How Arc’teryx’s bricks business is accelerating its already rapid growth

The last time Inside Retail spoke to Arc’teryx’s local retail operations manager, Byron Dawson, he spoke to how customer demand was outstripping its supply many times over.

“Do I feel we’ve satisfied demand in Australia and New Zealand? Certainly not,” Dawson told Inside Retail.

“I think there’s a lot of demand, both in Melbourne, Sydney and the rest of the country that is not currently being satisfied,” he added.

Arc’teryx sees bricks-and-mortar not only as the tool that will help satisfy its booming customer demand but also as the accelerator to its next phase of growth.

Now with five locations in its ANZ fleet, Arc’teryx is able to serve its guests with community activations, its rebirth program and its performance-driven product.

House of bricks

Despite its global virality, Arc’teryx is investing heavily in its bricks-and-mortar stores to grow its outdoor sportswear business.

“There’s a little bit of organic evolution in this, but we are largely a bricks-first business, and where we are seeing almost all of our growth and acceleration is actually in our bricks business,” explained Dawson.

“We are a premium product, we are at a premium price point and what we’re finding is, as we open retail in cities, the customers of those cities would much rather shop in a physical environment rather than a digital environment,” he added.

Unlike the majority of retailers, according to Dawson, attracting people in-store is not a challenge for Arc’teryx.  

“People are looking at the product online, researching, comparing within our brand, we’re looking at our competitors – but what we’re finding is more and more of our guests are choosing to shop in-store,” he elaborated.

Arc’teryx’s ANZ stores are on par with the North American business but the Australian rental market is not without challenges. 

“If I compare us against our Canada and our US stores, real estate here is about double [the cost] per metre,” Dawson shared.

“So the one thing we’ve done here is [make] our store formats a little bit more compact than we would ideally prefer, but that’s a function of expensive real estate.”

At its core 

While Arc’teryx certainly caters to fashion’s current obsession with wearing outdoor recreation gear as street style, it won’t bend its core mission in favour of passing trends.

“Look, gorp-core will come and go – we know that we make timeless, long-term products, and whether somebody is wearing our Gore-Tex shells to walk to work, or they’re doing a hike in the mountains,” shared Dawson.

“We are trying to make a timeless, long-term product, and very much build a brand around that, rather than chasing the here and now,” he added.

There is a subset of consumers who are buying into the brand for more lifestyle purposes but Arc’teryx is tripling down on its roots.  

“We are very much rooted in being an outdoor brand, and therefore all of our communications, our community activities and everything very much lean into that,” Dawson stated.

“You’ll find all of our branding, all of our marketing, is always people doing cool stuff outside.”

This focus on outdoor activities extends to its recruitment process – Arc’teryx store leaders are both efficient in retail and have an outdoor hobby.

“As [store managers] recruit their teams, they lean very heavily into indexing outdoor people in their teams, rather than a traditional salesperson. Their background, their sporting background, actually plays quite a large role in the recruitment process,” said Dawson.

But the focused marketing campaigns and on-brand recruiting would be nothing without Arc’teryx’s technical product. 

“We could be a t-shirt and hoodie brand, and to be honest, probably make a lot of money, but every season, we lean harder into more core and more technical products,” Dawson stated. 

Arc’teryx doesn’t have a sub-range that caters to general lifestyle products, it is focused on developing garments for outdoor recreation that deliver quality and performance.

Meet Arc’teryx Rebird

The prerogative of Arc’teryx’s Rebird program is to “waste less, by design”. It is divided into three initiatives; re-care, re-gear and re-cut.

“We locally have made a choice to lean into it really hard. We’re strongly of the view that the transaction doesn’t end at the register – we’re there for the months and years to follow after purchase,” said Dawson.

Arc’teryx’s Melbourne Emporium location is equipped with an in-store repair bar that supports the re-care component of its Rebird program. 

“The interest and the demand in what we’ve done with the Emporium store having the in-store repair bar has been much greater than expected, which has been really good to see,” Dawson shared.

Consumers can take in their Arc’teryx products that have experienced the inevitable wear and tear that comes from an active lifestyle in a product designed to be worn on many outdoor adventures.

“Come November, there’s actually going to be a quite large acceleration from the brand on how we service our guests after purchase,” concluded Dawson.

“It’s going to be really exciting – can’t speak to it just yet, but there’s a big acceleration coming in Q4 of this year.”

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