Tamara Stepchuk-Forrest and Olenka Stepchuk went to university to study art history and forestry, respectively. What they didn’t know at the time was if they fast-forwarded 20 years, they’d be running a family fashion empire.
The Stepchuk family’s story is all about staying power. To have that in a world where everything changes with the seasons requires not only resilience, but also a willingness to change and adapt quickly and constantly.
The first store, opened by their mother, Lydia, in 1977, was a consignment shop in the ByWard Market. Lydia, who is a clearly visionary, opened in a neighbourhood that had virtually nothing in terms of retail and, to entice her, her landlord gave her a few months of free rent.
Lydia’s father was a master tailor and designer in Ukraine and he taught her, from a young age, how to sew, design and understand fabrics. When she was old enough, she moved to New York to study fashion design and after graduating, she moved to Ottawa and opened her consignment shop, Rolyda, on Murray Street.
Wealthy women flocked to the store with their used Oscar de la Renta and Chanel and business took off. Soon, she’d outgrown her 300-square-foot space and moved into a 700-square-foot location on Parent Street. Gradually, as the business made money, she started bringing in new designer clothing, and eventually, consignment was relegated to the back of the store until one day she declared she was done with consignment, and off the merchandise went, back to its owners. At that point, she renamed the store Lida and moved to a bigger space nearby. When she outgrew that, she moved next door on Parent, to increase the square-footage of the store by more than four times. It was an adaptation that was all but necessary as business was booming.
“We would have five people working on a Saturday and none of us could eat lunch,” Olenka says with a laugh. “Our mother had such a good following. We still get customers who date back to those days.”
Unfortunately, the heydays of the ’90s haven’t kept up on Ottawa’s fashion scene. Tamara says they first saw a drop in 2001, after 9/11, when there was a “huge dip.” The next one came in 2008 with the mortgage crisis in the U.S. And since then, the business has changed again just as online shopping has taken hold.
The Stepchuks don’t sell online because most of the lines they carry won’t allow them to, although they do allow larger players — the Nordstroms and Saks of the world — to sell their products online. That’s meant that the Ottawa family has had to adapt, innovate and expand.
Their first location expansion took place in 2004 when they added a second location for Lida, calling it Lida West, on Wellington Street. In 2008, a new Westboro location became the first Gerry Webber store in Canada.
“That was a big deal back then,” Tamara says. “Now Gerry Webber corporate has come along and there are nine stores in Toronto alone. We still carry the product but our contract ended after five years and we didn’t renew.”
Not renewing gave them a chance to rethink their stores, their brand and their concept. In July 2015, Fashion United was born and is run by the sisters, with their mother having retired. The Westboro store took on the new name and the sisters opened another upscale shop — complete with two long rows of chandeliers — in a strip mall in Kanata.
The concept is a curated boutique version of a department store, with similar high-end brands, but less stock, a considerably smaller space and personalized service, often from the owners themselves. Popular brands — many of which can be seen on Hollywood celebrities — include Kate Spade, Mark Jacobs, Marc Cain, Longchamp, Michael Kors, Bella Dahl, Vince, Sky, Splendid, Cambio, Repeat Cashmere, Joie, Equipment Plus, Hard Tail, Hale Bob, Paige Denim and a jewelry line called Alex and Ani.
Tamara mostly works out of the Westboro location and looks after inventory orders and budgets, while Olenka moves around, counting among her responsibilities merchandise distribution and window displays. The sisters make a point of travelling together for their buying trips, hitting Düsseldorf, Germany, New York and Los Angeles, the latter being a trip they particularly enjoy.
“We look for stuff that’s different,” Tamara says. “Sofía Vergara wears Hale Bob all the time. Cindy Crawford wears Bella Dahl. Paige jeans — the guys in One Direction wear the men’s version of those. We have a great line matrix. We do a lot of research and reading. We buy what we like, what we’d want to wear, but we also do research to know what’s the latest thing. Hard Tail is custom. It’s a yoga line that was around before Lululemon. It’s all natural fibres, made in the U.S. We pick the style and the colour. So even if other stores carry Hard Tail, they won’t have the same styles as us.”
It seems to work. They have shoppers who come in from as far away as Montreal, Quebec City and Vancouver. “They come in and tell us they wish we were in their cities,” Olenka says.
“We hear it all the time,” Tamara chimes in. “We had a doctor come in — she was from P.E.I. She walked in at 5:15 and asked when we closed. We told her 5:30, but that we’d stay if she wanted. She said ‘I never have time to shop and we don’t have stores like this in P.E.I.’ ”
The sisters also pride themselves on good service. “Everyone who works with us is a stylist,” Tamara says. “We have nice things, they’re not cheap, but the quality is there. You won’t find Walmart prices here but you get what you pay for.”
In addition to the two Fashion United Stores, they own a true outlet where the old Lida store was in the ByWard Market.
“When my mom retired, we retired the Lida name and we opened up Designer Clearance Outlet,” Olenka explains. “We pull our sale stuff from (the two stores) and it goes there. It’s a real designer outlet. If it doesn’t sell, it goes there. Everything is 50 to 90 per cent off.”
And this fall they spent a considerable amount of time preparing a “pop-up” shop at Bayshore Shopping Centre. Opened in November, it will stay open until at least January, with an option to keep it open after that if it takes off. The store is located on the third floor, next to Hudson’s Bay.
“We’re always changing,” Tamara says. “Fashion always changes, the look changes, people’s lifestyles change all the time. You have to keep moving.”
The sisters, who are in their early 40s, have two daughters each. Whether they’ll go into the family business remains to be seen, but suffice it to say they’re being exposed to the ever-changing fashion emporium that is Fashion United.
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