Fact File: Fake Canadian fashion boutiques mislead shoppers

Multiple online retail businesses are advertising themselves as Canadian boutiques on platforms including Facebook. But many of the Facebook pages aren’t based in Canada, and the shops claim Canadian locations that don’t seem to exist. Warnings from customers and police say some sites dupe shoppers into purchasing misleading products.

THE CLAIM

For Canadian customers looking to shop local, small boutiques can be an enticing option.

On Facebook, there’s no shortage of shops advertising themselves as Canadian and posting photos and videos to attract customers to their websites. But evidence shows that some of the supposedly Canadian stores have no obvious ties to the country.

The Canadian Press found multiple pages and active advertisements on Facebook that follow that pattern.

With names like Lara and Kate Boutique, Sophie & Claire Vancouver and Olivia & Grace Toronto, the businesses advertise clothing, shoes and jewelry targeted toward women.

The shops have several similarities. They’re usually named after two women or include the words “daughters” or “sisters.” They typically claim to be multi-generational family businesses or run by a pair of friends or sisters at locations across Canada.

“My great-grandmother started this boutique in Victoria in 1956,” reads a post from “The Fraser Daughters,” a boutique supposedly based in the British Columbia capital.

Most of the pages link back to websites that offer retail products, often at steep discounts.

THE FACTS

The Canadian Press identified at least 21 pages last week claiming to be Canadian boutiques in cities including Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto and Calgary. Of those 21, Meta’s ad library showed on Friday that seven were running active advertisements on Facebook.

The pages’ follower counts ranged from several dozen to around 17,000, and the pages were created between March 2025 and June 2026. The majority were created in the last few months.

Only two of the pages had an administrator based in Canada, with 18 accounts managed from the Netherlands and one jointly from Germany and the Philippines.

The shops also have websites, yet all but one hid their domain registration information. The one exception listed an administrator based in the Netherlands, who did not reply to a message seeking comment. Most of the websites were registered between March and June this year.

Many of the pages linked to websites that claimed to have a brick and mortar location and listed opening hours. But few of the shops listed an address or phone number. A Google search of the shops yielded no evidence of a physical presence in the cities where they claimed to be based.

The addresses that did appear contained inconsistencies. The “Ivy Charlotte” boutique, for example, claimed to be located at the non-existent Toronto address of 118 Queen St. W. A call to the shop’s listed phone number, with a B.C. area code, prompted an error message that the call could not be completed.

The “Ottawa Grace” shop listed its location as the CF Rideau Centre shopping mall, but the store does not appear in the mall’s directory.

Most of the shops used images on their websites that appear to be AI-generated because of their glossy, unnatural look. Descriptions are vague and include language that could point to artificial intelligence, such as the frequent use of negative parallelisms.

“Not because we were difficult. Because the options just weren’t there … Not because something went wrong. Because something went very right,” reads a typical description from “Sophia & Claire Vancouver.”

The logo for The Fraser Daughters is identical to the logo for a similar shop, The Rowan Daughters, which claims to be based in North Carolina and seems to have no connection to the supposed Victoria store.

As of Tuesday, The Fraser Daughters website redirected to another boutique, “Rosie and Pearl,” which claimed to be based in the Australian state of Queensland. But the site’s terms of service page still referred to Canada Post, the Canadian dollar and the “the laws of British Columbia.”

Other shops, including “The Harrington Sisters Ottawa” and “The Bennett Sisters Vancouver” now redirect to “Luvora Wellington.”

Most of the stores seem to use the Shopify platform, which offers some chargeback protection from scam purchases.

While they seem to offer real products, some shoppers say the items they received were not as advertised.

“I just purchased ‘quilted’ bag from a site called Lara & Kate boutique. It sounded really lovely and legit. It came, shipped from China, cheaply made with no labels inside. I tried a return and only got 30 per cent of my purchase price,” one shopper said on Facebook about a boutique identified by The Canadian Press as one of the misleading storefronts.

None of the supposedly Canadian-based shops responded to requests for comment made last week.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which represents 103,000 small businesses across Canada, said it was not aware of the sites posing as Canadian stores.

Police in Victoria issued a warning last August about purported local boutiques with fake websites, saying many of the products promised were never delivered. It warned shoppers to look for red flags such as recently created domains, a lack of a physical address and deals that seem too good to be true.

“These scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated and can be very convincing,” acting Sgt. Vlad Filatov said at the time.

“Scammers prey on people’s desire to support local businesses and often create a sense of urgency to pressure victims into making quick decisions.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 14, 2026.

Marissa Birnie, The Canadian Press