Entrepreneur Justin Louis has launched his first SECTION 35 retail store in Chilliwack, B.C.
Louis, Creative Director and Owner of the brand, said the first physical space is about 500 square feet and gives him a smaller scale opportunity to get his foot into a retail location with the goal of expanding to a Vancouver flagship in the future while it can plan and search for the right location.
“The goal is to 100 per cent to open a flagship in Vancouver. The brand has a strong customer base in Chilliwack and gives us an opportunity to serve those customers directly,” he said of the brand.
“We are a streetwear brand based out of Vancouver. We make a wide range of products – hoodies, T-shirts, outerwear, bottoms, headwear. Just about everything. We’ve been in business since 2016.
“We’ve been strictly e-commerce but we do wholesale with places like Foot Locker and some other wholesale accounts. So we do have a small retail presence and we’re hoping to expand that and we’re also looking to expand into our own locations in some key places.”
Louis said it’s important to offer physical locations to reach the brand’s customers where they can actually come into a store and interface with the brand – touch the products.
“One of the big things I think misses with wholesale is that we don’t get an opportunity to really share our full offering and our full story. Accounts will only buy certain stuff and sometimes they’re not carrying the whole breadth of what we offer,” said Louis.
“And for me as an artist and a creator, it’s really important that we create a space where we can really showcase everything we do and we’re not constrained to things that major retailers may have in place. So it’s really about telling our full story ourselves and creating a space to do that.”
The Chilliwack store carries SECTION 35 collections and a small, curated footwear offering starting with Saucony and looking to add other brands which compliment the store and brand.
Louis is a member of the Samson Cree Nation and was born and raised in Nipisihkopahk (Samson) on Treaty 6 Territory. He now calls Unceded Stó:lō Territory his home. His work blends the past with the present and finds inspiration in the juxtaposition between these elements. He launched SECTION 35 in 2016 with the intention to use art and fashion to tell his peoples’ stories.
Louis was a finalist for Menswear Designer of the Year at the 2022 Canadian Art and Fashion Awards (“CAFA”) in Toronto. His work has seen features in numerous publications from Vogue to Complex and was included at “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” at the Metropolitan Museum of New York in 2022.
SECTION 35 is an Indigenous owned streetwear brand based on the Unceded Territories of the Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
SECTION 35 has been featured in Vogue, Complex and numerous other publications over the last year. In 2022, SECTION 35 had work featured at the Metropolitan Museum of New York’s “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” Exhibition alongside some of biggest designers in America. The brand has shown on numerous runways from Indigenous Fashion Arts in Toronto and most recently Yamaava Fashion Daze in California which was produced by Kelly Cutrone. In February of 2023, the brand attended the prestigious White Milan Trade Show in Milan, Italy during Milan Fashion Week. SECTION 35 has also collaborated with brands such as OxDx out of Phoenix, Arizona to The Hundreds based in Los Angeles, California and just recently launched its first collaboration with Mitchell & Ness alongside powerhouse Salish Artist Debra Sparrow.
“Right now we’re a B.C. brand and we’re starting with this small store but our goal is to open a spot in Vancouver. That would be our next goal because we are a Vancouver-based brand originally. We’ve got a strong following and customer base out there and I think it’s important for us to have a presence out there. That would be the next move for us ideally.
“And then we’d love to have a presence further East. In the Toronto market. And potentially in the Prairies where we have a strong following as well. We’re taking our time. We’re not rushing into this and so this Chilliwack location really gives us an opportunity to get our toes wet so to speak with a smaller risk, a lower risk profile, for something in a market where I live and we have a strong following out here. So it’s a chance for us to kind of test the waters and wrap our heads around retail.
“I started designing in 2014 when we founded the brand. There wasn’t a lot of Indigenous-owned streetwear brands. There was none that I was aware of in Canada. They were all in the States. And there was maybe a handful of Indigenous-owned fashion brands in general that I was really aware of. I felt there was a place for it in the market, being Indigenous and being a consumer, I didn’t see a lot out there that really kind of resonated with me from where I come from and from the way we view the world. It really was just kind of the catalyst for me thinking maybe there was an opportunity for me to create something. I felt there was a void in the marketplace for something like this.”
