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THE BOYS OF ST. HENRI

The neighbourhood of St. Henri in Montreal’s Southwest was, for centuries, the gateway for any ship making passage from the Atlantic into the West. It was safe harbour, flanking the shores of

the Lachine Canal, a detour around the toiling rapids of the St. Lawrence. Once a hub of manufacturing and distribution, the area began to fall into disrepair after the turn of the century. Its factories became hollowed shells, and crumbling warehouses succumbed

to a changing industrial landscape. The lights had dimmed on St. Henri, its cobbled streets vacated and the neighbourhood began to exhale its last laboured breaths.

Then in the ’70s, the tide began to turn. And in the last decade, a new flow of Young Turks riding the wave of gentrification have begun to pump life into the neighbourhood. With new

businesses sprouting from the cracks, a healthy heart now beats in St. Henri. The entrepreneurial spirit is rife, and the zeal of its new inhabitants palpable.

Jesse Bowden has called St. Henri home for over 15 years, seeing promise in an area many had once discarded. This is where he launched Tiger Distribution, one of the most vibrant and

forward-thinking businesses in the sport lifestyle industry. As Tiger’s success manifested, it at-tracted others to the area, like Raj Mehra, who would lean on Bowden as he launched Mehrathon

Trading. Much like sleeper cells, the two slowly and patiently developed their craft under the radar, first in their own community, then exploding onto the national scene.

These are the boys of St. Henri.

WORDS BY BRIAN PEECH PHOTOS BY PAUL LABONTÉ

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITYA CUB LEARNS TO HUNT“Montreal was a stopover on the way to Whistler,” says Bowden, who was raised in Nova Scotia, snow-boarding five days a week at the local hill, skate-boarding and eventually surfing the frigid waters of the Atlantic. “I arrived here and just never left. It’s an easy place to fall in love with.” Between draws of coffee he recounts his days of small town life and the dazzle of arriving in Montreal. “When you’re coming from a pretty rural area, and you come to Montreal, it’s just beautiful women and the city’s just alive, man. It’s really what I needed at that time.” Montreal became home in his late teens, when he was accepted into photo school, befriended a crew of local snowboarders and eventually weaseled his way into working at a shop. “That was the spike, the legitimate break into the industry,” he says, going on to describe the challenges of finding work as an Anglophone in Quebec. “I just convinced these dudes at the shop to give me a

chance, that I would freestyle it, whatever it took. It was a bit of a disaster for about five years.” Bowden gazes through the foggy window, admiring the bustle in the street outside the café. “Montreal is just a completely different world than the rest of North America,” he says. “It’s a very old part of Canada. Quebec in general, but Montreal specifi-cally, is really one of the last strongholds of the old colonial culture. You don’t see it anywhere else.” Bowden eventually left the city, albeit briefly, applying his photography skills to dip his toe in the fashion industry. Living in Denmark, he began seeing WeSC logos strapped to the Swedes who’d frequent Copenhagen’s party scene. Upon return-ing to Montreal six months later, he again stumbled across the logo on a business card. Ever curious, he hunted down its source. “I rolled into the address on the card, trying to get more info. I just wanted to get involved.”

Bowden managed to weasel himself another gig, this time in marketing for the company that handled WeSC in Canada. Eventually, that company began

drifting in a new direction. WeSC was left in limbo, and Bowden was left holding a ticket to a sales meeting in Sweden for a brand he wasn’t sure he was still involved with. He went anyway. WeSC realized the asset in front of them and offered to continue working with Bowden on one condition: He’d need to quit his job and start his own company. “They wouldn’t let me leave the country until I gave them an answer,” he says. “I couldn’t get a hold of anyone for advice, so I had to make the call on the spot. I was maybe 22 or 23 at the time. My little sister was cashing my cheques for me at that point. I didn’t even have a bank account.” He pauses, flashing through memories of all his years in the business—the brands he’s helped build, the negotiations, the spreadsheets, the deadlines, the parties and the coming downs, layovers, days away from family and the milestones missed—the sacrifices. “I was like, ‘Fuck yeah. How hard can it be?’”

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“Community is huge for us. And now we’re building this synergy in our neighbourhood. We’re all creating this. We’re physically involved in bettering

our hood, which is really, really cool.”

