In front of a colourful, flowery van stands small business owner Lainie Towell, the owner of Ottawa’s first fashion truck the Voguemobile. The scene is early Sunday morning on the fifth day of JazzFest, – the first major event for the new truck.
While it might be the first time that Ottawa has seen a boutique based in the back of a food truck, Towell said there is a large group of other fashion truckers around North America.
“Mobile retail is definitely a growing movement; I am not the only fashion truck in Canada,” Towell said. “The first fashion truck was created five years ago in Los Angeles, California, and according to them there’s now between 350 to 500 fashion trucks in the association of mobile retailers.”
The truck itself is relatively new, with this week marking its fourth on the road. The Voguemobile has something for everyone, according to Towell.
“We carry independent designers, everybody from Ottawa to Montreal . . . from Brooklyn to Europe,” she said.
But being the first does not necessarily mean getting all the perks of a niche market, Towell added. Due to the fact that the Voguemobile does not sell food and therefore cannot be considered a food truck, it cannot take advantage of bylaws put in place to help them, like the ability to sell on public property.
“I don’t even have the opportunity to park on the street . . . but the thing that is kinda cool is we do have the right under bylaw to park in privately owned parking lots that are zoned for retail,” Towell said.
However, Lainie said she believes that the prominence of large festivals such as JazzFest in Ottawa are a large help to small business owners like herself. Through them, she said she is able to spread the news of her fashion truck to foreign tourists and reach a larger market.
Towell added that for her and other small business owners, JazzFest is about more than just selling her clothing. It is about exposing brands that often have very small marketing budgets to the larger community and creating interest in them down the road.
“I am, as a very new company, exposing the Voguemobile to so many people who are seeing it and building brand-awareness,” Towell said.
“Even if they don’t come in and buy a dress from me today, I may meet a woman who takes a brochure and calls me in two months and books our truck to have a private shopping event night,” Towell said.
The truck seemed to be a hit among the JazzFest crowd. Towell said she sold more than expected, and at the times the truck is too packed to even let customers try on clothing. She added that during some night shows, the inside of the truck seems to have its own party going on.
Overall, Towell said she has loved the experience of owning a small business on the go so far, as well as the all of the positive attention that it’s received.
“Just being here, talking to people, meeting people, letting them walk into the truck, they’re taking pictures of the truck, they’re tweeting it, they’re touching the clothes, and they’re buying too,” she said.
When the Voguemobile is not hitting up JazzFest or eyeing future events like Polo in the Park, the truck can be found every Friday at Kunstadt Sports in the Glebe, every Saturday at 613flea, and other various locations around Ottawa.
