Activewear brand set to rack up more sales
YOU just have to look at the school run or your local cafe to see that there is no longer any distinction between activewear and casual wear – and Aje is banking on it.
This shift underpins the Sydney brand’s recently launched Aje.Athletica line – and the aggressive rollout of 11 new stores to house the subbrand across Australia and New Zealand.
“There’s the opportunity for us to really focus in on this new type of casual wear, which is what we call the athletic wear component,” co-founder Adrian Norris said.
Mr Norris said that the first collection, launched in May, was a “test and learn” scenario for the brand, which is best known for its sculptural, ruffled, puff-sleeved event wear.
The experiment paid off, with sales for the first Athletica collection “more than our revenue five years ago for the whole business”.
The existing Aje customer has embraced the brand – 66 per cent of those buying Aje. Athletica already have some Aje pieces in their wardrobe. But it’s the remaining customer base that has Mr Norris, and co-founder Edwina Forest, especially excited.
“The balance … showed that there is a massive portion of the market still available to us,” he said.
“Even if women haven’t shopped with us before, they probably aspired to. They maybe haven’t had the right scenario to wear our clothes.”
The new stores, which will roll out from next month through to the end of the financial year, will be housed exclusively in AMP Capital and Scentre Group shopping centres, including AMP’s refurbished Karrinyup centre in Perth’s north which launches in October.
“At the moment, they’re the ones that we’re opening in and that was all part of our strategy around how we dealt with landlords through Covid,” Mr Norris said.
“We’re really respectful of AMP and Scentre Group and the way that they supported us and the way we supported them back.”
The new stores, in general, will be larger than the existing 20 Aje stores, ranging from 140-200sq m.
Mr Norris describes them as “really striking”.
The 13-year-old brand has experienced phenomenal growth of 619 per cent over the past five years.
This is due, in part, to the international push that began in 2019 when the brand opened Australian Fashion Week.
It is currently stocked by some of the world’s leading retailers, including Matchesfashion, Saks, Nordstrom and Moda Operandi.
The US is now the brand’s largest market.