THE CAT’S CRADLESOUTHWEST IS BEST“Back at the turn of the century, this was the go-to neighborhood,” says Bowden. “There are all these massive factories here, which sat decrepit for the last 70 years. But now, it’s becoming one of the coolest neighbourhoods in town.” Once known as Les Tanneries because of the artisan leather shops in the area, St. Henri sits in the shadow of downtown Montreal. Predominantly a working-class neighbourhood, today the streets are a mix of hip restaurants, decades-old diners, new retail-ers and quaint grocers with storefront merchandise that’s faded from sunlight. “When I first started Tiger, I made a pact that I didn’t want to drive in traffic,” Bowden looks back to when he brought the business out of his apartment. “So I walked around to every empty factory in the area until we found a space that would fit our needs. And that’s where we’ve been ever since.”

Able to launch with obscenely low startup costs afforded by the cheap commercial leases of the time, Tiger set up shop. “We run a big distribution practically downtown,” he says. “We can get away with that. It creates a whole different quality of life for the people who work here. We’re all within three blocks of the office, so it becomes kind of like the clubhouse. “We lived here during the first recessions,” he says, recounting the days before parking meters. “When your apartment got dirty, you’d just move because you didn’t want to clean. But now, every six months there are five or six spots opening up, whether it’s a restaurant, retail shop, a bar, distro or a brand.” There are now about 300 businesses along Notre Dame between Peel and St. Rémi, many of them fronted by young creatives. “It’s just cool to see these like-minded people going for it —the entrepreneurship—it’s one of the backbones of Canada; it’s what makes this country what it is. “Community is huge for us,” he continues. “It’s one of the most important things. And now we’re building this synergy in our neighbourhood. Whether it’s run-ning into the guys from Mehrathon over coffee, the Burton crew is down here, we see the Timebomb East guys, Royal Agency around. There are a lot of good people here now,” he says. “We’re all creating this. We’re physically involved in bettering our hood, which is really, really cool.” Bowden goes on explain that a strategic advantage of setting up shop in the heart of St. Henri, aside from the low cost, is that being immersed in the Quebec culture, he’s able to stay strong locally, while at the same time branching out to the rest of the country. “Being Anglo-Quebecers, we can still mesh well with the rest of Canada,” he says. “Where being based out West, coming into Quebec can be challenging. We’ve built a lot of our relationships within the Que-bec scene first and foremost before branching out. And that’s a huge advantage, because it’s one of the most successful markets in the country. “It’s more of a European style of business here, the way we operate, our relationships. It really feels like we’re in our own country,” he says, noting the cultural divide between Quebec and the rest of North America has allowed a lot of businesses to grow and develop under the radar. “We always felt like outsiders, the odd sheep or the dark horse out here,” he says of his early days the industry. “But people didn’t know enough about us to interfere. And by the time people could interfere, we were too established to let that happen. It allowed us to do our own thing without being focused on all that.”

A NEW APPROACHEXPANDING THE PORTFOLIOTiger now employees 15 people full-time, services hundreds of shops coast-to-coast, and currently has a portfolio of seven brands: Poler, Lifetime, Deus Ex Machina, Brixton, Penfield and WeSC. They’ve come a long way since Bowden opened up shop. After the success of WeSC, Tiger added Brixton in 2007. A startup at the time, Brixton was exactly the kind of brand Bowden was looking for. “It was the first step to being a distributor,” he says. “It was a good complementary brand, buyers loved it and we really meshed with the product and the people behind it. We really believe in what they’re all about. “We were steering away from traditional paths.” he says. “We weren’t going down to any of these big Southern California shows, where we would be a bunch of young kids who didn’t know our ass from our elbows.” Bowden recalls the challenges as a young distribu-tor looking to grow, competing with large houses.

“A lot of times, it would come down to money, people looking at the size of your business and what you can provide for them on the back of some other brand,” he says. “But we’ve gone toe-to-toe with some pretty big guys, and it’s funny how often we’ve come out ahead and it’s never been about money—it’s all about being real and people feeling comfortable with you. “In a lot of situations, we’ve been given a chance before the books were even open,” he adds. “More and more, people are conscious of a long-term goal or strategy, and they want to align themselves with good partners who understand what they really want for their brand.” Bowden says that Tiger’s preference to work with emerging companies has allowed him to focus on build-ing solid foundations and the trust of his accounts. “We’ve always dealt with brands that aren’t looking for $10 million in sales right out of the gate,” he says. “They’re looking for someone to grow their business with them, and I think we’ve proven pretty good at that.”

Bowden admits to becoming increasingly picky when it comes to the brands he entertains now, preferring to go deeper with a few key partners, rather than overextend his brand offering. “We’re always looking for new projects, but honestly, our hands are full. A lot of cool brands have approached us over the last six months, but we feel it’s almost unethical to move forward with them. It’s like having three dogs and getting a fourth one. That little dog’s going to get left out.” Taking a genuine interest in others is one of Bowden’s most marked qualities, second only to his passion for his community, whether it be locally or the national retail landscape. “At the end of the day, if you’re out there talking to a customer who’s a friend, you legitimately care about their business; you have to believe what your selling them is going to be successful,” he says. “Otherwise you’re just fucking lying to people every season. And I don’t think anyone likes that—I am horrible at doing that.”

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NEVER LOSE YOUR STRIPESTIGER STYLE AND THE POWER OF BRANDINGTiger was one of the first distros to really embrace marketing itself with the same fervor as the brands it carries. “This is going to sound really cheesy,” Bowden admits. “But we’re really passionate about what we do, and we really care about the brands we work with. We’re an extension, an arm of those companies. So we’re not thinking what’s best for Tiger, we’re thinking what’s best for that individual brand. “But at the same time, we’re all creative-minded people with pretty deep creative roots,” he continues. “We can’t be a part of something without putting in the energy to brand it. When you have this massive blank corporate template, you just have to fuck with it, you know?” The Tiger aesthetic is a culmination of the creative people in Bowden’s circle—the photographers, designers and illustrators that inspire him all add to Tiger’s well-curated look. “Going the extra mile with little things shows a lot of consciousness,” he continues. “A lot of brands pick up on that presentation. If you care that much to put in that energy, it usually translates all the way down through everything you do.”

CAFFEINE AND CAPSULE COLLECTIONSA RETAIL CONCEPT SPARKED OVER COFFEEAn eclectic mix of old-world kitsch adorns the rough-hewn shelves of Tony Campanelli’s cafe about a block away from the Tiger offices. “When this place opened at the top of my street, I was psyched,” Bowden says. “Good coffee, good people, so I’d come in every morning on the way to work and just post up.” Bowden and Campenelli quickly became friends, and one day the conversation turned to what Bowden does for a living. “We joked we should expand the concept of the café, cut some holes in the wall and make a retail concept meshing with the cafe,” he says, opening the door to walk out onto Notre Dam. “We just had our second year, and we’re moving into year number three right now.” Bowden’s foray into retail proved to be more challenging than he’d expected. “Retail’s a very humbling experience,” he admits. “But it’s a really neat case study for us, in that the bulk of the people we sell to know nothing about the brands. We’re selling a more premium product in a more blue-collar neighbourhood.

BROADENING THE HORIZONSROAMING OUTSIDE YOUR BACKYARDTo be certain, Tiger has marked its territory locally. But it’s a global market, and Bowden says he now spends much of his time looking to Europe, noting that living in a culturally diverse city like Montreal has opened his eyes to a lot of opportunity. “Generally speaking, it just keeps you open-mind-ed, and that’s really important,” he says. “We spend three to four months a year traveling outside of our market, which is crazy,” he admits. “All the brands we work with have good stories, so to experience the brand at its home base, we learn everything—how they started, who’s behind it, how they think—so we can translate that message, that excitement to the buyer. And they pick up on that. That’s the most im-portant asset you can have in business, especially in sales. It energizes everybody, it’s good for confidence, it’s good for everything.” Bowden leaves for Japan tomorrow. His passport is mired with ink from countless overseas missions. But the desire to build a deeper community within Canada beckons back to his early days laying foundations in St. Henri.

“So you can really see what product works, and what product doesn’t,” he continues, “And we always joke that if we can be selling it super well here, then no one has excuses, it can work anywhere.” Bowden was conscious of not cannibalizing Tiger’s account base in his own backyard, painting the store as more a vehicle to build the brands and help his fellow retailers. “Look, we’re a city of 3,000,000 people, and there’s no one really close by doing what we’re doing,” he explains. “I’m a big advocate for brand affirmation. If the five best stores in the city carry your brand, and you’re co-signing that brand as being cool, it works. If one store carries it and has exclusivity, people like that, but it takes 10 years longer for that brand to develop. “We showcase our brands in a cool way, hold our pricing, and do everything we can to promote the product,” he says, adding that he’s beginning to bring other brands outside of his distribution portfolio into the mix. “It kind of validates the brands. And that helps validate all the stores that carry them. There’s a lot of weight in that. “A lot of the lines we carry are fairly massive,” he adds. “We stock a lot of the elements that might not make it to market otherwise. And we’re willing to try some of the more fun pieces, the crazier stuff, the more marketing-influenced styles. It’s really a cool vessel to tell the whole brand story.” Bowden peers through the window at the carefully crafted displays and fashionable sales staff tending to them. “We’ve learned a lot about the retail world,” he adds. “Now I can talk to a shop owner and they might say, ‘I’ve had a really shitty fall,’ and I’m like, ‘I know, tell me about it!’ Because we live it, too. It kind of puts us more in tune with what’s going on in our market—at least locally in Montreal.”

REARING THE LITTERA NEW BREED EMERGESRain pings off the tarnished copper roof of the old fire hall as Bowden walks past, making his way up the street. The conversation turns back to emerging brands and the future of our industry. “It gets back to the energy and the competitive-ness,” Bowden explains. “Some of the bigger brands, they get so big they lose touch with the market. They lose touch with how to speak to the independents. “It’s not a bad thing, getting big,” he’s quick to admit. “It’s just hard when you get there. You forget how to talk to your core customer base, the people who make you who you are.” Much like the influx of small businesses that acted as a defibrillator to St. Henri, Bowden sees the new wave of smaller, more nimble brands in our industry as a neccesary lifeline. “With the collapse of some of the major surf brands, a lot of stores realized there were some significant holes they had to fill,” he explains. “These smaller brands were already on the up, but without that collapse, they might have taken a lot longer to

develop. Now a lot of stores are giving these smaller brands a chance to step up to the plate and play in the big leagues. “These little brands, they’re super quick to react, they’re super quick to market. And it’s crazy, they’re getting attention all across the board,” he says. “I mean, the economy is tricky right now, but it’s one of the most exciting times for our business since I’ve been involved.” Bowden circles back to look closer at a window display that’s caught his eye, pausing to admire the variety and depth of its offering. “There’s just a wider pool of creative guys doing cool stuff now. It’s gotten everybody back up on their feet trying to come up with something fresh,” he turns to make his way back the clubhouse. “It’s making everybody sharpen their teeth again.”

“We’re a massive country,” he says. “We’re basically six or seven countries in one. We always joke that if you want to do an event, you have to do it three times in three different cities to have any impact. If some-thing happens in Vancouver, it has zero relevance to what’s happening in the East Coast. “Now imagine there was a traveling trade show where the whole industry moved to another scene every six months,” he says. “The local stores and reps set the agenda, and we’d all be going to their clubs and feeling their vibe, experiencing their scene. And all the stores are going to be like, ‘The whole industry is in town, we have to make sure our game’s on point.’ Plus, that host community would be more inclined to travel to all the shows. “Why are we doing it in the same place all the time?” he asks, not waiting for an answer. “I under-stand change is scary for some people, but it would be cool to give it a real national vibe, tie the country together. It would revitalize everything.”

“We always felt like outsiders, the dark horse out here. But people didn’t know enough about us to interfere. And by the time people could interfere, we were too

established to let that happen.”

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THE BOYS OF ST. HENRI

“Montreal is very much a melting pot. It’s like a soup; there’s so much flavour here. Being a part of this big multicultural city helps us think outside of the box.”

JUMPING INTO THE WATERKEEPING AN OPEN DOOR POLICYOn Raj Mehra’s office wall hangs a picture. In it he’s sitting on a box overflowing with product, his first order as a new distributor. “That was about eight years ago. I’d just gotten my first boxes,” he says. “I was like, “Oh my god, I have so much stuff, check this out! It was the biggest package I’d ever seen, and I was so happy. “Now we’re shipping hundreds of boxes, and I look at that photo... it was so new.” Mehra is working late, bridging the gap between his usual 12-hour day and heading to the local up the street. “Barry Walsh is playing vinyl. We play some old skate videos, just nerd out, bring the community together, have a beer, talk shit,” he says. “A lot of young cats come through, and a lot of older cats, too.” Locking up and heading into the St. Henri night, Mehra makes his way down to Notre Dam.

“I still see a lot of the guys who came up skating in the ’80s and ’90s around,” he says. “They haven’t moved away. We’ve re-tained a lot of talented people in Montreal. There is a tightness to it that comes from being so underground.” Approaching the club, Mehra goes on to explain why he’s not headed home to his wife and two kids. “Sometimes you get so caught up with work you miss out on a lot of things. When we were younger, we’d always be in the know; we were just out there in the streets, finding out what brands were doing what,” he says. “If you’re always in your office, you never know what’s really going on. “We have an open door policy at Mehrathon,” he says. “A lot of the younger generation who are actually active, putting on contests or coming up with new ideas, they come by and pitch us, because we’re accessible and we act on a lot of it.” It wasn’t that long ago that Mehra was

that little kid with big ideas. Like Bowden, his first gig in the industry was working at a shop. He started helping with the buying, and at the time was skating for éS through Timebomb in the West. “Timebomb really helped to open the eyes of a lot of skaters out here,” he says. “We were the underground, and that was the distro helping us out a lot. But we wanted to do a distro so badly in Quebec, where we live.” Eventually, Mehra wound up in the distri-bution game as a rep and then in marketing, becoming the Canadian brand manager at Zoo York before taking the leap to do his own thing. “It’s incredible once you go out on your own,” he says. “You’re afraid to jump in the water, but once you do, all your friends come out to support you.”

Friends like Jesse Bowden.

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CLAWING UP FROM THE UNDERGROUNDWORK ETHIC, STRUGGLE AND SOUP“When you love something so much and have so much passion, you’re just going for it, even in the shittiest conditions,” says Mehra, leaning on the brick wall outside the club, breaking for the occasional handshake. “Now we’re the older generation,” he continues. “Starting businesses and growing the industry even bigger than it was when we came up, which, out here, was almost nothing.” “Out here, we’ve had to work twice as hard,” he says. “Look at guys like Marc Tison shoveling out the Big O to skate in the middle of winter... just that dedication, it builds character. And there’s always been that diehardness built into the culture out here. It was just underground and untapped. “For us to just make any sort of ripple in what’s been 20 years of West Coast dominance, whether it’s been in skateboarding or in business, we have to work twice as hard,” he says. “I’m working doubly hard to let people know about Montreal, that there is a scene here, that there’s a lot of great stuff to offer the industry and encourage people to come out here and check it out. “Montreal is very much a melting pot,” he continues. “It’s like a soup; there’s so much flavour here. Being a part of this big multicultural city helps us think outside of the box. So apart from the work ethic and having a bit of a struggle to get exposure, we also think a little differently than the traditional model.” That work ethic has paid off. Mehrathon’s portfolio has grown to include some of the biggest names in skate hardgoods, something he credits to brands looking to break from the mold.

