LEADER OF THE PACK
Herschel celebrates its roots with first stand-alone store in Gastown
In recent years, retail insiders have struggled to find ways to entice shoppers back into their bricks-and-mortar stores.
The rise of online shopping, coupled with steady climbs in commercial property prices in many major cities, has created a perfect storm of sorts for the gradual decline, and potential demise of the industry.
Shopping, it seems, has to be about more than merely buying something in order for retail stores to survive. It has to be about offering an experience.
But to Herschel Supply Company co-founder Lyndon Cormack, who started the brand in 2009 with his brother Jamie, the idea of a store being more than, well, a store, isn’t a revolutionary idea. It’s common sense.
“Retail has never been, for me and my experience, it’s never just been about selling stuff,” he says. “I grew up working in skateboard shops and snowboard shops and bike shops and it was always a place, a cultural area, where like-minded people connected and talked about things they cared about. If you go to a skateboard shop, you probably care a lot about skateboarding, and maybe art and maybe music.
“It’s just natural that retail should be like that — and maybe other people are just catching up.”
That shared interest of a community of shoppers, regardless of the finer minutiae of a person’s personal background, is what the Vancouver-based Herschel team is looking to foster and promote with the brand’s first stand-alone store in Gastown.
The spacious, 5,000-square-foot boutique at 347 Water St., which was formerly home to a rug shop, offers visitors a wide variety of Herschel-branded products. But it’s also home to some eye-catching art installations too.
The Herschel team looked to celebrate the diversity of their customers’ interests and the Gastown neighbourhood they’ve selected for their first store — “In Gastown, all walks of life are here,” Cormack says — through an art installation centred prominently in the store.
“We scouted out a bunch of different sculpture artists and commissioned sculptures for this space,” he says of the dynamic, figurative pieces hailing from the hands of artists such as Amy Robertson and Diane Rudge, as well as a few “ancient pieces” from Italy. “The idea of this section is just really celebrating art.”
At the centre of the store, there’s a reimagined “window display” that replaces the traditional front-of-house display of wares.
“We really wanted to keep the windows open so you could use the whole store as sort of a window into the store,” Cormack says of the installation.
Designed by Omer Arbel, the creative director of Bocci, the store is rich in surprisingly sumptuous detail — more fitting for a luxury retail environment than one offering relatively affordable assorted accessories and outerwear.
In the fitting room, for example, there’s ludicrously luxurious finishes of floor-toceiling marble.
“We went and found the craziest, most beautiful marbles that inspired us,” Cormack says of the vivid pinkand-grey-walled spaces of solid marble, which practically beg to be shared with a selfie on Instagram.
So why go to the lengths of sourcing such exquisite stone for the fitting rooms of what’s largely known as an accessories brand?
“It’s just so beautiful,” Cormack says. “These are natural stones. These are found on Earth. That stone came from Earth. So why not just celebrate the hell of it? “I mean, we like Earth.” At the epicentre of the shop is the cash desk, wrapped in a stunning, floor-to-ceiling Bocci 44 installation created using molten aluminum and resin-infused sand.
“More than 640 pieces were used to create it,” Cormack says, motioning to the sculpture. “A cash desk is a reality of any retail space ... so we decided to make it as fun as possible.”
It’s yet another attraction that Cormack and his team are betting will resonate with the company’s fans.
“Our customers live in cities, they’re inspired by design and architecture. They’re inspired by experiences and the cultural connections they can make in a city. They’re inspired by new openings, whether it be retail, restaurants, bars or galleries. It really just boils down to our end consumer is inspired by all the things that make cities great,” he says.
“The idea is really to help celebrate the things they’re interested in.”
Continuing the tour, we come to the rear of the store, where there’s a wall of window panels that can be pulled back to create an open-air view of the picturesque waterfront beyond.
“We built a whole open-concept store,” Cormack says. “If you sit here for a few minutes, you’ll see a seaplane land, the SeaBus arriving and a cruise ship. Helicopters are landing.
