Arc’teryx is pressing forward on its retail expansion across North America, one of its key markets.
The Amer Sports-owned outdoor brand on Saturday opened the doors to its newest flagship store in Manhattan, located at 580 Broadway in New York City. The two-level, 14,000 sq.-ft. store is Arc’teryx’s largest retail location outside of China and the latest example of how the brand is looking to show up in brick-and-mortar.
“The store itself — the main level — has the best expression of our product presentation in the world,” Arc’teryx chief executive officer Stuart Haselden told FN in an interview. “It showcases our outerwear in a really powerful way and has enough room to really present a very complete assortment.”
Design-wise, the store uses natural textures like wood and stone as well as digital screens with mountain views to recreate the feeling of being out on a mountain ridge line. In addition to product, the store also has the brand’s first in-store cafe, A-Frame Café, designed to look like an alpine hut in the mountains, as well as an immersive theater zone to host brand films and community events. The lower floor of the store is devoted to Rebird, Arc’teryx’s circularity platform. The 1,600 square-foot in-store Rebird service center offers customers services like repairs, technical washing, waterproofing and more. The brand will also sell some of its refurbished product here as well.
“This is a big step in terms of an experiment to see how much we can build into our retail space to support refurbishment,” Haselden said. “We think will be a real draw, and something that we’ll learn a lot from in terms of how we can extend the Rebird strategy into other locations.”
Footwear, a recently deeper focus for the outerwear brand, is located on the upper floor and arranged on a backlit wall.
“We see footwear as the most substantial economic engine of growth inside the company,” Haselden said. “As we look into the future, the investments and the importance of footwear for our business is one of the most exciting parts of our innovation strategy.”
Arc’teryx footwear sales more than doubled year-over-year in Q2. Penetration of the footwear business also grew from six to 10 percent and the brand plans to reach 20 percent penetration over the next few years. The brand’s best selling trail running shoe, the Norvan LD 3, is still its top shoe model, though newer models like the Kragg have been recent hits as well.
By the end of 2024, Haselden expects Arc’teryx to have around 60 stores in North America, split between Canada and the U.S. In the longer term, Haselden sees the potential for the brand’s North American store count to exceed 200 locations in North America as he focuses on adding locations in “epicenters” like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver as well as in mountain towns like Banff, Aspen, Park City, Vail and Tahoe.
“We believe it’s important for Arc’teryx to have a very strong identity as an authentic on-mountain technical performance brand,” Haselden said.
This week, Amer Sports, Inc. raised its guidance for 2024 after posting Q2 sales and earnings results that beat its expectations. Revenues for technical apparel, which includes Arc’teryx and Peak Performance, were up 34 percent year-over-year to $407 million in Q2.
