Shortly following its inception, Joe Fresh was merely a dowdy, supermarket-based line targeted towards suburban bargain hunters. Over the years, it has progressed into one of Toronto Fashion Week's headliners, with ad campaigns in ELLE and Vogue and a handful of locations opening in the ever-trendy Big Apple. The driving force behind this rise to glory was Joseph Mimran, the label's creative director who began his career in the fashion industry as the founder of Club Monaco. Despite all of this promotion, the idea of buying my wardrobe basics where I bought my chicken breasts and salad was a little unsettling. There's a certain shame that comes along with buying your clothing in a grocery store. With the company's growing demand, Mimran and his associates have planned the opening of several stand-alone boutiques to separate Joe Fresh from Loblaw's. Today, I popped into the first stand-alone store in the GTA on the corner of Queen St. West and Portland to see what it's all about.


Initial Thoughts

-The store was well-merchandised: Nothing was cramped and hung alongside the other pieces on clothing racks. Everything was hung on walls and in full view, sorted by occasion (athletic wear, casual, business, etc.) and colour-coded.

-Good use of lighting with large windows, lots of pot lights.

-Ads were hung on the walls like you'd hang artwork. No ads were hung from the ceiling and were not in-your-face.

-Sales staff lacked a presence. I received no enter/exit greeting, nobody asked me if I required assistance, etc. Perhaps this is a good thing for people who prefer to just shop on their own, but I prefer someone's advice (I often find that "pushy" sales people find me great pieces that wouldn't normally catch my eye) and it's always great to have a staff member take your pieces to a fitting room so you don't have to drag them around the store.

-No leftover summer merchandise, most displays were geared towards late fall/winter. Good to see that there weren't pairs of shorts and summer-y colours like there are in other stores with mass-produced clothing.


Pros

-Good location. The area is filled with both chain and independent boutiques, but is also isolated enough from the downtown core to avoid clusters of tourists and power shoppers.

-Wait times in line for a change room were minimal. Let's face it, nobody likes waiting to try on clothes. We want to try them on, whine about what makes us look fat, encourage our friends to tell us how great we look even if we're going to buy the piece anyways, toy with the idea of buying it for half an hour, buy it, and repeat the cycle.

-Quite a good selection of pieces. Especially in regards to basics like v-neck sweaters, button-ups, slacks, etc.

-Store was uncluttered with lots of open space, which cuts down on time spent crowd-weaving and sorting through aisles. Everything is within view when standing in the center of the sales floor.


Cons

-As mentioned in the "initial thoughts", the lack of a presence from the sales staff was rather annoying. My existence should have at least been acknowledged. A staff member didn't offer to check the back room for a pair of jeans that I would have bought if they had my size on the floor. That's called a lost sale, kids.

-Lack of sizes in more of the trendy pieces. Everything that I was drawn to was either far too tiny or far too large for me. If these pieces are selling quickly, they should restock accordingly.

-I wasn't in the market for any, but there was no lingerie in the whole store. This struck me as odd because the Joe Fresh pop-ups in the Loblaw’s chains often have a massive lingerie section.

-Beauty and eyewear selection not as vast as in the Superstore. Eyewear wasn't on-trend and looked kind of dollar store-esque. The beauty products were good; there just weren't a lot of them.

-The jewellery needs to be much more on-trend. It was the same typical shiny plastic beads on a silk ribbon garbage that they've been pumping out for years. The whole look is very aging, and incredibly tacky.

-Shoes and outerwear should have been grouped together, but were instead scattered around the store. It would have been much easier to memorize the selection and pick-and-choose what I was looking for if I had it all in front of me.

-A lot of the pieces looked great on the hanger, but were ill-fitting. The fabrics were bunchy, wrinkled, and unintentionally sheer. Not a good look.


Overall Rating

6.6/10.

While there are certain advantages to having a stand-alone store, such as shopping downtown and not having to wash the stale supermarket smell out of your clothing, a lot of the in-store boutiques have a better selection than this particular store. From a retail standpoint, the staff needs to work on being both friendlier and more helpful. As a company, the brand either needs to lower their prices down to what they used to be (any piece in the store used to run at next to nothing, but with growing popularity, prices can top those at H&M or Zara) or improve the quality of the fabrics used in the pieces. If you're looking for something trendy or a short-term basic to boost your wardrobe, I'd definitely recommend this particular boutique. If you are looking for something to act as a staple in your closet, you're better off investing elsewhere.

(All photos via FASHION Magazine and various sources. All words and ideas are my own)