Online suit-seller Indochino, which continues to forge ahead with its strategy of opening brick-and-mortar stores to complement e-commerce, this week opened its first stand-alone Vancouver store.
The 4,351-square-foot store at 159 Water Street in Gastown replaces a make-shift showroom that was part of the company’s head office at 611 Alexander Street in East Vancouver’s Railtown neighbourhood.
“Gastown is a hip area,” Indochino CEO Kyle Vucko told Business in Vancouver October 23. “There’s lots of boutiques and places to shop.”
Evidence that global brands view Gastown as chic came earlier this year when fashion behemoth Versace announced plans to open in the area the world’s first Versace Home store to carry a full line of home products – from tiles and faucets to comforters, dining room tables and wallpaper.
Indochino’s opening comes on the heels of the company launching brick-and-mortar stores in Toronto, New York and San Francisco.
No further openings are expected this year but Vucko said that he is looking at real estate in Boston, Chicago and Calgary.
Opening permanent brick-and-mortar locations is an extension of the company’s so-called “travelling tailor” pop-up stores, which have been increasing both in number and duration in the past several years.
Indochino’s first travelling tailor pop-up store was in 2011, when it held a four-day opening on Georgia Street in Vancouver. It then had five pop-up stores in various cities in 2012, 12 pop-up stores in 2013 and is expected to have 25 pop-up stores this year.
