In the late ‘90s, Jason Tuttle noticed a university student who walked into his Victoria, BC, skate shop. Jason asked him about the business textbooks in his hand. The student, Miles Wishlow, was a skateboarder and snowboarder, heavily steeped in hip-hop subculture and art. Miles was taking entrepreneurship classes on the side, with some vague notions of starting a business. After talking to Jason for a while, the two had a “meeting of the minds” and decided to go into business together.
Sharing an interest in sports and music subcultures, they started their store, Complex, offering clothing, music and hardware to skaters, DJs and artists in the local area. With the advent of digital music several years later, the clothing side of the business took off, and the partners found themselves on the “forefront of the urban clothing wave,” says Miles.
Around 2000, they moved out of the original space and “really made a go for it” selling apparel. A few years after that, they felt confident starting a second location in Vancouver’s Gastown. In 2012, the store outgrew the space and The Corner Store arrived at trendy Main Street, where skate and art culture had roots, and retail was booming.
