Custom tailor Indochino plans to open its 13th store this morning (April 28) at Metropolis in Metrotown in Burnaby.
This is the Vancouver-based company’s second showroom in Metro Vancouver, with the first being at 1014 Homer Street.
The showroom will sell ties, pocket squares and other small accessories but will primarily be used as a place where customers can make appointments to get measured for suits.
“This month we’re opening three stores,” Indochino CEO Drew Green told Business in Vancouver on April 27.
“We opened Edmonton at the start of the month, then Calgary thereafter and now Metrotown. We’re in negotiations on some other opportunities and our next five stores will be in the U.S.”
Indochino’s 2,088-square-foot store in Metro Vancouver’s largest shopping mall will be on the upper level in an area known as Atrium Court.
The next five stores that Green plans to open are likely to launch by the end of 2017 and one of them will be a second store in New York City, he said. A significant share of the company's business is through e-commerce.
New York City is the company’s biggest market and the only showroom that it operates so far is in the SoHo district.
Retail Insider Media owner and analyst Craig Patterson told BIV that SoHo was a smart choice for Indochino’s first New York store and that the second location would likely do well if it is in the financial district or in Midtown Manhattan – as long as the rent is not too high.
Indochino’s launch comes two days after another Vancouver retailer with big aspirations, Kit and Ace, announced that it would close 32 international showrooms and focus on nine Canadian stores as well as its online store.
The company launched in 2006, when University of Victoria commerce students Kyle Vucko and Heikal Gani hatched the idea to have Chinese tailors sew made-to-order suits for people to buy online.
In 2011, the company launched its first in a series of pop-up shops in Vancouver to help customers get accurate measurements. In June 2014, the company opened its first permanent showroom in East Vancouver, near the Port of Vancouver, in what was then part of its head office.
In quick succession, its Vancouver showroom moved to Gastown and then, in 2015, to Homer Street.
