With more shoppers looking to buy local or at least Canadian, Ottawa’s Maker House is seeing an uptick in interest as it moves into a bigger holiday pop-up location at Place d’Orléans Shopping Centre.
This season, shoppers will be able to browse Maker House’s Canadian-made goods at the former Eddie Bauer location at Place d’Orléans. This will mark the third year Maker House has had a pop-up location in the east-end mall.
Owner Gareth Davies told OBJ that he thinks the larger location will attract more customers and, hopefully, more sales.
“This year we’ve decided to go a little bigger. Our space is the old Eddie Bauer location, so it’s double the space we would have had in previous years there. We’re excited to have almost our whole product mix from our main Hintonburg flagship store.
“We’ve had two really solid years at Place d’Orléans, growing a little bit last year over the year before, and now with the bigger location we’re anticipating a lot more sales just due to the product mix and the additional space and capacity for customers.”
In previous years, the store’s pop-up location was farther from the food court or mall entrances. But Davies said this year’s location is in a better spot to pique shoppers’ interest.
“Being near that Farm Boy and Scotiabank entrance should yield more traffic,” he said. “Just having a bigger frontage should help more people see us (and) notice that Maker House is in the mall … We were already happy with the results and customers we met in Orleans last year, so it can only get better from here.”
In 2024, Davies opened the pop-up in the city’s east end due to the area’s growing interest in Maker House’s products.
“We’ve had a ton of online orders over the years from Orleans, which prompted us to look for a space during that peak gifting season. Working with Place d’Orléans the last couple of years has been really smooth and it’s been a complementary relationship with us bringing some additional traffic to the mall and meeting lots of new customers there.”
In years past, the pop-up’s most popular items have been greeting cards and gift boxes of Canadian-made chocolates, hot sauces, jams and other food items. Davies said he expects that trend to continue.
“On the bigger-ticket items, we sell a lot of wool blankets from MacAusland’s Woolen Mills on P.E.I. They do very well with the Place d’Orléans crowd. It’s a little bit of an older crowd out there than what we see in Hintonburg, but there are flavours (for our food items) that do better out there than they do in Hintonburg.
“We’ll be sampling a lot of products too, from our whiskey maple syrup to our ginger-infused honey. That always builds the connection with customers so they can actually experience the products before they take them home to put in their stockings.”
Davies hopes to expand Maker House’s holiday pop-up network to other areas of the city.
“We’re working on it right now. There are a few markets we have lined up,” he said. “And we’re talking to at least two other retail centres. So, without giving it away, we do hope to have additional pop-up stores throughout the holiday season and especially into future years.”
Plus, Davies hasn’t ruled out opening another permanent store.
“It’s definitely something we’re considering. We’re happy with the traffic and the results from the holiday season. We may very well see additional Maker House locations that are permanent in the outskirts of the city, whether that’s the east end, west end or south. Nothing certain at this time, but it’s always on the radar for us to expand,” he said, adding that he hopes to find “the right spot for a longer-term lease.”
Canadian pride bodes well for business
With the trade war with the U.S. making headlines, Davies said Maker House has been affected, but not in a negative way.
“Our supply chain is all Canadian companies, so we haven’t seen direct impacts on our pricing or the availability of our products because over 300 Canadian companies make up (the items on) our shelves in the store. We have seen an influx of support for shopping Canadian (and) buying local. (Our products have been) resonating with people even more over the last six weeks since the whole Lake Ontario debacle.
“Just like last year, we’re finding there’s a peak to the patriotism currently and we obviously love that because we’ve been banging that drum for 11 years, encouraging people and giving them a place to find Canadian-made goods,” Davies told OBJ.
The desire to buy local and Canadian-made products has meant that Maker House’s corporate gifting program has seen sustained growth.
“There are lots of companies finding staff gifts, client gifts that are Canadian-made for bulk orders or group gifts at Maker House. It’s nice to see that over the years that continues to grow organically for us through word of mouth.”
