My City Life in Saint John is expanding yet again, into Nova Scotia. With this being their first store outside of Saint John, Michael Melvin, owner and co-founder of My City Life, says that it is just the first step in his business’ long-term plan.
In the upcoming weeks, My City Life will be opening its fourth location in Saint John at the Parkway Mall. Following this though, Melvin says that he plans to go straight into opening his next location in Bedford, Nova Scotia.
RELATED: Furniture Store Expands to Saint John’s Parkway Mall
Melvin says that My City Life is a consignment store that works to help and give back to its community.
“We’re giving people a chance to sell their items through us so that they can get, in my opinion, a much better price than they would if they were selling it themselves on Marketplace or Kijiji or other sources like that,” Melvin tells Huddle.
Along with this, he also says that My City Life has a program where they will go and pick up your item from you. After having a large number of consigners who were senior citizens without anyone around to help them, he says that he realized that this was something that the community was in need of.
RELATED: My City Life Moving To Brunswick Square
“We can go in there with our trucks, with our staff, we pick things up from people, we bring them to our shop, we sell it for them, and then they either get an e-transfer or cheque,” says Melvin. “It just makes it really easy for everybody.”
Melvin says that he aims to have a My City Life in every major hub in the Maritimes by 2028, which averages to opening about two stores per year. Then, within ten years, he wants to have expanded outside of the Atlantic provinces and be completely across the country within 20 years.
With the desire to help communities across the country, Melvin says that My City Life is “Canada’s consignment store”.
RELATED: My City Life Opens Second Location In Saint John
Each location is unique, carrying one-of-a-kind products. Melvin says although there may be others of a product in existence, he will only usually carry one of them to make sure people are getting something unique and seeing different things every time they visit.
Their newest Saint John location has plans to be open by mid-July. Following this, Melvin says that they will go to Bedford in Nova Scotia to work on opening their next store. This would mean that they will have opened five locations in less than four years since first opening
“Everyone said that this was never going to work when I had [my first] store, and here we are three and a half years later and I’m at store number five,” says Melvin.
Ryley Roach is an intern with Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
