Posted Feb 9, 2008, 12:35 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2006
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Great story about a great localy-started reatil outlet.
Now if only every retailer could learn from them!
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Jumping into retail Duo turns love for hip hop into chain of stores
Lisa Grace Marr
The Hamilton Spectator
(Feb 9, 2008)
The Jump Off in downtown Hamilton is really more of a landing spot for Kevin Hall and his business partner Diarmid Kane.
Hall, 34, is just hitting his stride with his mini-chain of 10 retail stores spread across southern Ontario, with three in Hamilton.
This week he's heading to Wisconsin to seal a franchise deal with a businessman he met at a U.S. trade show.
It's a long way from a few years ago when he was hustling hip-hop T-shirts out of the trunk of his car.
Hall's business success is not only huge for him, it's huge in Canadian retail.
Derek Nighbor, vice-president of national affairs at the Retail Council of Canada, says historically, Canadian retailers have not fared well south of the border.
"The market there is very different. The people who shop at a major discount store there are not the same kind of people who shop at the same store here. We're just two different countries."
Then again, The Jump Off has had a very different history.
Hall got into retail six years ago while working as a barber in Mississauga. Kane, one of his customers, was selling hip-hop shirts. Hall started helping him, selling them out of his car. They'd make runs to New York and run back to the GTA to sell.
"I got a car and then I couldn't fit the clothes in the car so I bought a minivan," said Hall. "Pretty soon I couldn't fit everything in the minivan."
Kane, now 25, already had Mississauga's Dixie Mall flea market sewn up and Hall didn't want to tread on his turf. So he turned to Hamilton, where he had lived for six years.
He found a spot at a flea market in a strip plaza at Strathearne and Barton. But soon, that, too, proved too small. Kane had the same problem.
They had combed the planet for hip-hop clothes they liked and got some suppliers who gave them great deals.
So they opened SSauga, a combination barber shop/clothing store in Mississauga. It was OK, but not enough. Those great deals required they buy a lot of clothes. That meant they needed to sell them. They needed a jumping off point.
So Hall opened The Jump Off (thejumpoff.ca) at Centre Mall on Barton in 2003. In hip-hop slang, Jump Off means something new, something exciting.
It is this intimate awareness of all things hip hop: the music, the culture, the flash, the bling that is the cornerstone of their business.
"I've been into the music since Day 1 from Fat Boys and Grand Master Flash," he said.
"You have to know hip hop to know the market. It changes constantly. Everything could shift in two weeks. It's the way people express themselves."
It's the same way Burlington-based West 49 president and CEO Sam Baio took his love of boarder culture from the fringe to the mall. He opened three stores in 1995, went public in 2004 and has grown the business into a national chain.
Nighbor said entrepreneurs usually start a store because there's a passion for something, like Baio's for boarding, Hall's for hip hop.
"Those regional chains are the fastest-growing segment of our (RCC) membership," he said.
Some grow into national chains.
Aside from the U.S. deal, Hall hopes to take The Jump Off to 20 stores in southern Ontario by this fall in franchise deals.
He says the stores have a broad-based appeal.
"Older people come in here and they're in shock because they don't realize they are going to like it," he said.
Most of Hall's business decisions are made by instinct and street smart know-how about how to market it and where.
The King Street store windows are steaming with dry ice and on the weekends there's a D.J. doing his thing on the second-floor balcony "to liven things up a bit.
"I have the three busiest corners in Hamilton: King and John, Kenilworth and Barton (as of March 1) and Upper James and Fennell," said Hall.
In 1990, Hall moved from his home in government housing and a mostly black high school in Toronto to Delta Secondary.
"I had a culture shock. No one knew anything about hip hop."
He transferred to Sherwood Secondary and moved on to study business at Mohawk, an education he said was good to get but credits success with a strong work ethic and God.
"Everything I do belongs to God, my business, everything. But I got there through working extremely hard," he said.
There are no plans to bring any more stores to the Hamilton area. They're enjoying strong sales and that alone sends a message. "I want people to see this success and know that it's possible in Hamilton if you just work hard."
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