Upscale Australian skin care brand Aesop will open its second freestanding Toronto location this spring in Toronto’s Rosedale commercial area. Aesop also opened concession within Saks Fifth Avenue‘s CF Toronto Eaton Centre and CF Sherway Gardens locations last month.
The Rosedale Aesop will be located at 1116 Yonge Street, replacing a restaurant. Hilary Kellar-Parsons of Avison Young acted on behalf of Aesop in negotiations with the landlord.
The new store will be designed by Toronto-based architecture firm superkül, which also designed Aesop’s Queen Street West unit which opened last year.
When the Rosedale store opens, Canada will boast five freestanding and two concession Aesop locations. It’s impressive, considering that the brand’s first Canadian locations opened in July of 2015. Aesop’s first stores included a 615 square foot location at 19 Water Street in Vancouver’s Gastown area, and a 990 square foot location at 880 Queen Street West in Toronto. A Montreal location followed in the fall, at 4968 Sherbrooke Street West in Westmount and last month a second Montreal Aesop location opened on St. Viateur Street in Montreal’s ‘Mile End’.
Aesop was founded in 1987 in Melbourne by hairdresser Dennis Paphitis. Product packaging is simple, and its quality is considered to be exceptional. It sources plant-based and laboratory-made ingredients, and uses only those with a proven record of safety and efficacy. It operates free-standing ‘signature stores’ as well as wholesale operations in a variety of retailers, high-end department stores such as Holt Renfrew and Barneys New York. Canadian stocklists include a handful of smaller independents.
