Late last year, Marlon Pather, owner of a midtown meat shop called The Butchers, embarked on an ambitious plan to sell thousands of online coupons. Like other merchants seized by the daily deal mania of websites such as Groupon, he thought that his deep discounting would bring in new shoppers. It did. He quickly became Canada’s biggest coupon merchant, selling 22,000 coupons, worth millions of dollars, in a few months. Pather thought the new customers would redeem the value of their coupons gradually, but they cashed in all at once. By spring, he realized that his loss leader strategy had turned into a straight loss. Customers were lined up around the block, and the fridge was constantly running out of stock. The coupon clients came for the discount—$400 worth of steaks and burgers for just $100—but every time the cash register rang, Pather lost money. And his established clients, who until then had been willing to pay full price, were having trouble even getting into the store.
Black is always in style, but espresso is the colour for handbags this fall (that means there’s a brown undertone, like hair with lowlights). We know it isn’t fall yet (we’ve been outside), but during our endless hours of shopping, it has become clear that fall and pre-fall items are slowly creeping into stores, like the worst kind of autumnal tease (oh, and since we’re still sweating the summer, there’s a good chance a 50 to 70 per cent off summer sale is within throwing distance).
American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale) once 
Henry Holland is known for dressing London’s 
Designer Roland Kreiter wants us to believe that his MySqueeze reamer is the tool people should use when life gives them lemons. We certainly would, and not just to make lemonade. The item, put out by Italian “design factory” Alessi, doubles as an object d’art (check out the video 
Doctors recommend sodium-free diets, but these Hatchet S and P shakers we found at Made warrant a second opinion. There is no veneer here, just good Canadian maple and some smart eco-design. The creation process is simple: Sheridan Furniture Studio students Tomas Rojcik, Mark Finnigan and Joseph Bauman throw hatchets (see what they did there?) into wood to create a split, and voila. The trio wanted to create modern objects that produced limited material and energy waste. We’re not sure the novel table toppers will de-thrown our mother’s silver, but for day-to-day use, the Hatchets will do more than 
