Andrew Lutfy

Lutfy did not open the first Garage. That store opened in 1975 in Place Versailles, a shopping centre in east-end Montreal, and Lutfy arrived in 1982, aged 18, as a part-time stock clerk. He rose into management, took a minority stake within a few years in exchange for his work, and by the McCord Museum's account bought the store from his father-in-law. In the mid-1980s he added a second banner, Dynamite, for an older customer who had a job to dress for, which left Garage to the teenager. That split, two customers sharing one studio and one supply chain, is the structure the company still runs on four decades later. He became sole owner in 2003, and took the banners across Canada and, from the late 2000s, into the United States.

His reputation as an operator rests on two things. The first is the engine: an in-house design team producing around 1,800 styles a year, a buying model that commits late and in small quantities, and inventory kept at about 45 days of sales, which is why a mall chain earns a gross margin near 64%. The second is how he handled 2020. With sales down about half and roughly C$357M of liabilities, he put the company into creditor protection in September, called the pandemic 'a corporate tsunami', used the process to rewrite leases and close weak stores, and kept the American business rather than retreat. Five years later the company had no bank debt and its best results in its history. In 2019 he had set up a structured board and an employee share plan, and the 2024 IPO made about 6,000 employees shareholders.

The contested parts belong in the record. Lutfy controls the company: after the IPO his holding company kept about 92.6M of roughly 110M shares, including every multiple-voting share, so minority investors own the economics with very little say. He is also a property developer. Carbonleo, which he founded in 2012, built Quartier DIX30 and Royalmount, the Montreal mall where one of Dynamite's new-format stores opened, and a company whose controlling shareholder is also a landlord has related-party questions to answer, even when every answer is disclosed. Finally, the IPO raised nothing for the company. It was a C$300M sale of his own shares at C$21, which is a perfectly legitimate thing for an owner of forty years to do, and also a reminder of whose interests the timing of a listing serves first.