Podcast [Interview] CEO of Porsche Canada Discusses Retail Future Including GTA Experience Centre
Craig and Marc Ouayoun, President and CEO of Porsche Canada, discuss the brand’s future in this country that includes new retail showrooms as well as the unveiling of one of the world’s only Porsche ‘experience centres’ opening near Toronto next year.
The Interview Series podcast by Retail Insider Canada is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Also check out our The Weekly podcast where Craig and Lee discuss popular content published on Retail Insider which is part of the The Retail Insider Podcast Network.
Interviewed this episode:
Marc Ouayoun – President & CEO Porsche Cars Canada, Ltd.
Drop us a line at Craig@Retail-Insider.com. You can also rate us in Apple Podcasts or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show!
Background Music Credit: Hard Boiled Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Retail Insider is streamlining its Canadian retail news from around the web to include a handful of top news stories that can be viewed quickly during the day. Here are the top stories from the past 24 hours.
Herschel Supply Robson Street Flagship (Image: Ema Peter)
Vancouver-based global travel lifestyle and accessories brand Herschel Supply Co. is opening its fourth North American retail store on Vancouver’s iconic shopping destination, Robson Street, and it is the retailer’s flagship location.
Lyndon Cormack
Lyndon Cormack, Managing Director and Co-Founder at Herschel Supply, said the store is 2,800 square feet.
Originally renowned for their contemporary renditions of classic backpack silhouettes, Herschel Supply’s range has since expanded to include luggage, travel accessories, wallets, apparel, and more.
Herschel Supply, with headquarters in Vancouver, was founded in 2009 by brothers Jamie and Lyndon Cormack and is named after the small Canadian town in Saskatchewan where three generations of their family grew up.
Herschel Supply Robson Street Flagship (Image: Ema Peter)Herschel Supply Robson Street Flagship (Image: Ema Peter)
“We thought the bag space was a little boring so as we say every business starts with a problem. Ours was simple. Bags are boring. So we decided to go after that category specifically and make it more interesting,” said Lyndon Cormack.
“From there we have grown quite rapidly over the last decade and a bit and we now sell in about 113 different countries around the world.”
The retailer’s first store opened in Gastown in 2018. Other stores are located at Metropolis at Metrotown, and McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Vancouver Airport
“We are looking throughout North America to expand our retail footprint throughout our top selling cities throughout the US and Canada,” said Cormack.
Herschel Supply Robson Street Flagship (Image: Ema Peter)
The company said the new Robson Street store has a curated selection of vintage pieces, art, and well-traveled items from journeys all over the world.
“We designed it internally with our Herschel Supply Design Studio. We really wanted to celebrate the vibrant and eclectic nature of our end consumer and the creativity that we instill in them and they instill in us,” said Cormack.
“It’s a very vibrant store mixing old and new, classic design but with modern colours and design . . . For a brand that’s predominantly transacted online or transacted through wholesale, it’s a real opportunity for the stores to act as community hubs to bring all our creative customers together in one place. We’re really looking forward to this being another one of our clubhouses around the world that allows people to gather together.”
Herschel Supply Robson will serve as the brand’s retail hub and platform for local artists, designers, musicians, and other creatives, hosting artist-in-residence programs, workshops, speaker series, and community events.
Herschel Supply Robson Street Flagship (Image: Ema Peter)
“(Robson) is the most important street for Vancouver retail . . . We wanted to find the best location we could on the street as it is a really important, prominent retail location in Vancouver,” said Cormack. “It brings in a consumer we certainly already engage with online or through wholesale but it allows us to really join the conversation on a really important street.”
In addition to the brand’s diverse range of iconic backpacks, duffles, luggage, travel accessories, and updated apparel line, the new flagship store will be home to the Herschel Supply Book Fair, a curated reading area with books and magazines centered around Art, Architecture, Photography/Graphics, Music/Film, Travel, and Leisure, said the retailer.
“At Herschel Supply, we offer classic products with a modern twist, and that design ethos extends to the way we think about retail too,” said Cormack. “Retail is an opportunity to have fun and foster community, we wanted to make sure that our store reflected that by creating a space that inspires creativity and connection.”
