Boarder patrol

>> The Know?Show East trade show
bridges industry and community,
fashion and sports with street-wear
for skaters and snowboarders

JUST SAY KNOW: (Clockwise from left) Oli Van Roost,
Stefan Gauthier, Jesse Bowden, Mer Van Roost

To illustrate the lengths to which some people go to wear unique clothing, local wholesaler Jesse Bowden, of Tiger Distribution, holds up a size 13 women’s pink and grey suede Air Jordan shoe. The costly, limited-run sneaker belongs to one of his male employees.

When Bowden, 31, began wholesaling clothes six years ago, he doubted he would ever see a demand among people his age for such hard-to-find designer street garments. It seemed unlikely that his skate shop clients would carry $300 jeans, $40 t-shirts and vintage Nikes.

These days, though, things are different. Grown-up skateboarders want more sophisticated clothing, and plenty of people just want to dress like grown-up skateboarders and call that clothing streetwear.

Bowden says that in the past two years, streetwear has grown popular enough to warrant a twice-yearly trade show in Montreal. Organized by Bowden and his partners Stefan Gauthier, 31, and Oli and Mer Van Roost, both 35, Know?Show East is an offshoot of the two-year-old, Vancouver-based Know?Show. The next show, their second, takes place August 7–9 in Old Montreal.

Pay to be unique

Though Know?Show East also includes skateboarding and snowboarding hard goods, the bulk of its business is streetwear. Prior to the show, the primary Canadian venue for street-wear brands was the National Snow Industries Association (NSIA) trade show, an outdoor-life event held every winter at Place Bonaventure. Their collections were displayed alongside large sporting brands’ lines.

“We’re basically bringing in brands that most of the retailers that attend [NSIA] wouldn’t even carry and wouldn’t understand,” says Bowden. Many of the most sought-after lines, like Mighty Healthy and Married to the Mob, a women’s collection, started off by printing t-shirts and marketing them through blogs. Others, like Diamond, are skateboard crossovers.

Much of what these companies produce is limited-edition, created in conjunction with artists and occasionally one another. Street-wear fans monitor release dates to ensure they don’t miss out on pieces that will quickly disappear from stores.

Which makes exorbitant prices seem worth it. A Mighty Healthy and Diamond t-shirt featuring a graphic of a grinning, gold-toothed, money-bag-clenching Mighty Mouse fleeing a police car costs upwards of $40. “People will pay a bit more to be unique,” says Bowden. “And they’ll still be unique, but affiliated with a brand. So they get the cred from wearing a known label.”

But not too well-known. Bowden says that he’s declined to sell floor space to several mainstream brands interested in the show’s niche market. Their presence would be off-putting to the other exhibitors, who will be showing 90 lines, detracting from an event that is “almost like a community project, an effort to strengthen our whole market,” he says.

Local draw

Bowden says the decision to hold the show in Montreal was a “no-brainer.”

“There is no other place where we could do a show like this,” he says. Toronto, he explains, was too expensive and not sufficiently central to cater to shops on the East Coast as well as those in Ontario. He also expected Montreal’s surfeit of nightlife to appeal to the predominantly 25- to 30-year-old streetwear set.

Bowden, however, didn’t expect the show to draw industry types from Western Canada and the U.S. These out-of-towners, many of whom are wary of selling to stores they don’t know, “go to see what our retail scene’s all about,” says Bowden. The city’s most serious streetwear purveyors showed their commitment to the subculture by hosting evenings, complete with art and music, in their stores.

“What’s important is to see the face behind the store, to see the face behind the brand,” says Angelo Destounis, of the Ste-Catherine Street clothing store Off the Hook. The business relationships the trade show fosters give Destounis greater access to emerging lines. “Every day, there’s new things,” he says, “and every day, people want them.”

But having a show on his home turf also helps Destounis determine whom he’d rather not work with. “I’ve seen certain guys behind certain products, and I’m like, “That’s the guy from XYZ?” he says. “You’re like, ‘This guy’s in it for the short-term. He’s here to make a buck really fast and then move on to the next thing.’”

Despite its initial success, Bowden thinks Know?Show East is far from reaching its full potential. “This is a new thing for Montreal, having a focused show,” he says. “It’s definitely been a struggle in a lot of ways, getting people to come and support the show. We’ve had attendance, vendors are backing it, but it’s still a growing process.”