The fashion industry in Quebec is in mourning. The founder of the chain of stores and the Jacob women’s clothing brand, Joey Basmaji, died recently at the age of 70. At its peak, the company had nearly 200 stores and employed thousands of people across Canada. However, the retailer Boutique Jacob closed its doors in 2014 in the face of fierce competition.
Mr. Basmaji was known for his great discretion. He almost never gave interviews to the media. It is therefore perhaps to honor this discretion and to be able to gather in the privacy that his family waited before announcing his death. The businessman passed away on December 21, but the death notice was only published this week.
A ceremony will be organized in his honor at the Mont-Royal funeral complex, at the foot of the mountain, on February 11.
“Giving confidence to women”
The image of the Jacob brand has certainly been tarnished by its many financial difficulties which generated a veritable media saga ten years ago, but today, the fashion world is full of praise for Mr Basmaji.
“Joey was driven by the desire to instill confidence in women. [Il] has dressed several generations of women and her legacy will forever remain anchored in the history of our industry,” said Chantal Durivage, vice-president of the MAD Collectif agency behind the MAD festival, previously named Festival Mode et Design, on Facebook.
Diane Lessard, a fashion blogger, commented: “A jewel of Quebec fashion of the time is leaving us”. Many other Quebec women still remember the Jacob brand, which offered stylish urban clothing at low prices.
A family business
It was in Sorel, in 1977, that Joey Basmaji and his wife, Odette Bolduc, founded Jacob, whose name is borrowed from his father, Jacob Basmaji, an immigrant of Syrian origin. The latter had founded the first haberdashery in the city, in 1960. Refusing to open stores beyond the Canadian borders, Jacob nevertheless enjoyed resounding success in the country for decades.
“It’s really the arrival of foreign brands of fast fashion which was a blow for Jacob and so many other companies in the early 2010s,” explains Jean-François Daviau, co-founder and president of MAD Collectif. Unable to overcome the competition and restructure its administration accordingly, the company closed shop in 2014.
Only one store, the one in Sorel-Tracy, remained open until 2018. The company also launched an online store last year to continue selling its three once very popular perfumes, as well as some clothing. .
A great capital of sympathy
Mr. Daviau adds that Jacob was “an avant-garde brand, in the sense that it produced quality clothing and that Quebec women liked it very much. It has also always benefited from a great capital of sympathy, among other things because it was a family business. »
At the turn of the 2010s, nearly a third of the products sold by Jacob boutiques were made in Canada. In the company’s most glorious years, “there was great interest in local fashion,” points out Mr. Daviau. He also says he is enthusiastic at the idea of seeing “a certain return” of this trend in recent years.
The brand is also “very involved in the Quebec fashion landscape,” he says. “It’s because companies like his believed in the Fashion and Design festival that we were able to get here today. Jacob has also encouraged and collaborated with many young creators from here”.
Fashion, a difficult market
Jean-François Daviau also recalls that “the fashion sector is very competitive” and that Jacob would probably have had as much trouble doing well today. He points out that some multinational companies can benefit from tax advantages, the weakness of the Canadian dollar compared to other currencies or even lower production costs abroad.
“There was also, at the time Jacob closed, an interest in novelty, for the big American and European chains that were popping up,” he says. For example, Zara arrived in Quebec in 1999, then H&M in 2006, and have remained essential on the market.
This is why today, when the public is “more aware of the ecological consequences of fast fashion “, according to Mr. Daviau, it is all the more important “to support our ecosystem where local companies manufacture products here and make people work here”.