the British Empire, and the business was the primary driver of the local economy.

At the turn of the century, the current warehouse beside the rail line was constructed as a storage facility, a house for the hides. And although the tanning industry itself was long gone by the time the retail store opened, the Olde Hide House helped it live on.

The store is expected to fully close by the end of January and they are no longer taking any sort of tailoring or customizing requests because of the short time window.

According to Danbury Global Ltd. & A.D. Hennick & Associates Inc., the companies that will be running the closing, there is more than $5M worth of stock to liquidate.