By Craig Patterson

Paris-based children’s luxury fashion retailer Bonpoint will make its Canadian debut this summer with a standalone store in Vancouver.

The 920 square foot Vancouver boutique will be located at 1512 W. 14th Avenue in the city’s Fairview area, a few steps away from the tony South Granville retail strip. The boutique is being run in partnership with upscale multi-brand children’s retailer Isola Bella, which operates a retail space in Vancouver’s Kerrisdale area. CBRE Vancouver represented the retailer in the lease deal under the direction of Martin Moriarty, Mario Negris and Chloe Hamelin.

Bonpoint sells upscale children’s fashions including newborns, and also has a line of footwear, sunglasses, perfume and skincare. Some garments can cost into the hundreds of dollars each, which means its target market is households with discretionary income. The store’s location is clearly in line with that sentiment — rather than locating downtown in the city’s ‘Luxury Zone’, Bonpoint will be located on Vancouver’s affluent West Side which houses wealthy neighbourhoods such as Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale and Point Grey, where some homes can cost in excess of $20 million.

The company was founded in 1975 with a single store in Paris, and the company has since expanded to include retail and wholesale accounts globally. Bonpoint has nine stores in the United States, all of which are generally located in upscale locations. New York City has three Bonpoint stores (Two stores on Madison Avenue as well as a store in Soho) as well as in Bal Harbour FL, Beverly Hills CA, Chicago, Houston, Palm Beach, and Short Hills NJ (suburban NYC).

According to a report in WWD last year, Bonpoint has also set its sights on opening a store in Toronto at some point in the next while. The WWD report notes that Bonpoint is also considering opening stores in Las Vegas, San Francisco, and at Orange County’s prestigious South Coast Plaza.

Craig Patterson, now based in Toronto, is the founder and Editor-in-Chief Retail Insider. He's also a retail and real estate consultant, retail tour guide and public speaker.

Follow him on Twitter @RetailInsider_, LinkedIn at Craig Patterson, or email him at: craig@retail-insider.com.

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