True patriot shopping

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/12/2021 (1113 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘You are here.”

Even if you haven’t had the wherewithal to hit a mall lately, you’re undoubtedly familiar with those colour-coded directory maps most shopping centres employ, to let patrons know where a certain store, restaurant or, most importantly, washroom, is situated.

You’ll find the same type of layout — beauty products to the left, sporting goods to the right — at the Made in Canada Mall, with one significant difference. The six-month-old shopping mecca, currently home to 100-plus shops and services peddling everything from musical instruments to wax candles to vacation getaways, is an online entity only.

Head to the website, www.madeincanadamall.ca, click on “go shopping” and, faster than you can say Polo Park, up pops a floor plan-type screen displaying a dozen or so shaded boxes of varying sizes, each of which takes you to an individual merchant’s or business’s website, when you click on it. No worries if nothing strikes your fancy right off the hop; hit a tab marked “next” and you’re led to another slate of stores, followed by another and another until you’ve paraded through the entire mall.

Best of all, you never have to remember where you parked your car.

Doug Touchette, a 58-year-old IT whiz, is the brains behind the Made in Canada Mall, which as its name implies, features goods solely produced in the Great White North.

“Whenever I shopped online I found the existing (online) directories and their search filters unsatisfying, what with too many fruitless searches, or drop-down menus that were far too specific,” Touchette says, seated in a (real) mall food court, 30 minutes from his home in St. Adolphe. “On the other hand, people are very visual so I thought, why not use traditional mall-sign graphics, combined with Google Maps-like navigation?

“We get very positive feedback from 99 per cent of visitors, with only the occasional sourpuss letting us know the graphics look like something out of the ‘80s. That’s when we know we got it right.”

Touchette, a cyber security expert, was laid off from his job with a Fortune 500 company in June 2020, owing to cutbacks associated with the pandemic. A big supporter of the buy local movement well before COVID struck, the married father of three had been tossing around the idea of a virtual mall promoting strictly Canadian goods for a while. Suddenly with time on his hands, he did his homework and was surprised to discover nothing like what he was picturing in his head existed.

“Every single attempt seemed to have been based on complex artwork, etc. and guess what happened? Nobody launched because they made it all too complicated,” says Touchette, who, during his previous career, assisted in designing complex security systems for such noteworthy clients as the National Hockey League and Royal Canadian Mint.

Of course, a mall isn’t a mall without anybody in it.

Touchette spent close to 10 months, from August 2020 to June of this year, cold-calling people from coast to coast, asking if they were interested in renting space in an internet mall. Most found the concept intriguing, and were interested to learn more, but it wasn’t until he landed a couple of what he refers to as “anchor” stores — namely, undergarment giant Stanfield’s and Custom Leather Canada, the largest leather accessories manufacturer in the country — that people running smaller-scale operations were willing to sign on the dotted line.

The Made in Canada Mall officially opened for business this past Canada Day. Traffic was spotty initially, just a handful of customers per day, he admits, but has since grown to around 2,000 shoppers per week, with each of those 2,000 clicking on an average of six different stores’ websites during their time “in” the mall.

“At first I was just selling a concept, but now that people can see things for themselves and how it all works, it makes things a lot easier to explain,” says Touchette, who currently charges $100 annually, about $8 a month, for a “regular” store, and $250 annually for a larger, “flagship” presence, such as one rented by a indie rock station in Montreal that provides background music for shoppers 24/7. (Careful; the last time we were there, the Paul McCartney earworm Wonderful Christmastime was on heavy rotation.)

Sandra Harvey, a tenant since Day 1, is the founder of Chilly Dogs, an Ottawa-based operation marketing outerwear for your furry friend.

“Doug reached out to us directly,” she says. “I understood the concept and applauded any initiative that promoted Canadian businesses and Canadian-made products. A lot of people inquire where our products are made, and consider that criteria seriously in their decision whether to purchase.”

Harvey hasn’t checked analytics provided by Touchette lately, ones that indicate precisely how many people visited her website while perusing the mall. She is fairly certain, however, that a recent uptick in sales, especially those to customers in other parts of the country, are attributable, in part, to people finding about her wares for the first time via the mall.

“It has been a hectic season thus far, which we feel incredibly fortunate for, because we know that is not how it is for everyone,” she says.

Touchette, who counts a number of Winnipeg- and Manitoba-based operations among his tenants, including Nourish, which turns out small-batch bath and body products, and Mugging Whales Premium Coffee Co., is forever thinking what he can add to the mix next. (Unlike e-commerce sites such as Amazon that charge commission fees on every sale, Touchette is a landlord only; he doesn’t make a penny from anything purchased through the various tenants’ websites.)

On Dec. 18, for example, kiddos will be afforded the opportunity to let a virtual Santa know what they want for Christmas. He’s also laying the groundwork for what he calls a mall stage, which will play Canadian-centric videos, everything from music videos to snippets of TV programs. (The Beachcombers, anyone?)

And OK, while it’s not as if people can walk his mall for exercise, he is hoping to stream fitness and/or yoga classes for interested parties in the near future. (A virtual food court, where one could potentially order takeout in a manner similar to Door Dash and Skip the Dishes, is another possibility.)

There is one thing to keep in mind: because the various screens refresh following every log-in, a store or service that was on Page 3 yesterday might be on the first page — or the last — the next time you’re there. That’s to encourage browsing, says Touchette, who professes to have dropped a few dollars in the mall himself, at ventures such as Family Pastimes, a Perth, Ont.-based biz that builds creative board games for people of all ages, and Pura Guitars, run by a luthier in Saskatoon whose area of expertise is handcrafted guitars, mandolins and bouzoukis.

Also, you know that age-old stereotype about how much men hate going to the mall? Consider Touchette Exhibit A.

“I do my best to make sure the mall has variety, that there aren’t 10 soapmakers or whatever,” he says. “But I did have to tailor things a bit early on, so as not to end up with all these male-centric businesses selling snowmobile parts or shaving supplies. Perhaps that was my subconscious at work: me looking for stores I was personally interested in, so I’d never have to leave the house, ever again.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca