THE HOME IMPROVEMENT MALL
Facility is the first of its kind, offering 320K square feet of home-reno shopping
Shopping for home improvement products and services is about to change.
Located in Vaughan at Keele and highway 407, Improve Canada is a new concept: a shopping centre that offers one-stop shopping for consumers looking for the latest trends, smartest new products and the widest selection in home renovation and design.
Oleg Chekhter is the founder and developer of the $147 million project. “Improve Canada is based on a simple idea: to bring home products and services together in one location, year round,” he says. While this marketplace-style mall is unique to the GTA, Chekhter says, the idea isn’t new. “There are similar centres that are successful in Europe and other places in the world.” The concept works because it brings the most popular and successful home-improvement vendors together under one roof, letting shoppers comparison shop quickly and easily. Some of the biggest names in the home-improvement market are opening showrooms at Improve Canada.
Chekhter describes the mall as a combination of three business models: “The first model is the typical shopping mall. Everyone loves the time-saving with one-stop shopping and ease of parking.” The second model, he says, is the home show, “but [Improve] is more than one week or weekend a year, with showrooms that are much nicer and more complete and attractive.” The third element his concept mall combines is healthy competition: putting all the vendors together in one place for customer convenience. Chekhter contrasts the experience with shopping through the more than 4,000 kitchen companies in the GTA. “It’s hard to compete and hard for customers to locate them, compare them. Improve Canada houses more than 50 kitchen stores at all different price points so you can find whatever you want, from top-ofthe-line custom to budget-friendly. We bring them all to one place.”
“Think of all the drive time you save when you don’t have to run from location to location,” says Oscar Visentin of luxury kitchen retailer Pedini – Vaughn. “It offers my customers such an advantage to have everyone in one place, in a convenient location with free parking, versus a seasonal show that’s downtown with expensive parking.”
Frank Piacentini — who has run Canaroma Bath Tile and Lighting (one of Canada’s top bathroom companies) with his partner Roy Mancini for almost 40 years — agrees. “We’re involved with home shows every year, but Improve offers us an opportunity to market and network year round and to connect with new customers who now have the ability to do everything in one building. And as we get to know other vendors in other categories and what they offer, we can help our customers by recommending other companies within the mall.”
Improve Canada spans 320,000 square feet, with 350 businesses covering more than 38 different homerelated categories, from furniture, art, windows and roofing, to lighting, security, tiles and flooring. And unlike other malls, most of the businesses in Improve own their units rather than leasing them. “Knowing our vendors are making this financial investment assures our customers that they are dealing with established businesses that won’t be here today, gone tomorrow,” says Chekhter.
As for the vendors, they can focus on their relationship with the customers. “They are not just buying real estate. They’re also buying the foot traffic,” Chekhter says. Visentin adds: “The mall is doing some of the advertising for you, giving you that extra layer of marketing, offering you more credibility with consumers.”