The arrival of international fashion chain Forever 21 at the Rideau Centre shows Ottawa is growing up as a retail location, but local boutiques say they don’t feel left behind.
Cindy VanBuskirk, Rideau Centre’s general manager, says Ottawa picking up Forever 21 sends a positive message to other big retailers that the city is a destination market for popular stores.
Forever 21, which caters largely to teenagers and young adults, and sells “cheap and chic” clothing inspired by designer fashion labels, will open its first Ottawa store this summer or fall.
Even with this move towards a more mature retail landscape, Centretown shop owners say their businesses aren’t suffering.
George Monsour, a sales associate with Benton’s menswear at the 240 Sparks Street mall, says those who shop at local clothiers like Benton’s represent a different clientele anyway.
“There will be no effect on our business,” he says, “and in the short term, I don’t see it having much of an impact on local small businesses.”
Construction for Forever 21’s 16,000-square-foot store starts in April.
Ottawa fashionistas will be able to browse the store’s two floors, complete with an in-store escalator and three entrances.
The store’s trendy and affordable clothes would get 19-year-old Carleton University student Kasia Gnatek to do her shopping in Ottawa instead of at home in Toronto, she says.
“I still want to shop in Ottawa, I just don’t have the stores here that I’d like to shop in,” she says. “It’s good to see Ottawa expanding its retail horizons.”
While shoppers, such as Gnatek, say they would have liked to see Forever 21 open a long time ago, the floor space wasn’t available until now.
VanBuskirk says most retailers that are just entering the Ottawa market prefer to open their first store at the Rideau Centre, but it can be difficult to get enough space in the mall.
“Landlords just don’t have 16,000 square feet hanging around. There’s typically a threshold below which they won’t do a store, which is why we don’t have an H&M store,” says VanBuskirk, referring to the Rideau Centre only acquiring Forever 21 now.
The new boutique will include about 370 square metres across from Shopper’s Drug Mart on the first level of the mall, about 1,100 square metres directly above the old food court.
Jeffrey Berkowitz, President of Aurora Realty Consultants, Forever 21’s retail real estate brokerage, says the company brought Forever 21 to Ottawa now because there was the space available in the Rideau Centre, and nowhere else in Ottawa.
He says stores such as Forever 21 do not look at Ottawa first due to its smaller population size, not because the city is unfashionable.
“Ottawa has the customers,” he says. “There are a tremendous number of new retailers looking at Ottawa.”
Not only was the space available to build a store here now, he says, but the city is ready for the fresh change Forever 21 brings.
“The store has a unique perspective. Styles go right into stores from the runway,” says Berkowitz. “Everyday there is new stuff coming out.”
This is the formula that helped the chain expand to 13 Canadian stores in three years, after opening its first Toronto flagship store in 2007.
The Los Angeles-based brand specializes in women’s apparel, but has expanded to footwear, under and outerwear, accessories, men’s and children’s clothing.
“It’s a go-to store for many teenagers – especially the starving student with a passion for style,” says Gnatek.
There are 390 Forever 21 stores in the United States and outlets in Dubai and Singapore.
Global retailers from North America and Europe are now considering Ottawa in the same breath as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver or Calgary, says VanBuskirk.
“It makes it easier to attract the next hot retailer to Ottawa when some of the names like Sephora, Michael Kors, and Coach are already here. They’re operating, and they’re doing phenomenally well.”
There will be no inconvenience for shoppers as a part of the construction next month, says VanBuskirk.