Vuori Opens East Coast Flagship in SoHo
NEW YORK — Joe Kudla has wanted to open a store in New York City for years — and that dream has finally become a reality.
The founder and chief executive officer of Vuori, a Southern California-based active and lifestyle brand, has opened its largest retail store at 106 Spring Street — a 5,000-square-foot East Coast flagship on the corner of Mercer Street.
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This is the brand’s 25th store and one of several it will open before the end of the year. A unit on Rush Street in Chicago, Illinois, is next, followed by NorthPark in Dallas, Texas; Las Vegas, Nevada, and Scottsdale, Arizona. The plan, Kudla said, is to open another 70 stores over the next five years, to bring the brand’s total to around 100.
The retail rollout is just the latest illustration of Vuori’s skyrocketing growth. Kudla, an active yogi and surfer, created the brand in 2015 to fill a void he saw in the men’s activewear market for workout shorts that could take a guy from the gym to lunch. He raised $300,000 from friends and family and created moisture-wicking, quick-drying shorts with a distinctly coastal California aesthetic. Since then, the brand has expanded into a large assortment of other categories, including womenswear, and thanks to some deep-pocketed investors — notably SoftBank Vision 2 and Norwest Venture Partners — it now has a valuation of $4 billion.
“It’s never been the financial outcome that motivates this company,” Kudla said as he visited the SoHo store for the first time this week. “We want to inspire a happy, healthy outlook on life and bring that message to new markets.”
Surveying the store that had a soft opening over the weekend, Kudla said: “We very much believe in brick-and-mortar. In the first three days this store has been open, we’ve seen an incredible response. The community is excited that we’re here. All our stores are embedded in the communities in which they operate. And we believe there’s no better way to build a brand.”
That strategy that the company honed in other locations where it holds events, such as local art shows and yoga classes, will also be executed in New York. To introduce the store to the city, Vuori hosted SoulCycle takeovers this week and there will be similar activations in the future. During the pandemic, the brand created the ACTV Club, a program of free workouts on its Instagram page, to motivate customers to keep moving. Now, those workouts are being brought to life in stores on the West Coast and may soon be added to the New York flagship as well.
But for now, the focus is on establishing the store itself.
The SoHo unit, which is located in the neighborhood’s historic cast iron district, retained some of the original architecture, such as floor-to-ceiling columns, but it also strives to bring a taste of its hometown of Encinitas, California, to New York City with custom-designed fixtures handcrafted from natural materials, a skylight ceiling installation that brings a sense of brightness to the space, a striking 40-foot hallway of lit arches leading to the fitting room area, and a Rise and Shine Sun behind the cash registers.
The store also features a custom art installation of back-lit mountains — Vuori is a Finnish word that means mountain — museum tables to display brand books and marketing materials, and walls with sayings such as: “We draw inspiration from an active coastal California lifestyle,” and “Run. Surf. Hike. Train. Chill.”
“Our goal is to bring the natural environment of Southern California to New York,” Kudla said. “We’d been looking at New York for more than two years — pre-pandemic — but we wanted to wait until the brand had the right level of awareness on the East Coast. Today, New York City is our number-two market online behind L.A. We have customers here, so it was just about finding the right location.”
The rent is not cheap and negotiating with the landlord took a while, but Kudla believes New York is “the pinnacle of retail in the world,” so securing such a prominent location in the popular neighborhood was key to his decision to open here. “SoHo has long been one of New York’s most desirable shopping hubs, as it’s the perfect mix of being a place where people live and work, but also where they come to shop, discover new brands and have fun. We look forward to serving new and existing customers and bringing locals together in ways that celebrate and inspire a healthy, happy life.”
The store offers the widest assortment of any unit, Kudla said, with fitness-related product on one side and lifestyle offerings on the other. There are product callouts in front of some of the bestsellers, such as the Kore short, and the men’s and women’s collections are merchandised together instead of separately. And some of the brand’s newest additions, such as outerwear and accessories, are also given priority in the store. Women’s, which the company launched in 2018, now accounts for 50 percent of sales, Kudla said.
“Our business was founded on fitness and bringing a new perspective to performance apparel,” he said. And although the Kore short with its athletic fit that falls just above the knee and includes a breathable, boxer-brief lining, remains the top seller, performance loungewear and outerwear are also doing well out of the box in New York. “And the customer is not hesitating on price,” he said. Other top sellers for the brand include the men’s commuter collection, which includes pants with a traditional silhouette created from performance fabrics that can be worn to work or to travel.
And although the store has only been open a few days — the grand opening event is Thursday night — it has already become Vuori’s number-one location, Kudla said. “We still have a lot to learn, but we’re optimistic.”
Despite the focus on physical retail, Vuori still has a robust wholesale business that accounts for around 28 percent of total sales, Kudla said. But it’s the online store that still represents the lion’s share of the business. “Our retail is still relatively small,” he said. “The majority of our sales are still done on our website.”
But that may change. In late September, Vuori opened its first store in London in Covent Gardens as a way to kickstart its business in Europe. The store is small, about 1,000 square feet, but has served as an introduction to the community and is doing well. “We’re really encouraged by the response,” he said. “It’s exceeding plan.”
In addition to the London store, Vuori in March also launched online and through wholesale channels in seven countries: the U.K., France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Australia and Canada. The expansion includes local retailers, including Selfridges, Harrods, Equinox in the U.K., and Breuninger in Germany. And at the end of September, it added China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Middle East and Mexico to its global rollout.
Kudla said going forward, the plan is to continue to expand its reach in Western Europe by adding more stores in London and elsewhere, and China is also in his sights. “We just launched on Tmall and we will open our first brick-and-mortar store there within two years,” he said.
Kudla believes the future is bright for Vuori, both in the U.S. and beyond. “In spite of the inflationary environment and the potentially looming recession, we remain cautiously optimistic.”
So with such an ambitious expansion strategy, is a public offering in the brand’s future? “It’s hard to say,” Kudla responded. “Right now, we’re now focused on creating building blocks for the future.”
