1. 98 99
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 theWest. 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 YoungTurks
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 launchedTiger Distribution, one of the most vibrant and
forward-thinking businesses in the sport lifestyle industry. AsTiger’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 CITY
A CUB LEARNSTO HUNT
“Montreal was a stopover on the way toWhistler,”
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
seeingWeSC 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?’”

2. 100 101
“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 CRADLE
SOUTHWESTIS 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 LesTanneries 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 startedTiger, 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 theTimebomb 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
outWest, 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 APPROACH
EXPANDINGTHE PORTFOLIO
Tiger 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 ofWeSC,Tiger added Brixton in
2007. A startup at the time, Brixton was exactly the
kind of brand Bowden was looking for.
“Itwasthefirststeptobeinga distributor,”hesays.
“Itwasa goodcomplementarybrand, buyerslovedit
andwereallymeshedwiththeproductandthepeople
behindit.Wereallybelieveinwhatthey’reall 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.”
BowdensaysthatTiger’spreferencetoworkwith
emergingcompanieshasallowedhimtofocusonbuild-
ingsolidfoundationsandthetrustofhisaccounts.
“We’vealwaysdealtwithbrandsthataren’tlooking
for $10 millioninsalesrightoutofthegate,”hesays.
“They’relookingfor someonetogrowtheir business
withthem, andIthinkwe’veprovenprettygoodatthat.”
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.”

3. 102 103
NEVER LOSE YOUR STRIPES
TIGER STYLE ANDTHE POWER OF BRANDING
Tiger 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 forTiger, 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?”
TheTiger aesthetic is a culmination of the creative
people in Bowden’s circle—the photographers,
designers and illustrators that inspire him all add
toTiger’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 COLLECTIONS
A RETAIL CONCEPTSPARKED OVER COFFEE
An eclectic mix of old-world kitsch adorns the
rough-hewn shelves ofTony Campanelli’s cafe about
a block away from theTiger 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 HORIZONS
ROAMING OUTSIDE YOUR BACKYARD
To 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 LITTER
A NEWBREED EMERGES
Rain 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 inVancouver, 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.”

4. 104 105
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 WATER
KEEPING AN OPEN DOOR POLICY
On 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.
“BarryWalsh 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 theWest.
“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.

5. 106 107
CLAWING UP FROM THE UNDERGROUND
WORK 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 MarcTison 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
ofWest 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 NEWTRICKS
THE YOUTH ARE HAVINGTHEIR DAY
An 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 GrandTrading 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 WING
NEIGHBOURLYLOVE 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. ButTiger was
in theWest 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.”
Mehramakesmovestowardthedoorandtheconversationswerves.
“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.”