The iconic Canadian menswear brand Harry Rosen is in store for a $50 million evolution, but it’s staying true to its core roots – both geographically and on the customer experience front. Last week, Harry Rosen announced the pricey project, which will include a fancy new Yorkville flagship location by spring 2026 (and the subsequent closure of the existing one at 82 Bloor Street West), expansive upgrades in its West Edmonton Mall store in Alberta, and a new Vancouver location at the city’s new Oakridge Park development.
Founded in 1954 by the trailblazer whose name the chain still bears, the eponymous brand has grown from a single 500-square-foot store in Toronto to become a powerhouse luxury retailer with 19 stores across Canada. It’s safe to say that Harry Rosen becomes a lifelong staple to countless Canadian gents once they slip into their first perfectly tailored suit.
“We took a business that was largely in-store and made it omni-channel,”
Ian RoseN, President and COO, Harry Rosen
Digital transformation
The brand’s focus in recent years has been a story of digital transformation. “We took a business that was largely in-store and made it omni-channel,” says Ian Rosen, Harry Rosen’s president and COO – and member of the third generation at the helm of the family-run business.
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“We went from basically 3% of our sales coming from online, to 20% being online. So much more of the traffic that comes in store starts online. It’s anybody’s guess, but Google estimates that close to 80% of transactions begin through an email or visiting a website to see if something is in stock. So, that’s been the focus,” he continues.
Rosen says that one of the important projects Harry Rosen has worked on for the last number of years is building the brand’s clothing advisors personal stylists an in-store associate selling tool (proprietary app Herringbone) that allows them to curate and build a personal webpage with sizes selected for the clients they know. The advisor can then send the link to their client, simplifying the online shopping experience.
“For me, that’s the Harry Rosen way of bringing our existing business into the digital world, because our team stops thinking about the store stopping at the door line, right?,” says Rosen. “They start thinking, ‘I have a tool available to me that, when my clients see something great, I can help him select from any product that Harry Rosen carries and I can help him make sure it fits him and I can aid in him shopping online.’ That was step one; building that culture, and it’s still something that we’re focused on.” He says 10% of Harry Rosen’s online business is driven through the Herringbone software.
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Rosen says the next frontier is taking the digital experience to things like live streaming and beyond. “I’d say we’re in the evaluation phase, a consideration phase, but one thing about us is we’re not going to just jump onto a trend,” says Rosen. “I think we always try and think, ‘How does this become Harry Rosen-ized?’
On that front, Rosen says that the online initiatives will never replace the classic Harry Rosen in-store experience. “We took this low and steady approach [to digital], and it’s complementary to what we do on store in store,” he says. “We’re not looking to build our suiting business online. We understand that that’s a higher touch, slower business. We never want online to be a barrier to coming in store, or in store being a barrier to shopping online.”
Back to the future: A refocus on the Harry Rosen in-store experience
“Today, we’re kind of shouting to the world that we really believe in this omni-channel vision and we need our store experience to evolve,” says Rosen. He says that in 2014, the time of the brand’s last capital campaign (which was a great success), the retail industry was in an era of “stack them high and watch it fly.” Meaning, shelves and racks were full of inventory. But, times have changed. “Then, you wanted to have a lot on the floor and our stores are architected around that experience, but today’s customers are just much different,” explains Rosen. “The new Yorkville flagship will have a much larger backstock, which will allow for us to have a much cleaner floor plate in the store. We’ll be able to really merchandise suggestively, but we’ll also be able to have all the stock.”
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Clients can also expect a whole new in-store suiting experience in the new Toronto flagship, West Edmonton Mall, and Oakridge Park. “We’ve never backed away from being in the suiting business, and for Harry Rosen, the category is also almost synonymous with our name,” says Rosen. “But we don’t necessarily need to think about having suiting everywhere in the store. We’re actually focused on building one incredible made-to-measure suiting experience and area in the store with more of a lounge feel – somewhere to grab a glass Prosecco or have an espresso and work through some fabrics. There will be private fitting areas and salons. You can have a wedding party in there. That’s not how we’re architected right now.”
Rosen says the focus is to service Harry Rosen’s customer needs and demands and on flexibility with the brand’s in-store evolution. “We don’t want the store to look and feel the same every time a customer comes in,” says Rosen. “We need to be really focused on surprising and delighting a customer when they come in and want to do it with a lot of intention. We’re not only focused on this as a shopping trip, but a place where they can spent time and see some new ideas.”
With that said, don’t expect technology to make its way into the stores on a self-service front. Refreshingly, that won’t happen. “We’re thinking about the integration of our online experience from a service perspective; we’re not really thinking about self-serve technology being part of the experience we’re serving up,” says Rosen. “We’ll probably build more digital screens and ways of highlighting the offering, perhaps, but it’s not really a feature of the build.” He says where technology will play a role will be with regards to things like order notifications, pick-up logistics, and ordering specific items from another store. “This integration of that offline to online experience is going to be very important to us,” says Rosen.