UP TO NEW TRICKSTHE YOUTH ARE HAVING THEIR DAYAn old shred skates past, slaps his tail and grabs the nose, stepping off and walking towards the door of the club. “Never, in the history of skateboarding, that I’ve seen, has it been so possible to succeed,” says Mehra. “I’ve never seen it on this global of a scale before.” Mehra greets another friend who’s rolled up, a kid barely old enough to get in the bar. After a quick exchange, he turns back. “I’m learning from a lot of people younger than me now,” he says. “A lot of the power is in the youth, and the older guy has to have enough wisdom to listen to the younger people. Because they’re on the ground; they see what’s happening. “A lot of the companies I’ve worked for, all the decision were being made at the top,” he adds. “There was no autonomy, no incentive to give ideas. That’s the old model. You’ve got to think, ‘Hey, we’re a team.’” That mentality extends to Mehrathon’s newest competitors, who, according to Mehra, are a breath of fresh air. He remembers the way he was welcomed as an upstart, the way Bowden took him under his wing, the way his enthusiasm struck a chord with so many. “Honestly, the more competitors, the better, “ he says. “It’s not better for our wallets, but it’s better for our culture. “There’s more stuff going on, more ideas flowing and people doing more things for the scene,” he continues. “Having smaller distribu-tors, like Kadence and Grand Trading and Black Arts, these guys...I’m telling you, I don’t even look at the bigger guys right now. These guys are doing things differently and making noise in the underground.” Old skate vids are playing, beers are being had, people are nerding out, talking shit, and Barry’s playing vinyl. As Mehra walks through the door, he looks back. “I don’t underestimate the underground,” he says. “I’ve been there.”

“There’s always been that diehardness built into the culture [in Mon-treal]. It was just underground and untapped.”

UNDER A TIGER’S WINGNEIGHBOURLY LOVE IN ST. HENRI“Tiger really took me under their wing,” says Mehra. “When I first started, I didn’t know where to open up shop, and a lot of the traditional businesses were in the industrial parks. But Tiger was in the West End of downtown. At the time, it was a really ghetto down there.” Mehra recalls the boarded-up houses, the graffiti, the smashed-in warehouse windows and collapsed porches facing the bungalows. “I remember his first spot,” says Mehra. “I was so proud of him, because I looked up to Jesse. I was like, ‘Oh my god, this guy’s got his own company. Amazing.’ “He chose to go downtown,” he continues. “I don’t know if it was strategic at the time, but it was close to where he lived, it was cheap and it was close to the action. So when I started my thing, I went to him for advice, and eventually moved right next door. Literally, I was his next-door neighbour.” Mehra says he noticed a drastic change from working in the outskirts of town to the more central neighbourhood of St. Henri. “People would just come through more often, the right people, the influential people in the know. And that just helps a lot with everything in business. Plus, Jesse would send customers over, like, ‘Hey go next door and see Raj.’ “Tiger really helped me out massively by taking me under their wing like that,” he says. “Like, I had no scale, and they were like, ‘Here’s an old scale.’ They’d pass things down to me. They were like big brothers in that way.”

“The old model doesn’t work. You have to adapt to new times, be mobile and move quickly,” he says. “It’s not like it used to be. You can’t just sit back and wait for the orders to come in, you’ve got to really think on your feet. And when you’ve been underexposed and underestimated, that’s where some of the best stuff comes from.” Mehra admits that having his roots in the East, despite the lack of exposure, has been an advantage. “If you look at the simple demographics, two-thirds of the population, of the business, is in the East,” he says. “I would rather be stronger in that two-thirds and work on the balance than the other way around. “There is that language and cultural barrier,” he says. “A lot of times companies dismiss it, like, ‘Ah, Quebec, there’s no busi-ness there. We do a little bit, but whatever.’ They say, ‘Oh, we don’t understand Quebec,’ and that’s the end of it. But imagine trying to maximize sales, then losing out on 30 per cent of it. “There is so much business out here, we’re having a field day,” he says. “It sounds simple, but like in any culture, let’s say you go to Japan, if you’re trying to speak the language and learn the culture, it goes along way. It’s respect. “But if you don’t work for that connection, if you don’t put in that effort, or if you’re just hiring a rep out here to just do whatever you say, it’s not effective,” he adds. “More and more, a lot of the owners are coming out and doing it right. And I have a lot of respect for everyone who does. There’s enough ocean for everyone.” Mehra makes moves toward the door and the conversation swerves. “These days, it’s become easier for us to attract new brands,” he says. “And not because everything has become more global, but because we’ve thought differently and attracted attention. Being mobile and faster, that’s our competitive advantage. And in busi-ness, in this day and age, you have to act small to be able to move quick and be on the ball. “For a big ship to move in the ocean, it’s like, ‘Hey, call up the captain!’” he bellows into the street. “But as a smaller company, we’re a speedboat just zipping around, just looking for a line.”