The construction hoarding at 55 Bloor Street West already does most of the talking.
A woman in a long wool coat is captured mid-stride across the black-and-white backdrop, RUDSAK printed above her in block letters, OPENING FALL 2026 beneath it. Beside the door, a QR code invites the industry professionals working in the area to apply for a job there, a small, practical detail that says the buildout is further along than a placeholder sign would suggest.
Behind that hoarding is the storefront Van Cleef & Arpels vacated inside the Maison Birks flagship at the Manulife Centre, right beside Swarovski. The jeweller didn’t leave the street, it moved a few doors down into its own freestanding boutique at 100 Bloor, leaving the Birks space available. RUDSAK is taking it over, and the brand is targeting a fourth-quarter opening, though the exact date will shift with construction.
It’s one of the first stores to open since Armen Momejian became Chief Operating Officer in January, arriving after nearly a decade at ALDO Group, most recently running the company’s AI initiatives.
Momejian said the location was a natural fit for RUDSAK, offering the right setting for the brand despite its typically larger retail footprint.
“Bloor Street is one of the most expensive stretches of real estate in Canada,” he said. “The location, the proximity, the co-tenancy and the street were extremely critical for us.”
The boutique spans roughly 1,100 square feet, offering a more intimate showroom style setting than RUDSAK’s typically larger locations.
“The square footage made sense for us” Momejian said. “It’s a little smaller than what we’d typically take, but it gives the space a real boutique feel. We wanted this to be a very high-end boutique experience, showing our most prominent styles.”
This isn’t the first time RUDSAK has intentionally embraced a more intimate retail format. Its Royalmount store, which opened in Montreal in 2024, was the brand’s first location under 2,000 square feet. Bloor Street continues that strategic shift to welcome clients into a curated experience.
That instinct for tighter spaces runs straight into how the store itself came together. Momejian brought his technology background directly into the build.
“We used AI to envision and design this store itself,” he said. “We scanned the floor plans that were available, and our store design team used generative AI tools to build the entire design, from the lighting to the racks to the podiums and their materials, right down to the mannequins.”
A smaller footprint leaves no room for the traditional retail playbook, so RUDSAK is leaning on the same tools to decide what actually goes on the floor.
“We don’t have the luxury of storing as much stock in the back room, so we have to be intentional,” he said. “We use AI to predict demand and merchandise the store with the right items. As people make purchases, the AI learns which styles are performing best in this location, and if we didn’t forecast something correctly, we can adjust for replenishment or for the next season.”
By connecting its storefront and POS within one ecosystem, RUDSAK can put AI to work across the business, supporting both smarter operations and a more seamless customer experience.
“Bridging online and offline is top of mind for us, especially being able to identify our consumers in-store,” he said. “Because our storefront and our POS are both on Shopify, our data is unified, so we get a full view of our consumers. We fulfill about 30% of our goods from our store network and 70% through our distribution center.”
Momejian doesn’t think of the Bloor Street project as a traditional store, per say.
“I don’t even want to call them stores anymore. I want to call them boutiques, because that’s what they are,” he said. “We’re seeing a real comeback for brick and mortar. People still want to touch the material and have that experience, especially when they’re about to invest in a garment.” Stores also become a discovery point for new customers.
RUDSAK’s tagline, “crafted for those who wear it differently,” is meant literally, he said.
“That’s the rebellious spirit we’re going for. You can be whoever you want to be,” he said. “We want to connect with people who share that spirit and make sure every person we reach has the best experience possible.”
Outside Toronto, that instinct shows up as a store list rather than a slogan: Vaughan Mills, Ottawa’s CF Rideau Centre, Mont Tremblant, and RUDSAK’s newest Canadian flagship at Montreal’s Royalmount.
Evik Asatoorian built the brand out of a single leather jacket in Montreal’s garment district in 1994. Three decades later, RUDSAK markets itself as “performance luxury,” pairing leather craftsmanship with technical outerwear rated by temperature, from minus 5 degrees Celsius down to minus 30. Its store count tells its own story of contraction and strategic rebuild: 35 locations across Canada in 2018, down to 22 by late 2023 as the brand pulled back through the pandemic, now settled at 19 across Canada and the U.S., alongside premium wholesale placement at Revolve, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s.
The Outerwear Brand of the Year win at the 2023 Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards landed in the middle of that rebuild.
“I’ve been designing for over 30 years and, amazingly, still feel that creative rush stemming from the creation of every new collection,” Asatoorian has said of the brand he still leads as creative director. “I truly relish the creative process every season, striving to inject fresh seasonal twists to the fashion we’re creating while upholding that edgy rebel spirit that sets us apart.”
That same year, RUDSAK opened its first U.S. locations in New Jersey and New York. It’s now building on that push with a second New Jersey location, this one inside the American Dream Mall.
“You have a ski hill, you have a water slide inside. It’s a very unique piece of real estate,” Momejian said.
Ski and apres-ski is becoming a bigger part of the brand more broadly, and he said there’s room to grow it further.
“We have a very strong ski category. We’re in Mont Tremblant, but we’d like to be on the West Coast, like Whistler and Aspen” he said. “In the U.S. we see expansion into ski markets, but also warmer ones, like Florida or California, where there’s a lot of tourism.”
RUDSAK’s ambitions run well past this one address.
It already sells through a master distributor across seven European countries, with Alps pop-ups landing this year and Asia is next: Momejian leaves for a two-week trip to China shortly after this interview, with Japan and Korea also on the table.
“We have ambitions to expand into those territories,” he said.
Momejian said the next frontier for RUDSAK is wherever the customer already is.
“We want to be where the consumer is,” he said. “We’re testing new channels for sales, we want to serve them the best way possible, wherever that is.”
A date for the Bloor Street opening, along with a planned launch event, has not yet been announced. 6ixRetail will have more on the store closer to its debut.
Dustin Fuhs is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 6ix Retail, Toronto’s premier source for retail and hospitality industry news. As the former Editor-in-Chief of Retail Insider, Canada’s most-read retail trade publication, Dustin brings over two decades of expertise spanning retail, marketing, entertainment and hospitality sectors. His experience includes roles with industry giants such as The Walt Disney Company, The Hockey Hall of Fame, The Canadian Opera Company, Starbucks Canada and Blockbuster.
Recognized as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Dustin delivers insider perspectives on Toronto’s evolving retail landscape, from emerging brands to established players reshaping the city’s commercial districts.