By Lindsey Norris / Photographs By John Gaucher
Even a “closed” sign won’t stop determined shoppers. On a sunny Monday afternoon on Calgary’s boutique strip, a trio of high-heeled women take advantage of the unlocked door of Riva’s: The Eco Store. An old Raiders sweatshirt, reworked by Vancouver design company Adhesif, hangs at the end of a rack. Cropped and re-sewn, it barely resembles the football team hoodie it once was. One woman picks it up, exclaims “look at this,” then puts it down. The scene repeats: customers enter, marvel and leave empty-handed.
Many retailers would despair at a flow of browsers who rarely buy. But shopkeepers Riva and Andrew Mackie expect it. When they opened this store back in February, they figured consumer education would have to come before sales.
They’re also just happy to have a storefront. A few months ago, it seemed like an impossibility. The Mackies believed in their concept: a high-end, all-purpose eco store in a trendy part of town. But prospective landlords didn’t. Rent space to a local startup? A local green startup? Run by two kids – she’s 27, he’s 30 – with virtually no business experience? Next.
The couple searched for nearly a year before they found the perfect spot: a street-level retail space at the tail end of pedestrian-friendly 17th Avenue SW, where the boutiques begin to give way to convenience marts. Despite dozens of other interested callers, the owner gave Riva’s the lease. The Mackies printed price tags on old cardboard boxes, papier-mâchéd the shelves and opened for business. Five months later, the place feels like a neighbourhood general store – if general stores were packed with designer fare such as Good Society jeans, Grace & Cello skirts and John Masters Organics shampoo.
When Riva first considered the venture, she was expecting her first child. She’d been eating organic food and using non-toxic products since university, when she experienced health problems that conventional medicine couldn’t fix (“I don’t react well to medication,” she says). With a baby on the way, she realized how difficult it was to find non-toxic baby and home products in Calgary. But she knew there was demand. “It’s hard to make the shift for ourselves,” she says about eco-conscious consumption, “but when there’s suddenly another being involved, it’s easy.”
Riva thought an online store would suit her lifestyle as a new mom. But then she lost the pregnancy at 29 weeks, throwing her life into a tailspin. Instead of scaling back her plans, within a couple of months she threw herself wholesale into the store, deciding that shoppers would want to feel, touch and smell green products (take that, e-business). After all, she figured, their core clientele might be the converted, but they also wanted to attract skeptics: people who still think eco-friendly means sky-high prices and sub-par quality.
It was a risky move, financed almost entirely with a line of credit. Neither of them have retail experience. Andrew’s background is in architecture and fine art; she’s an alternative health practitioner. And even though the eco-store concept isn’t new, they weren’t sure if Calgary was ready for one. Nevertheless, they envisioned a one-stop shop for all things green other than food – from carpeting to elephant-poo paper – and wanted to do it Calgary style: urbane, high-end, chic. “We want to show young people that green can be fashionable,” says Andrew. “You can wear anything if you’re going back to the earth, but when you have to go to work, meet people, have job interviews, you need to dress well.”
Greener products are still generally more expensive to make, so they cost more, and that holds true at Riva’s. “Clothing sales have been a little slow,” says Riva. “People don’t understand why they should pay a little more for the clothing we have.” She wants shoppers to think of the proverbial cotton farmer who can now work in a pesticide-free field, and to compare her prices to those of other high-end shops. That reworked Raiders sweatshirt? $80. And it’s totally unique.
There are other challenges beyond price points. Some green manufacturers struggle to get stores to carry their products, but when major retailers decide they need to green up their shelves, they often demand exclusivity deals. Riva’s has lost out on a few products thanks to this equation, says Andrew. Not that its selection is lacking. In the building supplies corner of the store, for instance, Andrew points to formaldehyde-free timber and Nature’s Carpet. “I think it’s amazing,” he says, holding up a swath of carpet the colour of slate. “They don’t use dyes. This is actually the colour of the sheep’s wool.”
Building supplies and Canadian-made mattresses are the store’s best sellers; they keep the Mackies busy. Which is why on a Monday – their day off – they’re in the store catching up on orders and inventory. Not that they mind, of course. “Even when we started, there were plenty of people in Calgary that really got it and were trying to make a difference, but everyone seemed scattered,” Riva says. “Now I think they’re meeting each other and the core community is growing, and it’s much stronger.”
And that core keeps growing every time a consumer picks up a T-shirt and thinks about the farmer who grew the cotton. Every time a mother chooses not to feed her baby from a plastic cup. Every time a landlord decides to take a risk and lease space to a local green startup. U
issue 6
Category: Work
