Hip T-shirt business grew out of civic pride
Peace Collective’s new outlet sells milkshakes, clothing and a love of all things Toronto
Torontonians love Toronto. They love it so much, suddenly, that their patronage can support a 2,000square-foot, sun-drenched store on hipper than hip Ossington Ave. near Queen St. W. that sells T-shirts with Toronto-friendly sayings on them.
That’s a little simplistic. Peace Collective offers more than that. This rising-with-a-bullet brand gives generously to charity and also sells frothy milkshakes, hats, sweatshirts, jackets and baby onesies.
But it’s essentially a T-shirt business done real, real good.
Yanal Dhailieh, 26, started his professional life with a degree in biomedical science at the University of Waterloo. (“My parents were happy about that.”) But instead of moving on to medical school, he followed his true passion into sales and branding. He joined cloud-computing firm Salesforce and pondered his own possible business excursions on the side.
It came out of the blue. In spring 2014, Dhailieh was heading out to a Raptors playoff game. He had been tinkering with designs for a simple logo on his computer. He happened by a T-shirt store, went in and had some shirts whipped up with “Toronto Vs. Everybody” on them. (Since the city has the only NBA and MLB franchises in the country, it’s often our city versus, well, everybody.) His buddies loved the shirts, so he made up more. He started offering them online.
Dhailieh got some help, mainly from volunteers, people who liked what the brand was doing, including giving about $4 from the sale of each shirt to the charity Breakfast for Learning.
Lisa Diep pitched in when she wasn’t at her Bay Street finance job. John Molina worked on the side from his admin gig. The growing staff took on the tasks at hand, regardless of their training.
“Everybody on the team doesn’t have experience with what they are doing now,” says Molina, who does marketing and public relations.
Things grew nicely. There were some serious boosts, including a spring 2015 deal with Lululemon’s Queen West store to design a small collection (basically logos such as “Home is Toronto” on performance T-shirts). That went so well it went national. Then, the big deal. Via a friend, he sent some shirts to Blue Jays right fielder Jose Bautista. Molina recalls shipping them out. “You don’t really expect anything,” he says of that move — brands send products to celebrities all the time.
On Oct. 13, the slugger posted a picture on Instagram of himself, Josh Donaldson and David Price wearing “Toronto Vs. Everybody” sweatshirts.
The very next day, Bautista execut- ed his famous bat flip.
“He exploded the brand,” says Molina of Bautista.
Weeks later, Dhailieh quit his day job. Over the next few months, his part-time staff evolved into a fulltime one as they quit their other gigs, too.
Now, the company does brisk online sales and also sells through small retailers such as the Spacing Store, but also has a relationship with the Bay. Thanks to a deal with Major League Baseball, Peace Collective sells a line of very Blue Jays-blue Ts for the busy tail end of the season.
The company has more logos now, including “Toronto AF” (but spelled out, if you know what we mean). It’s about to launch a West Coast line celebrating other locations.
As for the store, Molina says “everything we do is quick.” At a meeting about three months ago, the team started talking about getting a retail store. In short order, they found this space (in a “dope” neighbourhood, Molina says), decided to offer some kind of food (milkshakes won, there’s so much coffee around here already) and opened up a few weeks ago.
The storefront fits nicely into the company’s concept, which is to be about community and building a brand, not just clothes. Indeed, these are off-the-rack shirt designs decorated with logos in the simplest of fonts. But the message on them is strong enough to make all of this happen. Says Dhailieh, “To me, it was never about design.”