Indigo Chapters: Sherway Gardens

This past weekend, I convinced (read: tricked) Sarah into checking out the new Indigo Chapters store at a mall here in Toronto. I’d heard about the opening of this new location back in May (there was a party and everything), and I’d been meaning to stop by for quite some time. I figured my birthday weekend was as good a time as ever. I was expecting the store to be nice.

I wasn’t expecting it to be this nice. I don’t exaggerate when I say the following.

This. Store. Is. Beautiful.

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I apologize ahead of time, for this post will mostly consist of photos. It’s been a long week and words aren’t coming to me as easily as usual. That being said, I feel that these photos speak for themselves. I cannot stress enough how much I loved this new Indigo location.

The mall entrance to the store is huge, with very tall ceilings that allow for beautiful floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Everything in the store is bright, and the walls and fixtures are all white, allowing the books to stand out. Books are the main attraction, after all! Like in other Chapters stores, the books are sorted by topic and genre. However, on top of that, the merchandise is also organized into those sections.

The Kitchen section for instance is an experience (and, naturally, the one I didn’t take a photo of). Their picnic merchandise for instance is all located with the picnic type food books. There was a section dedicated to tea and nestled right near there were mugs, tea towels and, you guessed it, books on tea and other drinks. Their fashion department is an ode to all the designers who are featured on the books and all the wearable merchandise (such as scarves, jewellery, etc) if also placed there. Though some Indigo stores have tried this sort of immersive merchandising, I’ve never seen it on this level.

I also need to mention one of my favourite sections. CANDLES! There is a huge section dedicated just to candles. (Why fire and paper seems to be such a popular combination, I will never be able to tell you… but it works).

There are two floors and the books that I am most excited about (YALitFTW!) are located on the second floor. Also located on the second floor is this beautiful blue piano. Sarah and I took the opportunity to play a jingle or two, and were very promptly shown up by a 7-year-old. Lesson learned. No more trying to be fancy. And yes, Sarah and I were wearing the same cardigan that day. Dream Team strikes again!

Now I know sometimes I tend to go on and on about #TeamCanada, but that’s only because I think that we really don’t have enough coverage in the literary world. For that reason, I am really loving the #ReadTheNorth campaign, which mirrors the #WeTheNorth campaign that the Toronto Raptors started last summer. It is trying to encourage Canadians to encourage Canadian authors. In this store, they have a wall dedicated to this, as well as other little touches of Canadian-ness throughout (These beautiful paddles for instance, which you can actually buy.)

I feel like Indigo is making a good move by really pushing their lifestyle-type marketing as they have in this location. As much as it kills me to say it (and it really does) physical print is not as popular as it used to be in our current digital age. I would never go as far as to say that print is dead (I think bookstagram proved that this isn’t true), I know that it is harder to get everyday people to buy physical books. Indigo has done a good job of keeping up with the times and pushing forward, trying to keep afloat by offering an experience. I love having a physical copy of my books, but that’s because I’m a bookworm. People who aren’t will still love all the other offerings at this location (+, as always, easy to use catalogue stands where you can order e-books and books on the spot).

All in all, long story short, TL;DR: We approve, and will be back to this location as soon as humanly possible.

Note: There are also a lot of really cool events there. Emily Giffin is there right now and I’m wondering why I’m not…

So tell me: what are your favourite bookstores and why?