Protests and demonstrations. They are a powerful and effective means by which to get a message heard en masse, often acting as useful sociopolitical tools that can be leveraged to shed light on important matters, giving voice to causes that have either been marginalized by government and other forces of influence or ignored by them altogether. In short, they are necessary, serving as critical cogs in the wheel of democracy. And our right to do so is secured under Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guaranteeing our freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the freedom of peaceful assembly. It’s exactly what organizers of the current ‘Freedom Convoy 2022’ are exercising in provinces across the country – a movement which began as a protest in opposition to the Canadian Federal Government’s COVID-19 vaccination requirements for truckers. However, in politicizing a health and safety issue that impacts everyone in every community across the country, they may find that their views are not simply in opposition to the Canadian government, but that they are also starkly contrasted by the views held among the general Canadian public.
In fact, according to a recent Ipsos poll, a vast majority of Canadians support vaccine mandates and are open to further measures that will help curb the ongoing spread of the coronavirus and its variants, with an overwhelming 80 percent in support of the announcement made in 2021 requiring mandatory vaccinations for all federal public servants. That support increases to 82 percent when it comes to views concerning the requirement for proof of vaccination for air and train travel, either internationally or interprovincially. With respect to vaccinations within specific sectors and forms of employment, 84 percent are in favour of mandating healthcare workers to do so, followed closely by teachers at 81 percent. A further 72 percent of Canadians believe that vaccine passports should be required in order to enter restaurants, gyms and other indoor spaces.
Within the retail environment, the numbers bear out in a very similar fashion. Retail-Insider.com and retail staffing expert and President of Luxury Careers Canada, Suzanne Sears, teamed up to conduct a survey in 2021, finding that 68 percent of Canadians believe that vaccinations should be mandatory for retail store staff. A further 65 percent of retail employees stated that they were not willing to work with other unvaccinated team members. And, it might be suggested that these numbers have likely increased since the time the responses were generated, falling more in line with sentiment concerning mandatory vaccinations in other sectors and industries.
When considering the needs and wants of the ‘Freedom’ protestors against the backdrop of these statistics, which reflect the sentiment of Canadians across the country, their message and objective seem to lose a significant amount of gravitas. Afterall, their views and opinions on ‘freedom’ represent those held by just two out of every ten people that you’ll meet today. And although a percentage balance or measurement is not often what defines a meaningful protest, view or opinion (most bright ideas and insights are often outnumbered by the masses), the fact that people gathering in cities across the country are not voicing concerns regarding gender inequality or racial injustice, or fighting for greater diversity and inclusion within society, tends to diminish the value of their efforts further. In fact, it could easily be argued that their penchant to be heard on the issue of vaccinations is impeding the freedom of everyone around them.
Disruption and ignorance
The ‘Freedom Convoy 2022’ protests, which have been causing disruptions in cities across the country, have risen to their crescendo in Ottawa where its Mayor, Jim Watson, says that the city’s downtown core is “out of control” where somewhere in the region of 1,000 parked transport trailers and thousands more protestors on foot have essentially commandeered the area. City residents are being urged to avoid the downtown core and warned about the likelihood of certain road and interprovincial bridge closures in an attempt by city officials to stem the momentum that the so-called ‘Freedom’ protests are gaining. In addition, the CF Rideau Centre – one of Canada’s most successful malls, and located in downtown Ottawa – remains closed for an eighth consecutive day after a mob of unmasked protestors filled its corridors a little more than a week ago. It’s an occupation that seems to have unfortunately become emblematic of the movement’s lack of foresight and direction and, according to Retail Council of Canada, could cost the Centre and its tenants an estimated $19.7 million in lost revenue.
In addition, many of the Main Street retailers in disrupted cities and towns across the country have been forced to temporarily shutter their store operations, adding to the cost of the ‘Freedom’ demonstrations – costs that are being incurred by their neighbours and fellow Canadian citizens. These are, of course, costs that are added to the fallout of a strained Canadian supply chain, resulting in further delays, increased food prices and a general sense of aggravation among much of the country’s population. And, as Ottawa’s Watson declares a state of emergency, preparing to boost police enforcement to quell the disturbances occurring within his city, it’s safe to say that the kind of action required to remove the protestors from the area, and other areas across the country, will be supported by the majority of Canadians.
