Erasmus Apparel to close storefront, online store will stay

Erasmus Apparel, the clothing business created by Ndılǫ’s Sarah Erasmus 15 years ago, will shut down its Yellowknife retail store in March.

The online store will remain in place and new clothing lines will be added in the months ahead.

Erasmus said she was moving to “the next chapter,” where she hopes to spend more time designing and creating. She also wants to devote more time to learning her language.

“It’s been an emotional decision, that’s for sure,” she told Cabin Radio (where she is also a broadcaster).

“I think it’s the best thing for us. It doesn’t mean it’s a goodbye and we’re done. It’s just you’re going to see us in a whole new way.

“We are still very much going to be a business in town, and hopefully for another 15 years. I love what I do, who we are and what we’ve become, and that’s not going to change. If anything, this is going to open so many more opportunities for us – for me as an artist. It’s one less thing to worry about, having the store.”

The decision was confirmed in a post on the company’s Facebook page.

Erasmus Apparel began as a business in 2010 and the store, on Yellowknife’s main street, opened shortly afterward.

While the building in which the store emerged wasn’t initially the cleanest or fanciest in the world, Erasmus said, the location “was amazing.”

Over time, the administrative burden of running the store grew, particularly through the challenges of Covid-19 and Yellowknife’s 2023 wildfire-related evacuation.

“As much as I’ve tried to adjust and manage my time better in the past five years,” said Erasmus, “I’m doing 10 things OK where I would love to be doing three things amazingly well.”

She said no longer being tied to a retail store’s opening hours would help to change that.

“It’s scary, because it’s an unknown and people are scared of unknowns. But a good friend of mine told me when we were talking about this: fear is nothing but an unknown excitement.”

Erasmus said she has multiple projects in the works and learning her language, Wıı̀lıı̀deh Yatıı̀, is “one thing I really want to do.”

“I can really tackle that in the freedom that I’ll have, and I can embrace being an artist. When I started, I thought I was not an artist, I was a graphic designer. I’ve grown in the past 15 years in doing this, and some of the stuff I want to create really is art to me,” she said.

Holding her own art exhibition is an eventual goal.

In the meantime, Erasmus Apparel’s physical store will remain open for a little while longer before moving online-only.

There is “not an exact date but probably early to mid-March,” said Erasmus. “And then you’ll be able to find us in other ways.”