Cindy Chau is the founder of The Welcome Market, a popular pop-up, artisanal and vintage market that regularly takes over 938 Queen St. W. Three years after launching that project to create more space for racialized business owners, she has founded another (more permanent) venture with a similar cause: The Welcome Studio.
The 3,000-square-foot space on Dupont Street is an open studio and workspace featuring several small businesses that open to the public Thursday (or in some cases Friday) to Sunday as well as individually by appointment. They include vintage stores Shop Feelings Vintage, Shop King Lis and Batch Vintage, Tooth Gem technician Glitter Gaud, antique shop Vellichor Vintage and multidisciplinary/ floral studio Asunto Studio. Designers Ang Kiriakos, who runs the Me + Art Market, and Kyra Lolkjen also have a workspace at the studio and sell their work through a display on the main floor, and The New Store Vintage moved in recently.
Chau found the space with her friend Teaunna Gray who runs Of Sorts photography studio and Sunday Afternoon Vintage, and was looking to expand her studio space at the time. After realizing they could afford it with their combined resources, the two leased the second floor studio at 1110 Dupont and divided the floor space into their separate businesses. For The Welcome Market, Chau’s intention is to offer affordable rental opportunities, scaled to size, for small businesses that were formerly operating via markets, where they can both work, sell and network with like minded creatives.
The vision dates back to her childhood, watching her parents run their own restaurant in her hometown of Waterloo, observing all that was gratifying and challenging about operating a business. Little did she know she was preparing for her own future endeavor via her love of vintage goods, cutting her teeth thrifting at Value Village and searching for collectors’ items on Facebook Marketplace.
When the pandemic hit she decided it was the right time to start a business, launching the Instagram thrift store Finders Keepers as a side hustle. All around her, she watched her peers start their own passion projects in lockdown and turn them into businesses. That was her “holy sh*t” moment.
“I realized there’s so many people in Toronto that are trying to find spaces to do their own thing,” she says, “I felt like there was a need.”
When lockdown restrictions rose, Chau broke into the market scene, debuting at a small DIY market, then at Hippie Market. Right away she realized that there was a disconnect in the market community between handmade creators and vintage curators, as well as a lack of representation.
“At the time there was only one big vintage market and then artisanal markets, but there wasn’t a market that integrated both, and that also focused on BIPOC businesses,” she explains. “I wanted to be able to go to a market where I could see myself represented, and where I could shop vintage and handmade in the same place; especially the brands that I love.”
With that blueprint in mind, she launched The Welcome Market in 2021 and enlisted the help of her friend Aleks Roxborough who operates Shop Feelings Vintage. The market was immediately popular, growing from seasonal events to running once or twice a month and with a semi-permanent home at Queen and Shaw streets.
The Welcome Studio, which Chau established in May of 2023, is an extension of the market with a more permanent objective of providing affordable space for creatives to grow their business.
At first Chau intended it to function as a shared workspace. “I wanted it to be a studio where everyone knows each other and can support each other but has different specialties, offering different opportunities to collaborate,” she explains. Shop Feelings Vintage became her first permanent vendor, allowing Roxborough to transition her business out of her home. It was the difference of reclaiming her personal space as a place of rest, and being able to create a more curated shopping experience for her clients.
Then when Roxborough started having open hours for clients to shop her collection, it created an opportunity for The Welcome Studio to not only be a workspace, but a retail destination. Soon after Arianna Stalteri and Marcanthony Spano of Batch Vintage joined the space, opening the Batch Vintage Studio in April of this year. Alex Kerr of Vellichor Vintage followed suit, and the ball kept rolling from there. Alisa Elizabeth of Shop King Lis also established her first physical space in the studio, having previously only sold her collection of rare designer vintage online and via markets.
Now with several business owners in the space, Chau considers the group a collective. The market helps pay for the studio rent, so that Chau can offer the most affordable prices to her vendors. A 10 ft-by-10 ft space rents for $750 while an 8 ft-by-8 ft space goes for $600. Comparatively, Chau explains that a 10 ft-by-10 ft stall at The Welcome Market costs $450 for one weekend — but she thinks a lot of people are starting to have market fatigue.
“Especially when it comes to vintage clothing, [vendors] have to hang up all their stock, price everything and tear it down, for one weekend. It’s a lot. If a brand has started to build their own reputation and clientele, then a studio space would make the most sense,” she says. But she knows that even at the prices she offers, most people are tight on cash right now — which is why she also permits vendors to split studio space.
In the future, she’d like to expand the studio into another building and bring more businesses on board.
The Welcome Studio, located at 1110 Dupont St., is open Thursday-Sunday from 12-6 p.m., or by appointment specific to each business. An open house event will take place on Sept. 20 during Geary Art Crawl, with additional businesses popping up in the space.