Getting back to ‘normal’
Rideau Centre (Justin Tang/THE CANADIAN PRESS)
It’s not often that a protest or demonstration of this size and magnitude, when its mandate and objective is broken down, resonates so poorly with onlookers and passersby. But, then again, the onlookers and passersby of this situation, generally speaking, are the majority whose rights and freedoms are being most dramatically impacted by so few. In fact, it’s rather poetic, perhaps pathetically so, when realizing that the fraction of Canadian society that supports the ‘Freedom Convoy’ are more than likely the fraction of unvaccinated citizens responsible for the exacerbation and perpetuation of the global pandemic that we find ourselves, collectively, wading through. And, it seems as though the longer these protests drag on, the longer people refuse to get vaccinated and contribute meaningfully toward returning society back to some kind of ‘normal’, the less effective the dissenting voices will become, rendering them eventually as pointless as the blast of a truck horn into an abyss.
Pronti AI has created a unique app that serves as a personal wardrobe assistant for people and helps consumers discover shoppable items that go with their clothes.
Mila Banerjee, CEO and Founder of the company, said the app gives people suggestions on what to wear based on closet items, choices and mood.
Mila Banerjee
The app also has the Shop-with Closet feature where people can browse for new items seeing how they match with the clothing they already own and buy items that they know they are going to wear.
The company was incorporated in February 2021 and a beta version was launched in late summer but “the real face version” came in September, said Banerjee.
“Over (a recent weekend), we completely blew up and we are now number two on the App store in Lifestyle and we’ve just been having such amazing, amazing traction on the app downloads. We unfortunately had to switch it to a wait list because it was so many that it was overwhelming our system but it’s incredible. It’s very exciting,” she said.
Image: Pronti AI
“We have a mobile for consumers that helps them with what to wear and what to buy. Our machine learning is really a wardrobe assistant so they can figure out daily outfits but they can also shop with clothing that they already have. So our machine learning takes items from their closet and mixes it with something new.
“Users upload images to their closet and they can do that in either of two ways. They can either take a photo of the item or they can find a similar item through Google images or other sites where they just recently purchased.”
Banerjee was a retailer with a furniture e-commerce business in Europe but she said it was such a hurdle to break through the noise and find the right consumer.
“And as a consumer myself or the people we talked to or tested with, it was just really hard to find items that are personal to you. The world e-commerce is an ocean and we are drowning in that choice and we can’t find what we’re looking for. All we do is scroll and scroll and scroll trying to find stuff that’s suited to us,” she said.
Image: Pronti AI
“And really things should be a lot more personal. The reason we have for Pronti is that no one understands your tastes and the way you wear clothes in such a way that we present you with items that you would have wanted to discover yourself and maybe never realized exactly what you were looking for.
“We have some really interesting things on the retailer side. Right now, we’re focused on Shopify retailers but we’re really open to other retail partnerships as well. And essentially there’s two ways that they can engage with the Pronti community or benefit from the machine learning that we’ve developed. The first way is through sending their items to our machine learning which then gets recommended to the users on our app. And the second way is through what we call smart outfits. It’s a retail integration on their website and right now it allows them to merchandise their items so users come onto the site and they get to see the item that they’re looking at in a number of different outfits.”
Banerjee said shoppers search for how to wear an item at least six million times a month. For retailers, it’s helping expand the potential for the users to understand how to wear it and it doesn’t require the retailer to take a ton of other photographs with different models or with clothing that they don’t necessarily have in their store.
Image: Pronti AI
“I think the potential is enormous. Certainly one of the reasons we had such an influx of people downloading the app . . . is we have reached two million views on a TikTok featuring our app and the number of people downloading just completely slowed down the app. We had to put people on a waitlist so we could fix the app. It’s just showing how much it resonates with people to have a wardrobe assistant, a personal stylist, that can both help with what to wear and what to buy,” she said.
