How an accident led to a Vancouver business that's still kicking 20 years later

An American man who came to Vancouver and fell in love with the city opened up a retail business that has survived 20 years in a neighbourhood that has seen its fair share of struggles.

Eric Dickstein is the owner of Dutil Denim, located in Gastown at 303 W. Cordova St. There’s also a location in Toronto.  The Vancouver location opened in April 2006.

According to its website, Dutil carries the “largest and most comprehensive denim collections in North America.”

We spoke to Dickstein about the last 20 years, about what’s changed, and about why he loves Vancouver.

Dickstein was born in the US, in California and hails from the L.A. area. When Dickstein was younger, he was married to a Canadian.

“We ended up in Vancouver, and what happened was my marriage didn’t work out, but I fell in love with Vancouver,” he said. Years later, he opened Dutil.

We wondered why Dickstein chose to open a business specializing in denim of all things.

“It was kind of an accident,” Dickstein explained.

Dickstein is actually from the optical industry, and it is what he’s done for a long time. He worked with a prominent brand in the optical space named Oliver Peoples. They launched a new brand around 2006, and the idea was not to go into optical stores but instead lifestyle stores.

“So I started going to all these stores, and I’m just kind of a chatty person, and I kept asking people. ‘Well, what do you do well with in your store?’ And they kept saying denim.”

He said that he sells one commodity to optical stores for the most part, but that there’s almost equally the same amount of demand for denim, but no specialty stores.

“So I thought, Oh, I’m gonna become a specialty store, and that’s how it was made.”

Running this Vancouver business was quite the learning experience for Dickstein.

“I had no idea. I didn’t know the difference between a boot cut, a skinny, a straight, or a wide. I had no idea.”

Dickstein is hoping to transition from being a specialty store carrying various brands to putting Dutil on the map as the brand.

“We will be one of the most sought-after premium/luxury basic brands in the world,” Dickstein said, adding that it would include denim.

The costly reality of doing business in Gastown

Loss prevention is an important aspect of the retail business, no matter what neighbourhood a store is located in. However, over the years, we’ve shared various stories about business owners struggling with the cost of petty crime in Gastown.

Most recently, the news of the London Drugs in Gastown closing due to safety incidents.

Dickstein runs seven retail stores and has dealt with this reality in an expensive way.

“If I told you that I have probably had over $200,000 to $250,000 worth of theft and damages throughout my business. It would probably sound like a joke or not real, but it’s true.”

He said that the sad part is, particularly in an area like Gastown, you can’t claim those with the insurance companies because he said they’ll cancel your insurance.

“It’s a very challenging situation, but we’ve always been able to be creative,” Dickstein said.

Dickstein offered some wisdom that might help folks who are interested in starting a business in Vancouver. He said he did some research, discovering that the number of businesses that can actually survive for 20 years is “quite low.”

He explained what he tells people who ask him how he helped his business survive for 20 years.

“The true answer for me is you have to be able to feel failure, because success is just cycles of things going right and things going wrong, and when things are going wrong, that’s when you have to reinvent yourself. And that, I would say, is the reason why we’re still in business. We were able to act and react quickly.”

Why did he fall in love with Vancouver?

We wondered what it was about Vancouver that made Dickstein fall in love with the city when he first travelled here from America.

“It’s multidimensional,” the Vancouver business owner shared.

He said he likes the look of the city, calling it an iteration of a San Francisco-type city.

“What I really like about Vancouver is it’s a small-big city. It’s not like Toronto, it’s not like New York, it’s not like L.A., it’s not like Montreal. It’s a pretty small, intimate city.”

He used the example of a new restaurant opening, and that when one does, everyone knows about it.

“It’s not like if you go to Toronto, they have like 30 cool restaurants opening every month. Vancouver has an intimacy that many cities do not have. And I think that’s what I love about Vancouver, the intimacy.”

You might also like:
• 'Vancouver isn't moving forward': Residents and leaders react to London Drugs closure
• B.C. doesn't have the workers it needs to build its major projects
• This is the plan to transform Gastown's streets for pedestrians and events, starting with a $25-million overhaul of Maple Tree Square