‘Our goal is to get famous in the US’: How Aritzia CEO Jennifer Wong plans to conquer the States

On 26 November, Aritzia will open its three-floor New York flagship on the corner of Prince and Broadway in SoHo, in the old Dean & Deluca spot. It’s a return of sorts: the brand once filled the same space with puffer jackets for a Super Puff-dedicated pop-up in December 2020. It’s a culmination of what Artizia’s best known for: good, easy basics — from its tailored (very viral, often duped) Effortless Pant to the sell-out Super Puffs — that are, importantly, priced in the sub to mid-hundreds. This aspirational character of the product, in aesthetic and price, is what made the brand a Gen Z TikTok darling back in 2021. But online hype only translates to new market momentum when consumers can shop in-store after discovering online. This ethos underpins the brand’s US expansion strategy: online buzz and word of mouth is great, but in-person touch is just as key. In the weeks to follow, Aritzia will open yet another New York store (on Fifth Avenue) and a Chicago flagship on Michigan Avenue. Next March, it’ll reopen in Manhattan’s Flatiron District with a new, larger location. So far this year, Aritzia has opened eight boutiques with one relocation, including Jacksonville, Florida; San Diego, California; and Kansas City, Missouri. The brand plans to have opened nine new boutiques, with three relocations, by the end of the calendar year. It’s all part of CEO Jennifer Wong’s plan to make Aritzia “famous” in the United States, she says. “We’re very well known and loved in Canada and we’ve had a few decades to build that awareness,” she says. (Aritzia was founded in Vancouver in 1984.) “Even though we’ve been in the US since 2007, it’s more recently that we’re getting more famous. We want to achieve the same level of success in the US as we have here in Canada.” It’s on a solid path. On 10 October, Aritzia reported its second-quarter fiscal 2025 revenues for the quarter ended 1 September. Revenues were up 15.3 per cent year-on-year to $615.7 million. US revenues were up 23.9 per cent to $345.4 million, comprising 56.1 per cent of net revenue. The US has made up at least 50 per cent of the brand’s revenues since Q1 2023 (reported in July 2022) and has teetered around the 50 to 55 per cent mark since, as overall company revenues have climbed. But the US is a big market to tackle, and awareness in New York doesn’t always translate outside of it. “There’s so much white space for Aritzia and our expansion in the US,” Wong says. “We’re tackling all the major cities where we know our brand and product resonates with the customer. The next step is to fill in the rest of the country.” Stores in new locations will help to build brand awareness and acquire customers, says UBS analyst Mauricio Serna. UBS estimates that Aritzia has approximately 5.6 per cent penetration in the Canadian womenswear market, as of 2022. The US estimate for the same period, in contrast, is 0.5 per cent. Serna says Artizia has significant market share opportunities in US women’s apparel, noting that the US apparel market is roughly 11 times that of Canada’s. The goal is for the US to make up even more of Aritzia’s sales, though Wong won’t give an exact figure. “We expect the mix to continue to shift towards the US, as that is where we are opening the vast majority of boutiques,” she says. As of now, the US is fast coming up on Canada’s heels in boutique count: Canada has 68; the US has 58 — with at least one more to open by the end of 2024. To further propel US growth, Wong needs to convince what the brand calls the “everyday luxury consumer” that Aritzia is the go-to, from workwear to loungewear to partywear. “It’s almost like a mindset and a lifestyle, in terms of what our offering is,” she says. “And I think you’ll find that in every city.” It’s a timely value proposition. Coming off a year when consumers are feeling pressed and looking to save, Aritzia’s “sub-luxury”, as Wong puts it, is a compelling offer. The rising cost of living has priced some 50 million consumers out of the global personal luxury goods market this year. This presents an opportunity for Aritzia to capture market share from consumers who can no longer stretch to luxury, but who still want to spend — albeit less. What’s needed is to get the message across to consumers, Serna says. “The brand is already known in Canada for everyday luxury at an attainable price point,” he says. “However, this strategy has been less understood in the US, particularly given a dupe culture in US retail.” On the ground Aritzia’s US growth plan has always centred on opening stores. Eight to 10 years ago, while ramping up its US strategy, the brand identified a list of high-traffic locations where it wanted to build boutiques. This was tempered with an omnichannel and digital acceleration of the business, to cater to the growing importance of e-commerce. Post-pandemic, the pendulum swung back to having a physical presence. “We experienced some explosive growth coming out of Covid,” Wong says. “There was pent-up demand and a whole new energy. That really accelerated our business in the US and we became more well known than ever. We’ve been really riding that momentum since.” Aritzia’s momentum ride is underscored by its strategic growth plan. It didn’t shift entirely, Wong flags — she credits the brand’s success to its commitment to its original plan. But Aritzia did accelerate its boutique openings. “We were opening five to six stores a year,” Wong says. In 2024, it hit nine. Fiscal 2025 (ending 2 March 2025) is the big push, set to hit 12 to 13 new boutiques. From there, the goal is to open eight to 10 per year through fiscal 2027. Typically, when Aritzia opens in a new city, a good percentage of its customers have heard of the brand, typically from shopping it in other cities, Wong says. The other main set hadn’t shopped with the brand before. In the new Jacksonville location, for instance, 60 per cent of clients during the opening month were new to Aritzia. “Our stores themselves have been our primary marketing vehicle,” she says. “They’re our number one client acquisition tool.” Convincing the consumer As Artizia ventures deeper into the US, will it change its proposition? Not exactly, says Wong. The baseline core offering will remain consistent. But, in terms of localisation, Wong concedes that factors like climate will dictate the volume of Aritzia’s core assortment allocated to a given store. Super Puffs won’t sell in Florida the way they do in Canada or New York. Stores may be Aritzia’s primary marketing vehicle, but they won’t cut it alone, Wong acknowledges. “It’s been [a combination of] our in-store customer service and environments and the product itself. That’s how we became wildly successful in Canada,” she says. “In the US, it’s different. It’s more crowded, there’s more competition. So we have to speak up a little bit more.” This will be key to Aritzia’s growth, UBS’s Serna says. “The US has proven to be a noisier market and Aritzia can’t solely rely on stores to convey its marketing message.” To this end, Aritzia is amping up its marketing efforts. It’s investing more in digital marketing and, relatedly, optimising its paid media spend. Recently, it re-platformed its website to enable a better user experience (the revamped site will enable video, for instance). The brand is also building out its influencer marketing, which it’s been cultivating since 2019 (viral sensation Nara Smith starred in its autumn Sweatfleece campaign). Beyond the States For now, the US is Aritzia’s primary focus. “Our current plan is to get famous in the US and build out our presence in the US market. We’re right in the middle of that now, and executing really, really well.” That said, Wong is paying attention to the tourist traffic opportunity at Artizia’s three latest flagships (SoHo, Fifth Avenue, Michigan Avenue). “There’s a lot of international exposure, there’s an international customer,” she says. “Those are destination locations, and that in and of itself exposes us to an international visitor to the US. It is the beginning of what could be a foray into international [expansion].” This is complemented by digital efforts. In the second quarter of fiscal 2025, Aritzia invested in upgrading its international direct-to-consumer sites, optimising features such as local currency and prepaid duties and taxes in an effort to drive higher conversion. (Currently, international makes up just over 1 per cent of Aritzia’s e-commerce sales. Wong anticipates that this will triple year-on-year with the optimised site — which is enough, for now.) “Right now, we’re focused on the US because we think there’s so much opportunity there,” Wong says. “But certainly, these three flagships are an amazing opportunity to start to introduce everyday luxury and Aritzia to the rest of the world.” Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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