“We’re really excited to help the retailers out. I think so many amazing small brands and really unique stores have popped up because Shopify enables them to get their storefront up but then they have such difficulty getting share of voice and getting out there. This is sort of our mission to help really unique retailers get out there and reach customers and find a new, more exciting way to shop than just scroll,” said Banerjee.
Snap Inc., parent company to Snapchat, has rolled out Catalog-powered Shopping Lenses which it says is a significant upgrade to artificial reality shopping by making it simpler and more engaging for consumers.
The company also says that its Lenses offering is easier to build, scale, and optimize. It’s a technology that can benefit retailers in Canada and beyond as innovations continue to be integrated into the consumer experience. Consumer preferences have been changing rapidly with new tech and the pandemic has only accelerated the adoption and growth of digital channels, and Snap appears to be addressing this.
Snap’s new Catalog-powered Shopping Lenses provides for what the company describes is a simplified, more useful AR try-on shopping interface for Snapchatters. With that, users can quickly see product info such as prices, descriptions, and unique URLs to purchase with new Lens Product Cards as you try on products.
As a result, important product information and SKU-specific purchase capability can be determined including real-time dynamically updated price and colour details. The platform provides Snapchatters with the required product information rapidly as they simply tap on the Lens Product Card to purchase each individual product.
Real-time results for brands is another benefit that includes instant feedback on which Snap’s Gen Z and Millennial audience is said to be drawn to. Snap says that this is good for research and development purposes and it also can help brands track consumer trends and product engagement by offering marketers immediate insights to help educate their research and development plans.
Marketers can now leverage Snapchat’s AR try-on as an early indication on which products Snapchatters are engaging with, while utilizing these signals when ideating on targeting strategies and early-on decision making for product development. That can be done down to the SKU level according to Snap.
The real-time results feature also allows Snapchat to optimize delivery of a businesses’ Shopping Lens to the Snapchatters most likely to purchase each item. In combination with its newly released auction optimization towards purchases for AR Lenses, brands are seeing meaningful increases in purchases and efficiency through Snapchat.
One example is Toronto-founded MAC Cosmetics which has seen 1.3 million try-on experiences at a cost of 0.31 cents per product trial and has secured 17 times higher lift in purchases among females, 2.4x higher lift in brand awareness and 9x higher lift in purchase intent. That no doubt led to an increase in sales and profitability at a remarkably low cost.
The new platform also expands on Snap’s simple Lens Web Builder which allows beauty brands to create Shopping Lenses in as fast as two minutes. At launch, the quick click accessibility in Lens Web Builder will be available to Beauty brands and will roll out to other product verticals in the coming months. Snap notes that all product brands can leverage catalog-powered Shopping Lenses with Lens Studio.
“Augmented reality is changing the way we shop, play, and learn, and transforming how businesses tell their stories and sell their products,” said Jeremi Gorman, Chief Business Officer, Snap Inc. “Our revamped AR Shopping Lenses will mean a more engaging experience for our Snapchat community, and enable a faster, easier way to build Lenses for businesses — directly linking Lenses to existing product catalogs for real-time analytics and R&D about which products resonate with Gen Z and Millennial audiences.”
Snap has become hugely popular — over 200 million people are said to be engaging with AR on its platform daily across a variety of personal and often useful experiences that span commerce, entertainment, education, and the arts.
Since 2020, Snap Inc. says that it has focused on AR shopping as a primary company initiative by offering brands real-time AR try-on experiences that reach millions of its ‘Snapchatters’. That ranges from trying on makeup to shoes, watches, glasses and other items with AR shopping being a key emerging part of how Snap’s community engages with its app. Incredibly, Snapchatters are said to engage with AR more than 6 billion times per day globally.
Retail Insider is streamlining its Canadian retail news from around the web to include a handful of top news stories that can be viewed quickly during the day. Here are the top stories from the past 24 hours.
Dufferin Mall Walmart Supercentre in Toronto (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
Walmart Canada has completed a $14.5 million renovation to its Toronto Dufferin Mall Supercentre which expands its Grocery Pickup service, launches its Express Pickup service and provides a wider assortment and other new services for customers.