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From one iconic Yorkville spot to another: Toronto’s new Harry Rosen flagship
The relocation of the iconic Bloor Street flagship to 153 Cumberland Street (which is currently occupied by a Mascot store, luxury boutique Nicolas, an Aveda retail space, and a Lululemon) wasn’t a decision that was made overnight. “It’s been a project that we’ve been working on for what feels like five or six years, exploring all the different ways that we could reinvent such a core part of our business,” says Rosen.
The shiny new three-storey flagship will occupy about 38,000 square feet of space and become a crown jewel to Cumberland’s retail offerings. “The design language and the aesthetic is going to be updated and modernized,” says Rosen. “You can even see in the rendering that we’re just going for a much fresher appearance and that’s going to be very obvious. The way we showcase merchandise is going to be about stories and ways of dressing. It can be from one designer, or it can be multiple paired together. But, because we have such a commitment to having backstock, we don’t need to crowd the floor with merchandise. It’ll feel a lot more open.”
The idea is to show a customer how the modern man might dress today. “You have some people who are a lot more conservative and classic, while others are looking for more aggressive designer looks,” says Rosen. “You also have people looking for more casual laid-back soft jackets. We have so many stories to tell them.”
Rosen says the second floor will be the “powerhouse” of the store. “It’s going to have a mix of that storytelling but it also will have the latest and greatest from a number of luxury brand partners that we are known for today, especially in our Bloor Street store,” he says. “We have some really strong partnerships and we’re excited to reimagine how those brands come to life in our space.”
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One of the best features of the new Yorkville flagship is a massive rooftop patio space that will overlook the Village of Yorkville Park (the one with the iconic “rock”) – a park that is set to expand. “My favourite part of this new location is the patio space that we will be able to leverage in the summer months,” says Rosen. “A little known thing, actually; as we vacate our current space, the plan is for 1240 Bay Street to be knocked down and the [Village of Yorkville] park will expand all the way to Bay Street. So, the new Harry Rosen flagship will actually have frontage on Bay Street.”
The next generation of Harry Rosen gents
An undeniable success story surrounding the Harry Rosen brand is its loyal, lifelong client base. And, in order to attract the next generation of style-conscious men (whatever that personal style may be), they’re constantly evolving. “We’ve always had a culture of reinvention, and Harry started that,” said Rosen of his grandfather. “We’ve never stopped reinventing ourselves, and that’s allowed us to avoid that classic Christensen innovator’s dilemma where the person ahead for some reason never sees what’s coming. My father, Larry, who is the CEO and chairman of our company, emailed me 65 times already today about this.”
Rosen recalls a story his father would share with him about when his father (Ian’s grandfather), Harry, welcomed him into the business. “Larry had shared with him that none of his friends were shopping at Harry Rosen; it felt too old,” says Rosen. “He didn’t have the right sportswear. But, instead of saying, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, ‘So, why don’t you join and help us figure out what sportswear is going to mean in the Harry Rosen market?’ Larry was pretty formative in bringing this to market and getting more progressive with what sportwear was like – jeans and casual shirts, and even expanding into shoes. Moving into shoes was a big radical thing when we did it, but now, it’s very important.”
“We’re choosing to invest in Canada and building Canadian men an exceptional experience that will allow us to our impactful role in the market for years and years to come.”
Ian Rosen, President & COO, Harry Rosen
Of course, each Harry Rosen store now has a dominant shoe area.
Rethinking and evolving the Harry Rosen experience also means adapting to an in-the-know culture of fashion-forward men. “I heard somebody say recently that the hardest part of their job is that today’s customer knows more than their team,” says Rosen. “It was someone from a big sneaker brand, but I started to think about it in our context. We’ve had to educate our team way more on how people are getting dressed, what occasions they might get dressed for, different ways for showing them what good looks like. It involves talking to our brand partners and understanding, how might you do a head to toe look in this and then how can you pollinate across brands.”
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So, while the customer is getting smarter, so is the Harry Rosen brand. “So, all that to say, we’ve always been reinventing,” says Rosen. “That’s why online was not something that we dipped our toe into. We said, ‘How can we actually orient our business around this?,’ and the market was shouting at us to rethink our stores. So, we said, ‘Okay, let’s do it; and let’s not pretend we’re going to do it. So, that’s why we put the number out there [$50 million] – just to show the magnitude of what we’re reinvesting in the Canadian market.”
Proudly Canadian, thank you
Unlike countless Canadian brands that may see the American market as the ultimate goal, Harry Rosen has no plans or goals to expand beyond Canadian soil. The company’s focus remains on its geographical roots.
“We’re very proudly Canadian and very focused on Canada,” says Rosen. “We’re choosing to invest in Canada and building Canadian men an exceptional experience that will allow us our impactful role in the market for years and years to come. You don’t need to be looking internationally only for growth. There’s an opportunity in front of us here. And we believe that this is the best way for us to reinvent. Frankly, if you start focusing elsewhere, you take your eye off the ball here, and we know that Canada is competitive.”
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Words and Interview by: Erin Davis, Steven Branco. Photos: Courtesy of Harry Rosen. Hero image/rendering, courtesy of dkstudio architects.
