A West Kelowna business owner is frustrated after waking up Saturday morning to find his clothing store had been broken into for the third time in less than a year.
Stu Foord opened Elevate Hype + Sport on West Kelowna’s Ross Road in July, and he’s now working to once again clean up the mess left by thieves for the third time.
“Around 4 am this morning, I get a call that the building has been broken into,” Foord told Castanet.
“So I go down there and the whole front window is smashed in. They threw a rock to get in … and they reached in and grabbed a few shirts. And then just took off.”
“It’s a ton of damage, and this just happened to us [as well].”
Castanet reported on the bizarre break-in at Elevate back in September when thieves broke through the ceiling of the store and made off with some clothing. But in February, Foord says Elevate was targeted again, when thieves smashed the front window and kicked in a security bar, making off with clothes again.
And now, Foord’s store has been the target of yet another theft, after thieves smashed into the store’s window, reached through the security bars and grabbed a handful of shirts.
With the damage and lost merchandise over the past three break-ins, Foord estimates he’s out about $30,000.
“It’s extremely discouraging,” Foord said. “Just the time and effort to get everything back and then the financial burden of having to pay for the windows that get broken. You can only go to insurance so many times.
“We’re trying to do all the right things, with thin margins and long hours, and then something like this happens.”
The thefts are particularly frustrating as they’ve caused so much costly damage, and the thieves aren’t even making off with much.
“This time around it was just a few shirts, but it was a full double window pane that has a window wrap on it to show what brands we have,” Foord says. “So that’s at least a full day’s work just to put on a nice clean window, and then the work to seal the window back up.”
Foord has lived in West Kelowna for seven years, and after running the clothing store for just eight months, he’s already considering a change in location.
“When you have something like this it makes us think that we might have to move locations, and we don’t want to think like that,” he said.
“We’re trying to be a staple in the community and, and the break-ins are just non-stop.”
Photo: Stu Foord
The aftermath of an early-morning break-in at West Kelowna’s Elevate Hype + Sport.
