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"FacebookPinterest\n\n What Alice Waters did for food, Byron and Dexter Peart are doing for fashion. With co-founders Mark Wiltzer and Jacqueline Gelber, the duo behind the successful WANT Les Essentials de la Vie brand opened their second WANT Apothecary in Toronto last week carrying brands like Nudie Jeans, Aesop, and of course, their own. We spoke with them about their approach to retail and learned that they're all about a slower way of doing things. And in today's fast-fashion world, the idea of slowing things down couldn't be more welcome. Read on to find out how The WANT Apothecary aims to generate an experience, along with sales.\n\n\n\nFor our readers who haven't been to Toronto, what was it about the city that drew you there for your second location? \n\nDexter: Well, both of us are Canadian and we run back and forth between New York and Montreal on a weekly basis. Within the last five years we noticed that there's been a resurgence of new opportunities in Toronto. There are a lot of great new museums, a lot of great new restaurants, a lot of things to do. The particular area where we chose to open up the shop is called Rosedale and it's just down the street from one of our favorite restaurants, Terroni. You could compare the neighborhood to Chelsea or the West Village in New York City. It seemed like there was a lot going on there and it was a place where we wanted to put down our roots and be a part of all the newness that's happening.\n\nDoes the city inspire you guys? \n\nByron:Rosedale more than the city at large. Toronto is quite cosmopolitan. It's global thinking. People here have traveled, they've see things. But, at the same time, it's large and has an expanse, and what we liked about being in a neighborhood like Rosedale was the aesthetic and the idea of a community in a very local way. It's slightly independent, but independent in a way that the people who are living there are looking for something slightly alternative yet familiar and that's exactly in line with what we're doing.\n\nHow does the store and its products play into the neighborhood's vibe? \n\nDexter: The idea was to make it feel like a home for the community. The WANT Apothecary, the concept, is about a slower process of commerce and service and that fits in well with this neighborhood.\n\nByron: We wanted to take a counter-culture approach to retailing and slow everything down inside the store. Let's say that someone is coming in for a skin care or body product, we like to think this person is going to come in repeatedly once a month to refill their moisturizer or shampoo. Or in the case of their clothing\u2014they'll come in regularly to replenish key items. So it's not about coming in and being like \"what's the next thing?\" because that's what fast-fashion is for. Everything we sell is meant to give people a story that's nuanced.\n\nDexter: The one word that comes to mind the most when I think about what we're trying to achieve is \"timelessness\" and there's something about this concept of the apothecary that has a feeling of something from the past, but we wanted it to have a modern context as well. So the store has this old English feeling, but at the same time it speaks to the modern customer's perspective and what they're looking for for their modern day lives. So when it comes to the design of the store, whether it's in the materials like the wood, or the powder coated steel, or the glass, or the marble, they're timeless materials that speak to the timelessness of the product we're putting forward and the timelessness of the standard of service as well.\n\nIs there anything else you'd like our readers to know? \n\nDexter: I think everything that we do is hyper-refined, hyper-curated as opposed to commercial. The concept started with this idea that when people come in they can trust us. I think that's a hard thing to offer and it's something we picked up from great service experiences we've had from around the world whether it was in a store, restaurant, or hotel, so that's something that we're really trying to bring through with this concept, for sure."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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