BC
2.0
APRIL 2020 JULY/AUGUST 2020 BCBUSINESS 37
Blaine McNamee had already brought the dead back to life
once in B.C.'s retail world. Then the pandemic came.
McNamee is the guy who took over the empty storefront that had been home to
the cherished Wonderbucks on Vancouver's Commercial Drive—an emporium of
sometimes trashy, sometimes stylish but always cheap housewares whose demise
in 2017 was widely reported as a sign of The End of Beloved Local Vancouver Retail
as We Know It—and transformed it. It became a third successful outlet of the for-
merly west-side-only Rufus Guitar and Drum Shop.
During Wonderbucks' final days, he'd visited the store, where its owners talked
about rent zooming up and property tax increases that made the business unwork-
able. He heard what the rent was—then $12,000 a month, with a planned hike to
$16,000—and thought, That's actually not bad. McNamee opened the new shop in
April 2019, after the property had changed owners.
In the first two months of this year, sales looked set to keep chugging on at a
healthy pace. For the 38-year-old escapee from Edmonton, who had worked in
music stores before buying the original Rufus at Alma Street and West 10th Avenue
five years ago, his success was proof of his firmest belief: in-person, store retail is
not dead.
THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC FORCED SOME
PROVINCIAL RETAILERS TO SHUT AND LEFT
OTHERS STRUGGLING. BUT FOR THOSE
NIMBLE ENOUGH TO ADAPT TO THE NEW
REALITY, IT'S AN OPPORTUNITY TO REINVENT
HOW THEY DO BUSINESS
b y F R A N C E S B U L A / / p o r t r a i t s b y T A N Y A G O E H R I N G