“These are our customers — whether they’re getting on a float plane or the SeaBus, or boarding a cruise.”
The view is a stunning reminder that this global accessories brand did, in fact, start in Vancouver. Even if many people are still surprised by that particular detail of Herschel’s history.
“There’s certainly a large percentage of people who know we’re from Vancouver,” Cormack says. “But it’s definitely caught some people by surprise.”
He says he’s often told by consumers that they thought the brand was from New York or London.
“It’s never one spot,” he says of the origin story confusion. “But isn’t that the new world in general? That we’re global? I mean, sure we’re based here, and that’s amazing, but our consumer travels the world and we’re as comfortable in New York, or London, or Paris, or Bali, or Phuket, or Tulum as in any place.
“Our goal as a global brand isn’t just to sell stuff from Vancouver to the world, it’s to adapt the world view of what we can be as a brand and adapt those stories and bring them everywhere.”
It’s fitting, then, that the new shop goes heavy on the brand’s travel goods such as suitcases and duffle bags. Cormack is confident it will be a good fit for the city’s avid-traveller base.
“There’s a thing about Vancouver, we love this city like crazy, but we also love going away,” he says. “But the fact that, when we fly home, especially on one of those beautiful nights where you’re flying in and the mountains are all lit up, it feels so good to be home.”
“Travel is what inspires us the most.”
Beyond backpacks, the store offers other Herschel bestsellers such as wallets and hats.
“It’s quite well-known that we make wallets, but I don’t think many people realize how robust our business in them is,” he says, with a laugh. “Because of the fact that they’re always hiding in your back pocket or purse.”
The store is also home to a selection of the company’s outerwear pieces.
“We started with the categories that were close to home,” Cormack says of the brand’s relatively new clothing items. “We started with windbreakers that were packable and rain jackets. We sort of look at those two items as accessories. If you’re looking at the weather forecast and it says that it might be raining in the afternoon, then you might throw one in your bag.”
The jackets were a big success for the brand.
“It worked so well that we just decided to keep going,” he says of the ever-expanding apparel range. “And we’re just getting started.”
Eventually, Cormack says, the plan is to create a more robust range of apparel. The aim, he says, being to further “Herschelize” the industry.
“As a brand who’s passionate about all things going on, whether in the city or the outskirts, we have the right and the ability to create unique experiences for consumers,” he says.
In terms of neighbourhoods, the Herschel team couldn’t have picked much better in terms of a locale in the city that best unites the international and local populations it targets for its goods. It’s a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Cormack.
“One of the reasons we love Gastown so much is we really think the area, or the territory in general, really celebrates locals and tourists alike,” he says.
“We find ourselves always loving areas like that in other cities where there’s this kind of uniting of locals and tourists at one place. It’s not like, ‘Ugh, that’s a tourist area.’ And I actually think Vancouver, in general, does a pretty exceptional job of highlighting places where locals want to go that become tourist destinations.”
Cormack pointed to Granville Island and Stanley Park as two other major destinations in the city that do well to avoid that locals-only vibe.
“With that, you get this tremendous amount of diversity,” he says. “And, as a brand, we’re full of this tremendous hope and optimism that our goal is for everybody to get along and for people to perfectly coexist together. And we know that’s going to be a lifelong struggle, but, as a brand, we embrace it.”
Cormack says the store will go beyond the mere point-ofsale perspective, acting as a “knowledge point” for what’s going on in the city.
“The best person who knows great retail is the person who works in great retail,” he says. “So we’re making sure our staff are also knowledgeable about the city.”
That means staff will be versed in hot spots around Gastown and beyond, including coffee shops, skate shops, eateries and more. It’s Herschel’s own guide to Gastown, Cormack says, in the heart of Gastown.
“I think it’s a service to the whole city, being a cultural hub,” he says of the hybrid retail perspective of the new store.
“And, if they just want to come in and browse, well, hopefully we can inspire them through art and design, architecture and interiors.”
Mission accomplished.