Arc’teryx doubles capacity in Melbourne's southeast

The second warehouse in Keysborough adds to the brand’s initial site in Moorabbin.

Commercial manager across AU/NZ Daniel Wojciechowski said Arc’teryx is seeing double-digit growth year-on-year since Amer Sports Australia took over distribution of the brand in 2015.

Amer Sports is a global group housing 12 sports and outdoor brands, including Arc’teryx.

“With the ongoing growth of all the Amer Sports brands, the warehouse upgrade from 2020 quickly reached capacity constraints again and a priority project was undertaken early this year to bring online additional capacity for immediate effect,” Wojciechowski said. “The business secured a second site locally in Keysborough, doubling our storage capacity and enabling additional process efficiency.

“The movement of business areas across the new facility was successfully completed in May 2023.”

Wojciechowski said the warehouse expansion also enabled the brand to address and reconfigure process flow and procedures to “enable a more efficient fulfilment of orders.”

“Having our own warehouse team has been an advantage as we were able to workshop solutions with the team to ensure our outcomes best matched both the business and team members' needs.”

According to Wojciechowski, the key channel for Arc'teryx currently is wholesale as it allows the brand to secure connections with core communities and grow its presentation among peer brands.

"Globally in 2019, a strategic choice was undertaken to accelerate our direct engagement with our guests through a global omni-channel eCommerce and brand store network," he said. "We will continue to invest and expand over the coming years across Australia and New Zealand."

Arc'teryx is also planning to open multiple sites each year over the next five years, adding onto the recent opening of its third Australian store in Sydney's Bondi Junction. It has two other stores in Melbourne.

"Our first priorities are to establish Melbourne and Sydney epicentre markets before expanding further across the major retail centres in Australia and New Zealand. The total number of sites and speed of openings will be heavily determined by our ongoing success rate and our ability to scale whilst further enhancing the guest experience."

Wojciechowski said the brand's key mission is to lead in climb, trail and snow.

Meanwhile, the brand is channelling local circular initiatives through its global ReBird program. The program covers three categories: ReCare, ReGear and ReCut.

Wojciechowski said Arc'teryx products are designed to last "as long as possible" through ReCare.

He said customers can also trade in unused but still wearable products for a voucher valued at 20% of its original price via its ReGear program, which are then refurbished and redistributed.

"Finally, when a product's useful life has run its course, we collect the material to divert it from landfill and find creative alternative uses for the material under ReCut," Wojciechowski said. "Material like zippers, drawcords, components and fabric can be used to mend other products or repurposed into other products that provide another useful life with this material."

To drive its Australian circular model, Arc'teryx partnered with Terra Rosa Gear to collaborate on "creative concepts" within upcycling.

Founded by Evan Howard in 2010, Terra Rosa Gear operates in the same snow and mountaineer categories as Arc'teryx.

"As part of the ReBird program, all end-of-life Arc’teryx product are sent to Terra Rosa Gear to be upcycled into new functional outdoor products," Wojciechowski said. "Rain jackets become backpacks, hiking pants into caps, the possibilities are endless.

"Although upcycling and product circularity has seen substantial growth in the fashion and artistic communities, our priority is to ensure everything we create has genuine value for the Core Mountain Athlete and can be used in the outdoors like everything else we produce.

"With leadership and community engagement as core principles of all Arc’teryx partnerships, Evan’s passion for sharing knowledge and teaching others, through workshops at his studio, made him a natural fit for the role."

Wojciechowski said ReBird is an iterative program with grow and scale alongside Arc'teryx.

"A good plan now is better than a perfect plan tomorrow and therefore we are learning by doing and collaborating to be agents of positive change. Infrastructure and processes to support the program will need to to grow and change to maintain best practice."

Amid Arc'teryx's Melbourne expansion of operations, additional work roles were recently added to its guest services and loyalty.

Wojciechowski said as the brand grows and invests in people, it will also "evolve structurally from a portfolio team involved with multiple brands to a more brand-specific team."

"This enables team members to have a deeper level of involvement and singular brand focus which we believe delivers a better result for our guests."