Resting boisterously on the nook of Gerrard Avenue E. and Ashdale Avenue in Toronto, Chandan Trend is a retailer you could not miss should you tried, with its bubblegum pink and child blue exterior. Actually, vacationers are recognized to snap just a few fast photographs as they cross on the 506 streetcar, or between bites at MotiMahal throughout the road.
Locals, alternatively, are used to the eye-catching Indian bridal store, which takes centre stage within the new CBC actuality collection Bollywed. In operation for 38 years, Chandan Trend is a landmark of Gerrard India Bazaar, one of many largest enclaves of South Asian items, meals and tradition in North America.
Watch as brides and grooms store for his or her all-important day for an entertaining peek into the colourful world of South Asian weddings and style tendencies.
Based by Jatinder Pal “Kuki” Singh — whose rambunctious power has made him the face of the enterprise for practically 4 a long time — and his spouse Sarab, Chandan Trend is the epitome of a household enterprise: their two kids, Chandan and Chandni, and daughter-in-law Roop all work alongside them. Actually, the shop’s roots go even deeper: Kuki’s father ran a bridal store in Punjab, Kuki Silk, named after his son.
Meet the household behind Chandan Trend
Chandan Trend’s inside is a comfy however chaotic area, with lehengas, robes, saris, kurtas and extra resting layer upon layer on wall-to-wall cabinets, and glass instances full of glittering jewelry. And it is as vibrant as its exterior and founder: from vibrant greens to luxurious reds and shimmering golds, no hue is spared. The third ground is devoted to a sprawling bridal showroom, which it took Chandan 5 years to persuade Kuki to renovate.
The household on the centre of all of it has saved the enterprise thriving all these years. Kuki, Sarab and Chandan run the shop, whereas Roop manages bridal gross sales and occasions, and Chandni handles customized orders. However that does not imply working with household — whereas additionally dwelling with household, and doing nearly the whole lot with household — is straightforward.
“It is type of good that you just get to have your loved ones as your co-workers,” says Chandan. “You realize the whole lot about them.… You realize the place the strengths or the weaknesses are. However you then even have [the feeling that] work would not really feel like work — it is similar to hanging out with your loved ones.”
Chandan and Chandni grew up within the store and, for a time, even lived upstairs. As children, they’d be tasked with writing up value tags.
When pressed, Chandan provides that the dynamic was a smidge extra irritating earlier than he married Roop two years in the past, as he lived along with his dad and mom up till then.
“You go to work … after which your loved ones’s there, and also you come residence after work and your loved ones’s there,” he says with fun. “You’ve got dinner collectively, you get up the following morning, you’ve breakfast, and household is there.… That was a very distinctive and particular alternative, you recognize — distinctive within the sense that you just get to spend a heck of a whole lot of time with your loved ones.… That additionally may create some occasions [when we would] butt heads or … have a second of disagreement about tips on how to run the enterprise.”
Now viewers will get a peek into the household dynamic, whether or not it is the children accusing Kuki of holding onto an excessive amount of inventory — like $40 blankets, that are of little worth and add to the mounds of things actually toppling over within the store’s basement — or heated discussions about whether or not they need to develop the enterprise with a second location. (Spoiler alert: a brand new Chandan Trend is ready to land in Brampton, Ont., in February.)
South Asian weddings are a booming enterprise
The demand is there. In Bollywed, Chandan says of South Asian weddings: “It is larger, higher, bolder and households are keen to spend more cash to make it occur.”
Chandan Singh desires to take his household bridal store in a brand new course, if his father will let him.
A 2016 KPMG report revealed that Indians spend about one-fifth of their wealth on a baby’s marriage ceremony. In Canada, in response to the CBC documentary Little India Large Enterprise, the typical Indian marriage ceremony prices about $100,000. Whereas that is perhaps surprising for some, it interprets into about 50 to 100 clients per day for the Singhs. And whereas that is a wholesome quantity, it is about half of what Chandan Trend garnered within the late ’80s and early ’90s throughout Gerrard India Bazaar’s heyday.
It is that shift that made Chandan understand he needed to be part of the household enterprise, regardless of how chaotic it may get. “I used to be going to be a pharmacist, after which somebody informed me that, ‘Hey, you recognize what? Your dad and mom have principally dug up a diamond that took them (at that time) like 20 years to dig. Now it is your job to take that diamond, polish it, reduce it and mildew it into this lovely factor that you would be able to showcase to the world,'” he remembers. ” My perspective on the enterprise actually modified, and it … set the tone of what I needed the following 20 years of the enterprise to appear like.”
Bollywed: A collection practically a decade within the making
A part of that imaginative and prescient included this very tv collection and, with it, a brand new platform to showcase not solely the household enterprise and the rising marriage ceremony trade, but in addition his household’s appeal.
Chandan has been reframing the enterprise as a world model, as orders have been pouring in from in all places from the U.Ok. and Singapore to the Netherlands and Brazil. After pitching Bollywed for seven years, he lastly discovered a companion in Gurjeet Mann, a producer he met at a marriage present in 2014.
Chandan will get emotional on the considered younger South Asians — particularly younger Sikh males — seeing somebody who seems to be like them run a enterprise and primarily have all of it. In contrast to within the suburbs, being a teen in downtown Toronto within the ’90s meant he was the one one at school with a turban and, later, a beard.
“I felt at all times misplaced,” he mentioned. “I do know that there are locations on the market, like Halifax and Saskatchewan and the place there are children that appear like me.… Perhaps they will a brand new college [and] possibly they’re new immigrants and so they do not slot in or they do not appear like everybody else. And in the event that they flip [on a channel like the CBC and they] see somebody on TV that appears like them … [who’s] from Canada — [who’s] born and raised right here — I feel that can give them a way of belonging.”
He added that it is a acquainted story of the brand new immigrant, “coming from one other nation with nothing in your pocket however just a few rupees or {dollars}, and also you simply work from [the] floor up and also you’re in a position to make one thing like this. It is actually particular.”
