It’s no surprise that running Brick & Mortar is a labour of love for its owners – it’s in their blood.
Jennifer Pistone and daughters Julia Dewhurst and Emma Nash are getting set to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their New-West based business. When they opened the doors to their business in June 2012, they chose the name Brick & Mortar Living to reflect the importance of small, community-based businesses in their communities.
“When I was a child, my mother had a chain of bookstores, Big Books, in Toronto. We were that family that ran the local book shop. It’s kind of in my blood since I was little. My mother had six kids and we all worked in the shop. The clients knew us by name,” Pistone said. “That’s where I realized we had an impact on the communities that we had shops in.”
When her daughters started working in retail, Pistone tried to impart on them the need to give 110 per cent – whether they were working for themselves or someone else. Eventually, they decided to open Brick & Mortar Living.
“Both of them seem to have retail in their blood,” Pistone said. “The girls have each found their niche in the shop. Each has their own role that they play. I don’t know how anybody runs a shop like that as a single person.”
Pistone, who travels to the business from her home in Seattle, tends to the taxes and finances, while Dewhurst takes care of local administration, deals with designers whose products are sold in the shop, and does the advertising and social media. Nash is responsible for all of the store’s merchandising and helps determine what products carried in the shop.
The crew at Brick & Mortar is thrilled to be celebrating their fifth anniversary, but it always hasn’t been smooth sailing.
“We’ve done three moves in five years,” Pistone said, “and we have another one coming up next year.”
Brick & Mortar’s first home was in an 850-square-foot space in a heritage building on Begbie Street, where it focused on vintage items and gradually started carrying products made by local designers. That evolution continued when the business relocated to a 2,400-square-foot space on Sixth Street on Oct. 1, 2013.
“The space was bigger. We needed to open our minds up to other product lines,” Pistone said. “We are customer-driven. We listen to our customers very closely. If they are asking for something over and over and over again, we get it in. We find it.”
When Brick & Mortar moved to its new space on Sixth Street, it knew its time there was limited because it was destined to be a display suite for the development that will eventually be built on the site. Last October, it moved to a space two units down the street – a space where Brick & Mortar had previously ran pop-up community events like art shows.
Today, the shop carries products by more than 140 local designers, focusing on Canadian-made products, with an emphasis on British Columbia.
“What it comes down to, Brick & Mortar Living is a labour of love,” Pistone said. “It is not a profit-making business for us as a family, it’s just not. The success of it is the fact that people love it and it makes enough money to pay all the bills.”
Since its inception, Brick & Mortar Living has sought to create a community vibe that’s about networking and helping local businesses thrive. With each move, the community has followed.
“I think you get what you give - that’s what it comes down to really,” Pistone said. “Our focus from the very beginning has been to embrace the community, not just from a customer point of view but from local community groups, the arts council. We have tried to immerse ourselves in the community as much as we can.”
Celebrating a milestone
What’s happening? Brick & Mortar Living is having a fifth anniversary celebration – Fifth on Sixth.
Details: The celebration takes place on Thursday, July 20 starting at 8 p.m. at 52 Sixth St. and features music, art, treats and beverages – and a chance to mingle.
