Good Neighbour ‘Lifestyle Department Store’ Expanding with a New Flagship in Toronto’s Summerhill [Interview]

Good Neighbour, a thoughtfully curated lifestyle and fashion department store, has opened its third, and biggest location in Toronto, on Yonge Street.

The store is 6,000 square feet in the Summerhill area at 1212 Yonge Street, said Aziz Alam, an owner of the company.

The brand’s first store opened in 2014 at 935 Queen Street East in Leslieville in 4,000 square feet of space. The second store opened during COVID in 2021 at 415 Roncesvalles Avenue in 2,200 square feet of space.

“I’ve been in retail for 40 some odd years. I was young when I started retail and I worked for the big guys. We lived not far from Leslieville. We had little kids and we used to have to go to Queen West to get some stuff. I thought this was crazy,” he said.

“There’s such an amazing demographic in Leslieville. Nobody thought of anything. I eyed this location for almost a year and a half. I tried to negotiate. They didn’t want retail. We finally convinced them. We took a small footprint of that store. We opened up with 1,700 square feet 10 years ago in October and since then we continued to take more space there and we became a 4,000 square feet store. During COVID we doubled our footprint in that building.

“Basically I always wanted to satisfy a need in a niche neighbourhood which we saw a demographic of young parents, young families like us and cater to the needs of the family.”

Alam said the idea was to create a unique, thoughtful and fun shopping experience with everything from hot sauce to blue jeans.

He said the new location in Summerhill offered a great opportunity for the brand.

“Nobody around here caters to the needs of a household which is exactly what I’m after all the time, especially a young household. You can buy not only a pair of jeans but you can buy dishes and you can buy soaps,” said Alam. “It’s a concept of what you need at home and for yourself and going to someone’s house with a gift.

“We will grow. We realized after expanding into Roncesvalles, even though it’s a smaller footprint, definitely we know how to scale ourselves and what we have people love. And we have a niche. We’re sort of high volume inventory type of people but not cheap at all. I’m still looking to be very design conscious and brand conscious.”

Alam said brick and mortar customers want an experience.

“They’re not just going to a clothing store anymore because they can buy anything online now. In order to make that experience, you need to give them the ambiance, to give them the full exposure. I go after people who travel a lot. Anybody that’s been to Paris, anybody that’s been to anywhere, Copenhagen, shopping, when they come into our store they can relate to all these stores in L.A., in Paris. There’s an experience they don’t get in Toronto or really in Canada,” he said.

“There’s very few people doing what we’re doing and how we do it. We know what customers like about us is basically being able to come in and leave with something in their hands and the store has a lot of stories, it has a lot of little departments so you get into the store and you get lost into the world of departments and categories.”

In the new store, there’s also a lounge with beverages.

“The name itself we know now resonates very nicely with communities and neighbourhoods. Are there more neighbourhoods left in Toronto that I see? We have the East, the West and the Centre now. Where we go next will be other cities. We’ll definitely grow. My heart tells me to go to Vancouver before anywhere,” said Alam. “We’re careful with how we spend our money too. So do we want to try an out of town experience first in a place like Oakville or Collingwood before we go test ourselves in a place like Vancouver. We are definitely going to grow.”

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