“Our customers have been waiting for this and there’s been tremendous feedback so far,” said Store Manager Maksim Bozic. “They can’t believe what they’re seeing with the new upgrades and changes to improve the shopping experience. The store looks bright, organized, and refreshed. We have ready-to-eat rotisserie chickens and samosas, a new sushi bar and a fresh in-store bakery for all to enjoy. The response from our customers has been very positive.”
Walmart has expanded its Grocery Pickup service with 150 slots available daily with plans to expand to about 900 slots. The renovated store is also one of 28 Walmart locations that launched a time-saving Express Pickup service, a new premium option that provides customers with online grocery orders for pickup in two hours or less.
Dufferin Mall Walmart Supercentre in Toronto (Image: Walmart Canada)
Dufferin Mall Walmart Supercentre in Toronto (Image: Walmart Canada)
Walmart Canada at Dufferin Mall in Toronto (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
Key features of the renovated store include:
A new fresh bakery, sushi bar, and other ready-to-eat food options such as rotisserie chickens and samosas;
The international food aisle is now larger with an expanded assortment available;
Fresh food has been moved to the side of the store under new signage and lighting;
Newly upgraded front entrance, self-checkout area, and dairy and frozen sections.
“Walmart has been here serving the community for 28 years when Walmart came to Canada and we’re the closest Walmart store to downtown Toronto. There’s nobody else but us pretty much in the heart of the city,” said Bozic.
He said the retailer has turned its focus on the online side of the business.
Dufferin Mall Walmart Supercentre in Toronto (Image: FieldAgent Canada)
Dufferin Mall Walmart Supercentre in Toronto (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
Dufferin Mall Walmart Supercentre in Toronto (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
“We’re looking to go to 500 (online) orders in the next four months by end of May and then we have a capacity of 900 to 1,200 orders per day,” added Bozic. “It’s part of the grocery pickup but the good thing with Walmart Canada is we offer also general merchandise.”
Over the past year, Walmart Canada has made approximately 70,000 items available for customers to pick up.
“Express Pickup, we launched at this location (recently). It’s in-store pickup but you can order your order an hour ahead and pretty much the same hour, two hours you’ll get your order,” he said. “If you need something right away, you place your order, you get one personalized shopper, Walmart associate, that does your full order for you, they pick it up, they get it ready, you come to the store, you use our apps we have, and in a matter of two to five minutes the order will be delivered to your car. It can be general merchandise items as well.”
The two level store at Dufferin Mall is a two-level location with 143,000 square feet. It has 420 staff currently with expansion possibly to 500 as it progresses with online orders, said Bozic.
Dufferin Mall Walmart Supercentre in Toronto (Image: Dustin Fuhs)Dufferin Mall Walmart Supercentre in Toronto (Image: FieldAgent Canada)
“At this moment we have about 28 open positions to hire different areas of the building – the front end, the fresh, overnight, online associates to help us pick those orders. We’re creating quite a few careers.”
Walmart Canada came to the country in 1994 and operates a chain of more than 400 stores nationwide serving 1.5 million customers each day with more than 100,000 staff. The Dufferin store was one of its first locations in Canada.
The Dufferin Mall Supercentre is the closest Walmart Canada store to downtown Toronto and it’s designed to be a delivery hub. The store has its own delivery vehicles, which includes a new van that was recently added to the fleet.
The renovation is part of the company’s $3.5-billion investment aimed to generate significant growth and to make the online and in-store shopping experience simpler, faster and more convenient for Walmart customers. That includes renovating more than 150 stores – more than one-third of Walmart Canada’s store network, said the retailer.
Dufferin Mall Walmart Supercentre in Toronto (Image: Dustin Fuhs)
Vendors in the Dufferin location includes a minutekey, Western Union, Naoki Sushi, Walmart Pharmacy, Walmart Photo Centre, Walmart Vision Centre, Walmart Wireless and Walmart Financial ATM. A new McDonald’s will be located inside the store, which is expected to open in the Spring.
Bozic said the company’s philosophy is to take care of its customers.
