Aritzia boldly faces the retail cliff edge
Right off that cliff.
That’s one way of looking at the brave, or possibly foolhardy, leap being taken by Aritzia Inc., the Canadian fashion retailer that in the course of a mere decade has created such recognizable lines as Tna (“street-inspired collections for elevated, casual dressing”) and Wilfred (“effortless style for the feminine romantic.”)
In filing a preliminary prospectus, the born-in-Vancouver chain is placing a huge bet that female millennials in Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, Denver and such — target markets for the company — will find some branded distinction in a flooded retail landscape. We know those targeted women have the dough — the company cites United Nations research that estimates the global millennial population at two billion, with the expectation that this group will become “the new dominant source of accumulated wealth and consumer spending.” This is not news. The Aritzia offering, the company hopes, will stand out from the retail pack precisely because of its exclusive inhouse brands, which account for 90 per cent of the company’s revenues, married with an aggressive e-commerce push, including a plan to start shipping to international markets this autumn.
This is audacious. The company’s financial results, now on public display, show impressive growth, with net revenue for the 2016 fiscal year reaching $542 million, compared with $69 million in 2005. What was a single-store outfit has grown to a chain of 75, the majority here in Canada. It’s a compelling story.
What’s eye-popping is the company’s aim to reach between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion in net revenue in a mere five years — a doubling, in other words, coinciding with the opening of a “minimum” of 25 to 30 new stores.
Well, Aritzia has made some interesting timing decisions before. In 2007, the company pushed into the U.S. (Seattle and Santa Clara, Calif.) as that country was settling in for a recessionary luge ride.
The prospectus does not break out store-by-store performance, so we can’t know precisely to what degree those stores struggled in the early going. But let’s assume that CEO Brian Hill knows what against-the-odds retail feels like.
Certainly the Hill family knows retail: Aritzia was born as a boutique within the family’s Hills of Kerrisdale shop in Vancouver, which was started by Brian Hill’s father, before launching on its own in 1984. The newly created Aritzia promised “beautiful clothes in aspirational spaces with exceptional service.”
In 1999, the company entered the Toronto market, targeting a niche that it defines as somewhere between fast fashion and affordable luxury through the vertical manufacture of their own lines. As an example, the consumer can look today to Aritzia’s offerings of leggings and capes and slouchy cardigans that graze the knee and its line of vegan leather wear, from the skin-tight Daria pant to the Spurlock skirt. The marketing pitch: “Looks as good as the real thing. Feels even better.”
The turning point for the company arrived in 2005, when the private equity firm Berkshire Partners of Boston purchased a majority stake for an undisclosed sum. Berkshire managing director Kevin Callaghan, formally of Lehman Brothers, has been on the Aritzia board since as the chain has grown its retail presence in the U.S. to 18 stores. In a 2009 interview with the Business of Fashion, Brian Hill said of Berkshire: “We really see eye to eye. They let us run the business and we turn to them when we need their expertise and support. It works really well.”
Aritzia’s public offering is very Canadian, comprised as it is of subordinate shares. The Hill Group and Berkshire will control the company through multiple voting shares, with each superior share carrying 10 votes. The Hill family has stated its intention to stay in for the long haul.
The degree to which the offering will appeal to investors is, of course, not yet known. Initial public offerings are not immune to failure, as we know. Should Aritzia be successful in selling investors on a dualclass share structure and on the company’s aggressive growth plan, it will be backed by the belief that for the first time in a long while, a Canadian company has what it takes to capture that ever-fickle American shopper. Either that — or it’s right off that cliff. jenwells@thestar.ca