Hugo Boss is a German luxury designer of menswear. In Winnipeg, they’ve sold through other retailers such as Hudson’s Bay. CF Polo Park‘s Hudson’s Bay store has a full time salesperson just for Hugo Boss. It has generally been considered a harder market to sell women and men’s fashions in Manitoba because such power suits are often seen in places with larger corporate worlds related to trading that employ thousands.
Winnipeg has a handful of independent menswear companies and tailors. Harry Rosen’s has been a longtime store in Polo Park and Tip Top and Moore’s have handled much of the city’s general business, sports jacket and suit needs for those required jacket and tie business and occasion needs.
Hugo Boss, in the post-war period, went from making uniforms to men’s suits and in the last decades has been associated with luxury.
Outlet Collection Winnipeg still has a few holes to fill but clearly is in a battle royale for stores that would in the past have landed at CF Polo Park. Many, many apartments are soon to be completed by Outlet Collection Winnipeg so I expect when the pandemic is over, the mall will have a population that can walk right over for anything.
Also opening is a nails salon called Nails 99. You are seeing more open in malls when in the past they were limited to strip malls. Shopping outlets need a variety of things that bring people in. It can’t all be high fashion stores as much the developers would love that. There just enough of those around to fill every space nor give people a reason to come to the area often enough.
Both Outlet Collection Winnipeg and CF Polo Park have new stores coming. Expect competition to be tight and for other malls in the city to try to follow suit with some innovative steps.
This has been a editorial by John Dobbin.
To read more from John, visit his blog Observations, Reservations, Conversations
