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’ANTI-DEPARTMENT STORE’ COMES TO CANADA

By Maura K. Ammenheuser

bruce, a hip lifestyle retailer in Vancouver, British Columbia, bills itself as ’the anti-department store.’

bruce is an enigma.

The year-old store won an Achievement in New Retail Concepts Award in March from Toronto developer Cadillac Fairview Corp., but it will never appear in a mall.

It caters to people with cutting-edge taste but operates amid "tacky-looking" duty-free shops, as one analyst put it, that beckon Vancouver, B.C.’s tourists. And according to one retail expert, bruce is walking a fine merchandising line, trying to capture customers that are baby boomer rich but Gen-Y hip.

bruce, which uses a lowercase "b" in its name, is a 7,000-square-foot, two-story, streetfront bastion of high style. It carries clothing, shoes, accessories, housewares, art, music and more. bruce appears to be a classic example of lifestyle retailing.

Campbell McDougall, bruce’s creator, likes to explain his concept as "the anti-department store."

Department stores offer all things to all people, he said, but bruce aims for a very narrow audience. McDougall wouldn’t discuss demographics with SCT, except to describe his customers as "urban modernists."

"It’s targeted at a very contemporary, sophisticated urban global shopper," said John Williams, a Toronto retail analyst who visited bruce for the first time in April.

Campbell McDougall, founder, bruce

McDougall recently closed his previous retail ventures, both designer boutiques in Calgary: decade-old Oxygen, a men’s store, and five-year-old Fritz Lang. Like bruce, they were carefully designed and offered international merchandise. McDougall opened Fritz Lang (named after the German film director) to serve more mature customers after realizing that Oxygen’s clientele was splitting along older vs. younger tastes and price points, according to FFWD Weekly, an alternative news/entertainment paper in Calgary. McDougall opened bruce in Vancouver for its tourist trade and "more populated and sophisticated market," he said.

bruce is near several hotels, and its Alberni Street location in downtown is known for restaurants and duty-free shops that cater to foreigners, said Blake Hudema, a Vancouver retail analyst. Alberni lies near Robson Street, the city’s Rodeo Drive, with department store Holt-Renfrew and other premier shopping.

bruce’s merchandise includes C$95 men’s shirts, C$400 cashmere sweaters and shoes ranging from C$150 to C$700.

All of it is gracefully laid out in "a big white box," said Williams — a bright, modern space with concrete floors and huge windows to bathe the goods in natural light.

"You could see that he spent lots of energy in the store in terms of what it looks like," said Brian Muzyk, executive vice president and COO of Cadillac Fairview. "It’s a beautiful store, very airy. It really sets the mood for his product."

Vancouver retail analyst Ian Thomas described the presentation as "very Italian. [Americans] tend to jam everything to the rafters. This is the exact opposite … there’s very little merchandise," considering the space.

The store doesn’t advertise. "No need, with the press and the buzz," McDougall said. He gets more ink from the fashion and gossip press — FFWD named him the best-dressed Calgarian in 1998 — than from mainstream media and the retail industry. He generally declines interviews with the retail trade press, and would only respond to selected written questions from SCT.

McDougall didn’t hype bruce’s opening, and many analysts in the Vancouver market are at best only vaguely familiar with it.

"It’s not creating a stir here," Hudema said. "It’s a quiet, going-about-its-business store."

Still, bruce is gaining a cult following, getting favorable write-ups in style and design publications such as Wallpaper* and Architectural Record.

"My friend bought cool leather pants there," said Elyse Mailhot, a Vancouver resident. "Some people like it; some people hate it. [It sells] both high-end and low-end stuff, original clothing and designers that you wouldn’t usually see in Vancouver … it looks cool, inside and out."

Other stores have noticed.

"I’ve been bombarded by other retailers coming through, wanting to take pictures" and ask questions, McDougall said. The espionage bothers him, but not the prospect of competition. Scrutiny is "inevitable," he said. "At the end of the day, though, it’s about a personal vision and would be very difficult to knock off."

It’s unclear with whom bruce competes.

He mentions Barney’s New York, Jeffreys and Fred Segal. Muzyk couldn’t name any peers. John Forzani, an ARC judge and president and CEO of The Forzani Group sporting-goods chain, said "everybody from the Gap on up" is a rival. Hudema mentioned downtown Vancouver’s menu of upscale boutiques.

"He’ll have to find his own niche," Forzani concluded.

That niche is elusive. Thomas sees bruce as "a valiant attempt to bridge the diverging socioeconomic segments … of the young and savvy with the old and wealthy."

That’s difficult, he said, but "it’s good. It’s breaking away from the traditional mold.

"The question is, does it have legs?," Thomas continued. "Because … when you dare to be different, it’s not always a guarantee to be successful."

McDougall declined comment on sales figures, profits and his financial partners.

He plans no Web site. And if McDougall ever opens more bruce stores, they’ll also be in streetfronts, not shopping centers. "This customer has an antimall" mentality, he said.

Thomas summed up bruce the same way shopper Mailhot did, adding that it’s true of any lifestyle store. "You either love it," he said, "or hate it."

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