“Because this is the closest to the downtown, we felt it was important that we make this store is 100 per cent what the customer is looking for,” he said. “The focus is on the online business but also we cannot forget that we have folks who come into our store and they want to feel, they want to see what we have.”
Thriftys brands (Bluenotes, Aéropostale, Aéro Kids and Lucky Brand) at Scarborough Town Centre
The Thriftys Family of Brands has launched an integrated brand model for some larger format stores to carry all of the retailer’s banners.
Overall, the company has 129 stores across Canada under the following banners: Bluenotes (100), Thriftys by Bluenotes (nine), Aeropostale (eight) and Lucky Brand (12).
Sean Goodall
“The way we’ve kind of built this multi-brand model is really around Bluenotes, Aeropostale and Lucky Brand,” said SeanGoodall, Director of Marketing and E-Commerce.
“When Bluenotes first started introducing Aeropostale into the Canadian market, we did open some Aeropostale specific storefronts and we still do have them coast to coast. But were kind of tasked with the brand problem of reintroducing the brand to Canada. It had exited the country. A lot of people were still under the impression that it was no longer a Canadian retailer that they could see in malls.
“One thing that we introduced off the bat was an Aero collection into Bluenotes stores. Due to the success and how we saw our customers responding to Bluenotes and Aero products together, we upped the ante if you will and really started integrating Aeropostale within our stores. And then when you shop our stores we’re now at a point where all of our Bluenotes and Aeropostale products are all integrated into one.”
Thriftys brands (Bluenotes, Aéropostale, Aéro Kids and Lucky Brand) at Scarborough Town Centre
That includes co-branding on window fronts of stores.
Josh Graham, Director of Visual Presentation, said there are a variety of storefronts based on the square footage of the store.
Joshua Graham
“Our real strategy lately is to obtain larger square footage in shopping centres. So if a store is over a certain amount of square footage we might call that store a Thriftys and really the plan there is that in a Thriftys store to be able to carry all of the different brands,” said Graham.
“Depending on the mall, most stores are called Bluenotes but in our most recent strategy to get larger square footage stores we have been opening more and more Thriftys stores which also carry Lucky Brand, Aeropostale and Bluenotes.”
Recently, a store in the Scarborough Town Centre in Toronto launched the multi-brand concept.
Thriftys brands (Bluenotes, Aéropostale, Aéro Kids and Lucky Brand) at Scarborough Town Centre
“Our Bluenotes store in Scarborough was much smaller and we moved to a larger store which allowed us to integrate more the Aeropostale and Lucky Brand products,” said Goodall.
Graham said at Scarborough Town Centre the store was originally 3,500 square feet but moved to a 10,000-square-foot store to showcase more of a variety of the retailer’s brands.
“We can really create that multi-brand experience within a large square footage store. Because we do have a variety of different sizes of stores, anywhere from 2,500 square feet in some cases all the way up to a store that is 40,000 square feet, the assortment will vary based on the square footage.”
The retailer is starting to take over larger real estate spaces in malls to expand this multi-brand store model.
Thriftys by Bluenotes concept store at Lynden Park Mall in Brantford, Ontario (Image: Thriftys Family of Brands)Thriftys by Bluenotes concept store at Lynden Park Mall in Brantford, Ontario (Image: Thriftys Family of Brands)
The Scarborough store for example is the same experience as a Bluenotes store but the company has really focused on creating departments within the store and within that department can be found the different branded items together.
“We’re very much of the model that online needs to play and within in-store very, very harmoniously. It’s one website for all the brands. We have the Bluenotes tab, an Aeropostale tab, and Lucky Brand tab so the shopper can easily flip back and forth between each of the tabs,” said Goodall. “And to kind of further mirror what we’re doing in-store if you shop the Bluenotes site you are actually shopping both Bluenotes and Aeropostale products.
“You have the ability to just shop the Aeropostale collection and then you have the ability to just shop the Lucky Brand collection but it’s all within one on the website interface.”
Entrepreneur Colleen Imrie has a mission to help artisans follow their dreams and build successful businesses.
It’s why she created The Nooks concept which some people have described as an artisan retail business incubator. The Nooks is a creative space that allows Canadian artisans and entrepreneurs to sell their handmade products both in-store and online.
