As the founder and owner of Gotstyle, Melissa Austria has been creating and delivering a unique and innovative lifestyle concept for men since 2005.
With a vision to fill the gap in the Toronto menswear retail market, she built a successful brand that offers a curated selection of international and local labels, catering to different lifestyles and body types. She also integrated technology to make shopping easier and to build the future of independent retail.
“With over two decades of experience in the menswear industry, I have developed a passion and expertise for fashion, merchandising, and retail,” said Austria.
She has worked as a sales manager and brand manager for renowned collections such as Mexx, Claiborne for Men, Valentino, and Calvin Klein Menswear, launching the Kenneth Cole men’s sportswear and tailored clothing divisions in Canada.
She also created original content and served as the editor in chief of Gotstyle Man Magazine, a nationally distributed publication that educates and inspires men to dress better.
Her work has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Uptown Downtown award for Retail Excellence and the W100 ranking of Canada’s Top Female Entrepreneurs.
“My mission is to empower men to look good, feel good, and do good,” she said.
Austria was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
“I consider myself a true Canadian. I was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick and then I moved to Vancouver, B.C. when I was 14 and then I moved to Toronto when I was 21,” she said.
“We didn’t have the money for me to go to university so I was just kind of working in retail and then decided that I wanted to move to Toronto and explore what my options here were. I worked in a couple of different jobs in retail and then I was very lucky that I got a job at Harry Rosen but not in the sales department but actually as a junior administrative person. I was working at the head office when they had the office at Scotia Plaza.”
From there, she went into sales at Harry Rosen and did that for about two years. Then she moved into wholesale with Mexx but still in menswear. She was a sales rep for Ontario. From there she moved to Clairborne.
“Having the background in terms of the finances as opposed to just selling was a great teaching,” she said.
“(My career) started at Harry Rosen but then every other job I did after was in menswear. I was in wholesale for a good 15 years.
“It was the wholesale experience where I learned the most but with Harry Rosen it was Mr. Rosen himself. The fact that I was such a lowly person on the totem pole, he knew everybody that worked at the store and many, many years later when I had opened up this store I remember meeting Mr. Rosen (Harry) on an airplane and he congratulated me on opening. He just had a memory that he knew everyone. He made you feel special. Because I was lucky that I dealt with all the great menswear stores across Canada I think I learned from all of them in terms of customer service, the product assortment and building a community within your store.”
What is it about this area of retail that she enjoys and likes?
“I definitely would say that I loved my time in wholesale. After Clairborne, I went to Valentino and Calvin Klein for all of Canada. Got to travel across Canada multiple times because we would visit all the stores, see all the retailers, travel to Italy, travel to Europe all the time, and then from there I was brand manager for Kenneth Cole. So I launched Kenneth Cole’s menswear in Canada. We had seven divisions that we launched . . . Doing the assortment for Canada, doing all the costing, working with all the reps, working with all the department stores, putting shop in shops in all the department stores, planning all the inventory. It was everything.
“Having that ability to control the brand from A to Z definitely sort of helped my career when I decided to open up a retail store.
“It’s so funny that in my entire career in retail I’ve never worked in womenswear, ever. I’ve only been in men. So it’s the only thing I know which is crazy and it kind of started because I had to help a lot of my guy friends put outfits together. They would always call me. ‘I’ve got a date tonight. I don’t know what to wear. Can you come clean out my closet?’ So it was something that I was always sort of excited to do. Womenswear, not so much. It’s always been this overlying mission to help men dress better.”
In starting her business, Austria went back to the foundations of what she believes in, which is education.
“So if we can educate guys on how to dress better then they’re going to dress better. I like to think of the store as not a clothing store but a solution provider. So we really wanted to use the magazine to push that message even more because the demographic of guy I’m dealing with is guys in their late 30s, 40s and 50s. They’re tactile. They want to look at the magazine, they want to flip through the magazine,” she said.
“I think when we launched the magazine everyone was going to digital . . . It was great because we were able to showcase a lot of our clients in there which they loved and this was before digital media was as rampant as it is. So guys needed a reference point to look back on.”
While describing the retail sector, Austria said she finds its back to about 20 years ago when she first started in the industry.
“The men in North America dressed like shit (then) . . . Now I find coming out of COVID everyone’s in a super casual mode. Hoodies, sweat pants, that sort of vibe. So I think it’s almost a re-education on the younger generation that were never told how to wear a suit, how to wear a sport coat, how to dress up,” she said.
“If you look at the young guys, they missed their grad. Grad was the first time men or boys got to wear a suit. There’s a whole generation of boys that have missed that point in their lives and now you’ve got everyone else that has forgotten how to dress up again.
“But it is going back to the roots of retail where even though you’re trying to sell the masses online, you’re still trying to build that community where you are.”
Had the pleasure of working with Melissa at Claiborne. Absolutely amazing, her engaging personality, her radiant smile and her high intellect made it a great overall experience. Not surprised that she is so successful.
Well done Melissa – and congrats on a stellar career and having created great retail environments and selection for your clientele.
Your eye for style and the curation of brands has made a big contribution to the independent men’s retail scene in Canada.
Wishing you much continued success.
David Goldman