The Vancouver Fashion Truck survived COVID but it couldn't survive the tough year that was 2022, according to founder Megan Currie.
In a video posted to Instagram last week, Currie announced that she had made the difficult decision to close the Vancouver Fashion Truck, her roving women's boutique and e-commerce store based in Metro Vancouver.
The truck acted as a permanent pop-up in the Lower Mainland, appearing at markets or available for hire. During the pandemic, like many other businesses, the truck was forced to take a two-year hiatus, but Currie says that the online store and shop-able warehouse in Burnaby kept them afloat.
In 2022, Currie welcomed a son and online orders started to decline, forcing her to get the Fashion Truck back on the road and balance events with new motherhood.
"The combination of having a baby and having to go back to truck events was challenging," she tells her followers in the Instagram video. "2022 has felt hard."
Currie says that from 2017 to 2021 running the business felt easy and that her husband has to constantly remind her that it was actually a lot of work.
"When I think back there were lots of hurdles and ups and downs," she says, adding that until this past year, she didn't notice them.
"I think I've lost my passion," she explains. "It feels different—it feels like a lot of work."
Since having her baby, Currie says she has lost 90 per cent of the time she used to dedicate to Vancouver Fashion Truck. She originally planned to pivot in order to find a way to keep the business going but says, "I didn't have any more time or energy to put into it."
"I don't want to miss out on [my son's] toddler years trying to change Vancouver Fashion Truck," she adds.
Currie admits she never started Vancouver Fashion Truck with the intention to do it forever and says that since deciding to close she feels lighter, unchained, and there's less pressure.
She also shares that she chose the truck business model because she developed a fear of driving in her 20s. The 24-foot box truck was a way to dive headfirst into what she feared most. "I knew if I didn't, my life was going to become so much smaller every day if I just gave into my fears," she says.
The decision to close is much like the decision to open, diving into her fears and the unknown.
"I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart," says Currie, tearing up at the end of her video. "I am most sad about losing you all, you are all so amazing"
People can shop her remaining inventory on the Vancouver Fashion Truck website and Currie encourages people to keep following what she does next because "there will be something."
