L-R: Brother and sister team, Milena Holmes and Duey Vlajic, in their south Oshawa premises. Photo by Katie Mutton
By Will McGuirk
Makers matter. And makers are at the core of what we do here at slowcity.ca. A while back we wrote about a couple of young makers who had set up a clothing manufacturing plant in south Oshawa but were in the process of moving it all to a location in the core of Oshawa’s downtown.
Happy to say so Frere Du Nord achieved their dream and will launch their new store Saturday Sept 21 2019 at their location on Prince Street, east of Bond Towers and across the street from the GO Station.
The launch party will feature collaborations with Town Brewery, Lowlands Pizza, live graffiti painting and music from Matt Gunn, Josh Kvasnak of the Doozies plus others.
“The most exciting part of the new space is the positive feedback we’ve been receiving. We started out with a vision for our business, and the building, and it has been an amazing experience to see how the space has been transformed almost exactly as we envisioned it and how people are sharing in the excitement with us,” says Milena to Slowcity.ca. “The biggest challenge we faced in completely gutting and renovating an old building was the timeline. Initially we estimated that the entire renovation would take approximately 6 months, and exactly 1 year later we are celebrating our grand opening. The entire process was made much easier working with a reliable and honest contractor, and knowing that we had a lot of support within City Hall ( specifically,The Economic Development Office and multiple City Councillors). The feedback we’ve received so far from other local businesses and our clients has been extremely positive, and it’s really exiting to be making a positive contribution to the downtown. We’ve really taken momentum generated by other businesses that have come before us and had success in the downtown despite all of its challenges; and we hope to inspire new businesses to come after us.”
Frere Du Nord have plans to enable those possible new businesses via space for an art hub and apartments on the second floor. Oshawa has always been a centre of manufacturing and congrats to Frere Du Nord for putting manufacturing back at the centre of Oshawa.
