Duluth Trading opens city store, its first in state
“But the big thing is the culture — you walk into a Duluth store and you feel like it’s a family. You know you are going to get awesome customer service, which is very important to me . ... It’s just the experience, and that’s something we plan to have ev
With the snip of an elongated “ribbon” — a strip of plaid fabric — Duluth Trading formally opened its first Connecticut store in Danbury, with the day highlighted by lumberjack demonstrations.
Duluth Trading sells apparel that it designs itself for blue-collar professions and outdoors enthusiasts, as well as gear from other companies including hiking boots. The company is taking over a large storefront in the Shops at Marcus Dairy, anchored by Whole Foods Market.
The Duluth Trading store opens with a staff of 40. The space was previously home to Eastern Mountain Sports, which closed after a bankruptcy.
Manager Sam Reynolds has been with Duluth three months, having worked a decade for L.L. Bean. His spouse manages the L.L. Bean store at the Danbury Fair mall across Backus Avenue.
Reynolds told Hearst Connecticut Media he was drawn to Duluth Trading long before getting the Danbury post.
“First of all, everybody knows the commercials — they’re humorous, it’s distinctive marketing,” Reynolds said. “But the big thing is the culture — you walk into a Duluth store and you feel like it’s a family. You know you are going to get awesome customer service, which is very important to me . ... It’s just the experience, and that’s something we plan to have every customer feel, the same way I did.”
If Duluth Trading’s “Buck Naked” underwear line is top of mind for many as a result of those tongue-incheek TV ads, the Danbury store has reserved plenty of space for the clothes that helped it get its start in its early days of catalog-only sales: shirts that extend longer in the back to spare plumbers any inadvertent displays as they hunch under a sink.
And at the front of the store are the company’s newer lines of the past several years: “Armachillo” shirts and other apparel with crushed jade embedded in the fabric as a way to provide better cooling properties.
Overall sales were up 21 percent for Duluth Trading’s most recent 12-month fiscal year, to $568 million.
Women’s apparel was the fastest growing segment at 28 percent compared to 19 percent for mens clothing and 14 percent for gear, with Reynolds highlighting the “No-Yank” Tank shirts
designed to fit the form of the torso without the need to tug it down continually into place.
Sales were helped by Duluth Trading opening 15 new stores in its fiscal year ending in February, a pace it plans to match in the current fiscal year. Reynolds said the decision to open in Connecticut was driven by a large contingent of customers here purchasing goods online, without saying why Danbury was the specific selection.
In April, CEO Stephanie Pugliese outlined Duluth Trading’s philosophy on new stores.
“We want to make sure that we always have ... (the) real estate that is right for us — not just because it’s available — and the ability to manage staff and create a customer experience that we expect from our stores,” Pugliese said. “We enter a market with a store (and) we instantly see that market penetration grow substantially.”
For the plaza’s Marcus family owners, Duluth is a welcome addition, along with Pink Soda Blow Dry Bar which opened last month in a former Nine West shoe store.
“This is a tremendous boost for the area,” said Neil Marcus. “They are a well-known catalog company that now is getting into (physical) stores — like Amazon . ... We were obviously out looking to rent the space vacated by EMS, and I’m so glad this store’s here, because it’s in the same nature of outdoor, quality (products).”
The Danbury store is open MondaySaturday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., with Memorial Day hours through 6 p.m.; and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.