THUNDER BAY – Ungalli Clothing Company is going to the movies.
There might be popcorn and snacks.
There definitely will be high-quality, locally made, sustainable clothing and custom T-shirts, and a lot more space for entrepreneurs Bree and Hailey Hollinsworth to display not only their own wares, but those of dozens of other Northwestern Ontario artisans.
The sisters, who founded Ungalli Clothing Co. in 2015, are moving into the former Cumberland Cinema, which stopped showing films in 2009, and currently counts Definitely Superior Art Gallery as its main tenant.
Their 8,000-square-foot space will also allow them to partner with Superior Screen Printing under one roof to create, store, sell and ship their one-of-a-kind clothing line.
A larger space has long topped the company wish list, but the sisters just couldn't find the right fit.
“We've been looking everywhere. We really wanted to be downtown somewhere, but we kind of lost hope of that after a year of finding a space big enough to have the warehouse and the store. A friend of mine actually shared that someone had bought this building and was looking for tenants and was looking for tenants on Facebook,” Hailey said.
“So we're super excited.”
The goal is to keep the movie theatre vibe alive when they open, their target being at some point in the fall, depending on the pace of renovations to the Cumberland Street building. Already, floors in the theatre areas have been levelled.
“We're going to use some of the old seats and offering some movie snacks. I know some of the other tenants are hoping to do that as well,” Hailey said,.
“The front of it will be our store,” Bree added. “We have at store right up the street right now and I think it will be four times the size of our store now, offering different products, artists – just a whole load of different things. It also gives us room for our own clothing as well as giving everybody else more space.”
The move means they can take on more local vendors.
“In the back it will be both us and (Superior Screen Printing), so we'll keep all of our blanks and all of our sorting and our offices will all be in the same place,” Bree said.
It's a bold move for a relatively young company, but also shows just how far they've come in eight short years.
“It means a lot of growth for us,” Hailey said. “So far we've been in three different locations. We have storage space out in Rosslyn, our screen printer is on Simpson (Street), so we're basically driving in circles all day bringing orders back and forth.
“This will allow us to be a lot more efficient with our orders and be able to pump them out faster and take on more orders – and still be in the downtown district.”
With orders starting to pour in from across Canada, as consumer attitudes continue to evolve, Ungalli Clothing Co. seems to have struck a chord and demand continues to rise nationwide. The extra space is not only convenient, it's absolutely necessary at this time, Hailey said.
“Ungalli is one of the only companies in the country that offers this kind of service on sustainable clothing. More and more businesses and organizations are seeing the value in sustainable clothing as opposed to fast fashion. With the world evolving and changing so much, people are starting to change with it,” she said.
"Sustainable clothing lasts longer, is higher quality, uses natural resources responsibly and does not hurt anyone in the process.”
