# Garage opens 20 profitable stores per year by betting on Gen Z's return to malls

*The Canadian fashion brand runs counter to digital-first orthodoxy with physical retail that actually pencils.*

By **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA, Principal** — The Stash Edge, Hako Shikin LLC.
Published 2026-07-09.

Canonical: https://www.pops4.com/stash/articles/garage-canadian-fashion-2026-07-09t09-4
Subject: Garage (Canadian Fashion)
Tags: retail expansion, gen z, mall strategy, physical retail, store economics, dtc

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Garage, a Canadian fashion brand, opened a new store in London this week and two in Manchester last month, according to Glossy. Since November, the company has added locations in Louisiana and Hawaii. The pace: **20 profitable stores per year**, at a moment when most apparel brands treat physical retail as a necessary cost center or a sunset asset.

The mechanics are straightforward. Garage targets malls where Gen Z already congregates, signs leases at favorable terms in a softer commercial real estate market, and stocks inventory that turns quickly enough to cover occupancy costs in the first quarter. The brand does not disclose per-door economics, but Glossy reports that each new location opens profitably from day one, a claim the company has repeated in trade interviews without retraction.

The underlying mechanism: Gen Z shops differently than the cohort that built DTC. They use Instagram and TikTok for discovery, but they convert in person. They want to touch fabric, try fit, and leave with product the same day. Garage's product—bodysuits, denim, crop tops in the **$20 to $50** range—moves fast because the customer buys on impulse, not after three retargeting emails. The mall location becomes the conversion event, not the research stop.

This inverts the last decade's playbook. Most brands launched online, raised venture capital, scaled CAC to unsustainable levels, then opened showrooms as a branding exercise. Garage runs the opposite direction: physical stores generate profit and discovery simultaneously, and the website exists to capture spillover traffic from customers who saw the product in-store but didn't buy that day.

The steal for a small physical-product brand: identify a retail format where your customer already spends time, negotiate short-term or pop-up terms to test unit economics, and treat the lease as a media buy. Your cost per impression is rent divided by foot traffic. If your product has immediate use value and a price point under **$75**, you can convert a meaningful percentage of walk-ins without remarketing.

Start with a single location in a secondary mall or a downtown corridor with below-market rents. Stock **200 to 400 units** of your top three SKUs. Track daily sales per square foot and compare that to your blended CAC online. If in-store conversion runs **8% to 12%** and your average order value covers the daily rent allocation, you have a repeatable model. Expand to a second location within 90 days, using the first store's sell-through data to adjust the product mix.

The critical line: do not treat the store as a billboard. Treat it as a performance channel. If it does not pay for itself in 90 days, close it and test a different location. Garage's model works because they measure stores like ad campaigns, not like brand temples.

The broader pattern is commercial real estate normalizing and foot traffic returning to physical nodes. Brands that dismissed malls in 2018 are now signing leases in 2025 because the economics shifted. The customer moved, and the smart money followed.

## The takeaway

Treat physical retail like a performance channel: if the store doesn't pay for itself in 90 days, it's a bad media buy.

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## Publisher

**Hako Shikin LLC** — Virginia Beach, Virginia. Founded 1997. ASI 217876 · DUNS 18-204-6339.
Principal and author: **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA**.

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