CAMBIE Expansion
CHANGES | With exciting new growth comes big change!
A message from CAMBIE founder, Camille Byrne:
It is with great excitement that I am finally able to announce the next chapter of CAMBIE. After years of growth as a retail space on Queen Street West, we will be permanently closing the doors to our brick and mortar shop in the coming weeks. Our official final day at 1048 Queen Street West will be May 31st, 2020, and we will thereafter operate solely online.
I recognize this news may come as sudden, and given the current pandemic and its global impacts on small businesses everywhere, I would like to note that this decision to close the physical shop was made long before social distancing measures were put into place. I want to assure our wonderful CAMBIE community that the business is well and will continue, just differently.
While I had initially planned to share news of this transition over a month ago, I made the conscious decision to postpone this announcement in the hopes that we may have been able to open our doors again before our last day to give the space a proper farewell. Sadly, it is clear this will not be possible and, though we know working together to flatten the curve is necessary and are proud to do our part, we deeply miss the wonderful face-to-face interactions with customers and wish we could facilitate a proper goodbye.
This June will mark 7 years (!) since signing the lease to our first shop location, and after great consideration over the past few months, it became clearer and clearer to me that the next stage for the business would require us to prioritize our growth and evolve as a business to serve the CAMBIE community better. We know that turning this page will allow us to expand in exciting new ways – one of the most important being the ability to offer more support to our makers and artisans by expanding our line of goods and creating special collaborations with artists and designers. And so, we will be pouring our hearts into creating an online experience that we hope will feel as special and inspiring as our physical spaces have.
I choose to approach this ambitious transition with enthusiasm and an open heart and hope you will too, as it unfolds. I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter below and follow us on Instagram to keep up with all of the exciting announcements we have planned throughout the month of May, including a sale of many of the custom shop fixtures, photoshoot props and window displays.
We have a saying here at CAMBIE that has been repeated time and time again over these past 7 years that we use whenever things seem to fall perfectly into place – “It’s the CAMBIE way.” As with many of our experiences with CAMBIE, I truly believe this change is our next “CAMBIE way” opportunity and sincerely look forward to helping you create spaces and share goods that do more than look beautiful, but also inspire, offer comfort, and support the well-being of you and your loved ones.
I truly cannot emphasize enough how incredibly grateful I am for this beautiful community, and want to thank you for your continued support.
- Camille Byrne, Founder