Imrie, owner and founder, launched the concept in 2016. She initially had an interior design, furniture store in Toronto based on consignment and her own designs.
Image: The Nooks
“I had a lot of artists come through my doors a couple of months in and ask if I would sell their jewelry, their art work. I told them I do consignment and that didn’t seem to be the right fit,” she said. “I wasn’t carrying any artisan goods. It was like furniture and home decor stuff.
“Then I quickly looked around my 2,500-square-foot store and calculated well what if I just charged rent. It’s not a new model. Lawyers do it, hairdressers do it. People do this rent-based style of retail and I quickly pivoted six months later to opening my first full Nooks store under a brand new concept of rent-based retail and then building a lot of different back-end and resources to actually help these artisans be a business.
“I really see us as a retail incubator for handmade craft brands, taking people from their hobby to it being their full-time gig. We do that not only with the placement of the best locations in malls, high volume, downtown streets, but also with our business development. That’s where the incubator comes in because we have a lot of resources that I designed or my team collectively designed to help makers go through the journey of becoming an entrepreneur. Just because you make stuff doesn’t mean you’re a business owner or even an entrepreneur. So we kind of teach them those ropes of how to make this super sustainable because we’re putting them in front of thousands and thousands of people. So they’re going to have to level up and get to that mindset that this could be something so big in your life and we can help you.”
The Nooks Future Store at Yorkdale (Image: Craig Patterson)
The stores came first and then about three years in Imrie took the basic retail model of rent-based and brought it online in a marketplace. Its own software was created where vendors can log in and upload their products, make full profit and pay The Nooks a monthly fee.
The company has 14 stores in Ontario and British Columbia.
It has also embarked in a partnership with Hudson’s Bay, launching a store within The Bay in Ottawa at CF Rideau Centre.
“Essentially they want to bring artisan goods into their store to get the customer base. Handmade’s all the rage,” said Imrie, who negotiated a rent-based model with the retail giant where the “nookies” can continue to earn full profit.
In that store, there are 68 vendors selling products in just under 2,000 square feet.
Image: The Nooks
Image: The Nooks
“We have a drop and go membership which is we merchandise on behalf of the vendors. In our regular stores, everyone has their own nook like a micro-store that they design. With Hudson’s Bay, given the space which our average store starts at 2,500 square feet, we had to shift to drop and go. We merchandise for the vendor,” said Imrie. “It looks like a regular retail setup.
“We’re looking at up to 10 stores across Canada. They shared with me kind of their hot list of top performers and we selected those. Every four months we’re looking to roll out a new location.”
The company, which has three stores in Vancouver (Kitsilano, North Vancouver and Gastown), is looking at two more stores in BC and one more store in Ontario.
“Then we’re going to start filling the gaps between BC and Ontario. We’re looking to do that with the Hudson’s Bay to start. Winnipeg, Alberta. Fill in the gaps of the country through the partnership,” said Imrie. “And that also helps us go about the malls and look for our own standalone store.”
Image: The Nooks
Image: The Nooks
The retailer’s growth also includes the launch of sub-brands The General Store and Hello Sunshine.
“Having six years of data, I’ve seen a huge rise in the popularity of artisan food and then also baby goods, especially through COVID. So I opened up sub-brand concepts. So we have four General Stores where we now represent artisan food producers. Originally, we had trinkle bits of it in our regular Nook stores besides ceramics and leather and all the other stuff, but I quickly realized when the food is bunched together it does better. So that’s when I thought let’s open up a food concept,” said Imrie. “Our General Store represents all handmade artisan food and drink.
“Our Hello Sunshine is our baby concept. People shop for baby better when it’s grouped together, not spread out throughout the store. It’s more of a destination. So then I created these baby stores. There are three Hello Sunshine stores which are all for baby vendors.
“We’re also going to be launching independent websites . . . because we want to start promoting and isolating those vendors because they need a different care in their business. They have different niches. I want to grow the sub-brands with the Nooks because the same people want to shop the stuff. It’s just better received in a more niched and curated environment over our regular Nook stores, those two categories.”
