Abdul Mintoo is becoming familiar with the garment industry from every perspective.
His native country of Bangladesh is the second-largest garment manufacturing country in the world, with production for brands such as Joe Fresh, Zara and H&M.
Now, he is getting acquainted with the other side of the coin, as his new luxury retail store, Fheny, soft-launches on Sparks Street next week.
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Fheny – named after Mintoo’s hometown of Feni, Bangladesh – will offer a curated array of clothes, bags, shoes and accessories from well-known European luxury brands such as Gucci in-store, with a larger selection of brands and products on its e-commerce website.
“We’re a startup brand giving Ottawa a one-stop shop for men’s, women’s and kids’ (collections),” Mintoo told OBJ.
Mintoo says he wanted to open a luxury retail store in the nation’s capital to close the gap he’s observed in the luxury market in Canada.
“You can hardly find any luxury items (in Ottawa). People have to travel to Montreal or Toronto to buy luxury, so I decided to close that gap,” he said.
The location at 148 Sparks St. could not have been better, he added.
“It’s a place where we can create a really good brand. It was a perfect setup, right in front of Parliament Hill. It’s busy during the summer with a lot of tourists,” he said.
Better yet, the store’s placement along the pedestrian mall plays into the allure of luxury boutiques in Europe.
“If you go to Paris, you see all those small boutiques on the roadside, just like Sparks Street. It gives you that European vibe that goes with the products I want to sell,” he said.
Mintoo says his family-run business takes pride in representing the Canadian fashion industry on a global scale and in supporting downtown revitalization efforts.
“Fheny will represent many premium and luxury Canadian brands to support our community and economy. Fheny will assist Sparks Street revitalization program and make it a destination for luxury shoppers.”
Fheny is a dream come true, not only for Mintoo, but also for his father, who passed away last January. Mintoo’s father had dreamed of opening his own business and shared Mintoo’s appreciation of luxury goods. Mintoo says his father cared for everyone in his large family before thinking of himself and, as a result, his dreams fell to the wayside.
“Fheny came from a longtime dream from myself and from my dad … after he passed away it kind of hit me more that I want to live up to his dream and make it come true,” Mintoo said.
His brand embodies his roots, from the name to the logo – a royal Bengal tiger, which is the national animal of Bangladesh.
Mintoo came to Canada more than 18 years ago as an international student to study engineering in Toronto.
“I came here from an average family back home with a dream of higher education … My dad put together everything he could afford to send to me,” he said.
After graduating from his program, he moved to Alberta to work in the oil and gas industry for nearly a decade before pursuing a master’s degree in sustainable energy at Carleton University. Since he’s been in Ottawa, he has worked with the federal government, developing the idea for Fheny on his own time.
“I have worked really hard. I’m putting pretty much 18 hours every day for this business. Day in, day out, nighttime too, because I have to be up because all my suppliers are in Europe,” Mintoo said.
Much of that work has been put into ensuring the authenticity of the products he will carry, a problem that is rampant in a market where counterfeit products are as genuine-looking as the real thing.
“Trust and credibility (in my brand) is something that is important to me,” he said.
Each product is authenticated from the supply chain to the distributor to Mintoo himself, before it is passed on to the customer. The largest hurdle will be making sure the products that get returned in-store are truly the real thing, Mintoo said.
“It’s really hard to determine the original versus a replica. So we’ll have a digital fingerprint kind of process that will tell us (if the customer) actually bought the original product at our store,” he said.
Mintoo says he has established direct collaborations to get products from their licensed manufacturers and distributors in Italy, France and Portugal.
His store will offer “premium products at accessible prices,” which he plans to achieve in part through these direct collaborations.
“When you’re selling online, brands give you authorization to sell products at a certain discount. You can’t just simply decide to sell a Gucci bag at 50-per-cent off, or else you are ruining the brand reputation. They want to maintain the market … instead, let’s say, you are selling a bag worth $1,500, you can sell it for a few hundred dollars less,” he said.
Mintoo says this doesn’t sacrifice the quality of the product, but instead reduces the retailer’s profit margins.
“Instead of making 10-per-cent profit, I’ll be making seven (per cent). But I want to give that opportunity to people so they have access to the product at a more affordable price,” he said.
Selling well-known luxury product brands is only the beginning for Mintoo. He plans on expanding his offerings to include garments and shoes from his own Fheny brand.
To start, Fheny will offer new luxury items directly from Europe and second-hand luxury items from brands that do not wholesale their products.
This plays into something that stays true to Mintoo’s heart: the sustainability of his brand.
“I am opening our brand in between seasons. Usually, you order your collection a season in advance or a year in advance … when I got into this business, one of my goals was to provide clothes from the past season (as well as the current season). I don’t want anyone to throw (last season’s products) away because you can still sell these timeless pieces that will last,” he said.
The Sparks Street storefront and web store will have a soft launch next week, with the Fheny brand’s grand opening slated for mid-December.
