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On College Street, just a short walk from Kensington Market, there’s a new store with eye-catching colorful displays. This 2,500-square-foot, two-story unit has been transformed into an antiques and art market, with the owners eager to make it the best market in Toronto.
The space had been abandoned for nearly 15 years before Ameen Ahmed and Lara Hassani decided to rent it out, renovate it and run it as a marketplace, bringing together more than 70 local artists, makers and thrifters, which have taken over A permanent edition of the popular antique market. City.
Ahmed and Hassani were not just business partners; They were a couple who met on the first day of their architecture studies at the University of Toronto nearly a decade ago and fell in love on campus.
“It feels so cliché,” Ahmed said. He moved to Toronto from India for his undergraduate studies, and Hassani moved to Toronto from Kitchener. They were both new to the city, but discovered a love for art and design in each other.
Today, much of their lives still exist in school—Ahmed is a graduate student in the architecture program and Hassani is an instructor at the John H. Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape and Design.
They had lived in the College-Spadina neighborhood for some time and were both interested in developing sustainable solutions for abandoned spaces. Ahmed and Hassani co-operate a business called Wimbling Studio, they execute projects related to art and architecture, including repurposing abandoned spaces. The couple shared similar visions for the Marketplace.
“We asked ourselves, what does this community need? How can we save this abandoned site? How can we use the materials we have?” Ahmed said. “Bazaar is the closest we’ve come to applying an actual business model to our practice. “
Ahmed and Hassani have long had their eye on the vacant land at 306 College Street, an old Toronto building that Ahmed estimates was built between the 1840s and 1860s. It was once a home hardware and was briefly used as an apartment display unit before a “Lease Now” sign was hung in the window.
“We always second guess it,” Ahmed said. Together they brainstormed what the space might be and ultimately came up with the idea for the market. The more they talked about it, the more likely it seemed.
To satisfy their curiosity, Ahmed called the number on the sign, but no one answered or called him back. Then they saw stickers on the windows because they were concerned it was a marijuana store. “It does make us concerned that there are too many similar spaces in our neighborhood,” he said.
So instead of contacting the landlord directly, Ahmed contacted a real estate agent to contact them on their behalf. “We spent a long time negotiating with our landlords, at least several months, to convince them to come up with a tenancy agreement that suited us.”
“I think part of what worked in our favor was we were able to tell him we were going to make a lot of changes in terms of improving the space and renovating,” he said. They finally got the house in mid-September and used their savings to pay the rent in advance. After running out of start-up costs, they began rushing to turn it into a fully functional retail environment – doing most of the renovations themselves rather than outsourcing labor.
Their greatest achievement is Handmade tile cash register in the middle of the store, and Hand drawn store sign It took them two weeks to complete.
During the revamp, they hastily put out a call for supplier applications on social media, explaining the market model, which Ahmed described as essentially utopian. “We’re lucky that a lot of people are convinced by our interpretation of what it could be, because there’s really nothing to see there other than an empty room,” he said.
The space is configured so that each vendor has a designated area for which they pay a fraction of the total rent, whether it’s a booth, a table or a shelf. Vendors fill and replenish their space as needed but don’t have to take care of it because the souk has employees selling goods on their behalf. A 3% commission on item sales helps cover administrative and labor costs, while everything else goes directly to the seller, with sales carefully tracked on a website that provides sellers with instant updates. “In a sense, the business is self-sustaining,” Ahmed said.
Bazaar officially opened on November 5, with just over 40 vendors at the time, and now has more than 70 vendors. Ahmed said they are adding about 10 people each month and are constantly receiving applications. “We’re very close to being completely full right now, which is really amazing,” he said. “I don’t think we expected it to be so popular, but I think it speaks to the pressures of renting in the city.”
He sees marketplaces as a natural solution to the pandemic surge of creators who have since sought to monetize their hobbies or expand existing businesses into physical spaces. “It’s not a primitive model because the market is one of the oldest commercial spaces in our civilization,” Ahmed said. But it’s especially useful now because of rising rental prices in Toronto. He added: “Even as individuals, there’s not a big enough space for any of us to be independent in this city.”
Rose Ruffolo, Supplier of Y2K Vintage Shop Only cool shit She said her share of the monthly rent is nearly the same as attending most weekend pop-up markets, except it doesn’t cost her any time. “This store is great. The rent is great and sales are great. It’s a great concept,” she said.
Although Ahmed and Hassani never viewed Bazaar as a permanent pursuit, they plan to continue running the business as long as it is sustainable. “Right now, we’re actually thinking about how to keep up,” Ahmed said. “I think that’s a good question.”
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