Toronto's first shop dedicated to the Italian
Calligaris line -- a mid- to upper-end Italian furniture designer -- opened last week on the increasingly dense King East furniture strip.
"We were looking for a particular square footage," says store owner and manager Yana Evlentieva, whose family has been in luxury retail in Moscow for 18 years, and recently moved to Toronto. "Real estate on the street is hard to come by. It just happened that at that time [that we were looking], the two units became available, and none of them worked for us independently, so we decided to combine the two spaces, and it worked out fabulous for us."
The total space is 5,000 square feet, part of which is in the old Imperial Bank building.
Evlentieva says the reason she approached Calligaris about opening a shop in Toronto is that their designs are especially well suited to condos.
"They're building 20,000 units of condos a year," Evlentieva estimated, "which is by far the highest rate in North America, so people are looking for furniture, and what we are offering is very functional furniture, [much of which] is meant for small spaces."
The renovation took about two months to complete, and was designed in Italy, modeled after the company's flagship store in Milan.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Yana Evlentieva
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