Australian fashion brands open more stores and distribution centres in the US

Australian fashion brands told Modern Retail they see huge opportunities in the US, which is larger than Australia and ranks first in terms of global GDP, while Australia is 13th. according to the World BankAustralian brands have long been active in the US e-commerce market (Camilla, for example, has had a US website for nearly a decade), but more and more are now turning to physical retail to boost their omnichannel business and connect with fans overseas. Some brands, such as Princess Polly and womenswear brand Outcast Clothing is investing further in the US market by establishing distribution centers in North America to serve its customers.

An online supplement

Bared Footwear, founded in 2008 by podiatrist Anna Baird, has five stores in Australia and opened its first store in the US this year to complement its growing online sales there. Digital still accounts for the lion’s share of Bared Footwear’s business (70% comes from e-commerce in Australia), but the brand is starting to gain traction with US consumers, Baird told Modern Retail.

Bared Footwear originally hoped to open a store in Los Angeles, but found an ideal location in Soho, a New York neighborhood known for its high foot traffic and popularity with tourists. Some of the brand’s employees relocated from Melbourne to New York to run the store, which Baird said was important to maintain the same level of customer service. But Baird hasn’t forgotten about California and hopes to target Los Angeles next.

“We know that having a physical presence is incredibly important, so we are very keen to explore additional locations as we monitor consumer response to the store in New York,” she said.

Camilla, an Australian luxury clothing brand known for its colorful patterns and kaftans, is also making physical retail in the U.S. a bigger part of its growth plans. In addition to a website, Camilla has more than 20 stores worldwide and four in the U.S.: two in Florida, one in California and one in New Jersey. Camilla opened its first U.S. store in 2019 and its New Jersey location in Short Hills in February. Camilla is also sold in U.S. department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman.

Currently, Camilla is looking to open stores in areas “where we have an existing customer base and we see potential,” Camilla chief commercial officer Rebecca Mansergh told Modern Retail. The brand is focusing on Florida, Texas, New York, California and Georgia, among others. Camilla will open a new location in Topanga, California, in January 2025. Mansergh declined to share sales figures for Camilla’s U.S. stores, but said they are “performing well.”

Princess Polly, meanwhile, opened its first U.S. store in September 2023 at Century City Mall in Los Angeles. In November, Ciaran Long, interim CEO of Princess Polly's parent company AKA Brands, said The store had “generated profitable revenue” and had a halo effect on Princess Polly’s e-commerce business. Additionally, 30% of the store’s customers were new to the brand, Long said. AKA Brands’ U.S. net sales increased 6% year over year during its first trimester ending in March.

Princess Polly doesn't have a store in Australia yet and is focusing primarily on the web. But in the United States, the brand is already working on opening three additional stores: one in Scottsdale, Arizona, one in San Diego, California, and one in Boston. These stores will be larger than the one in Los Angeles and will therefore be able to stock more merchandise, including accessories.

“We want to…really make sure that we can get that full representation of our product line and complete the outfit, which is what we do so well online,” Courtney Dres, Princess Polly’s director of merchandise, told Modern Retail.

Double the distribution

Opening stores is only part of the equation for international brands looking to enter the U.S. market. On a practical level, brands also need to ensure they’re prepared to ship items to those stores quickly, restock sizes and silhouettes of popular products, and adapt items to trends. And doing all of this from Australia, thousands of miles away, can be costly and time-consuming.

With that in mind, more Australian brands are opening fulfillment centers in North America to reduce shipping times, lower costs and stock local merchandise. One such brand is Princess Polly. In 2018, Princess Polly opened a fulfillment center in the United States, and since then, the brand has experienced “a very rapid expansion into the U.S. market,” Dres said. In fact, Princess Polly’s U.S. fulfillment center now has more inventory than its Gold Coast fulfillment center in Australia.

Outcast Clothing, a women’s fashion brand founded in 2015, will open a fulfillment center in Mexico in October in time for Black Friday. Unlike Princess Polly, Outcast Clothing does not have a permanent physical store in the U.S. Instead, it caters to the U.S. through its U.S. website, which launched in 2023. Since then, the U.S. has accounted for 70% of Outcast Clothing’s business. The brand has also tripled its overall revenue since launching in the U.S.

Currently, shipping from Australia to the United States can take four to six days, said Lawrence Lees, CEO of Outcast Clothing. But a distribution center in North America can reduce that to one or two days, he explained. “All operations are underway.” [in the DC]”, Lees said. “It's just moving inventory there. It's obviously a big process. We want to be at least 90 percent of our capacity.” Outcast Clothing is also considering opening a distribution center in San Diego, California.

The two fulfillment centers, Lees said, could help Outcast Clothing realize its U.S. brick-and-mortar retail ambitions. The brand held a three-day pop-up store in Los Angeles in October, and “people were lining up at 3 a.m. every day,” Lees said. “That was kind of our starting point for figuring out if brick-and-mortar retail was right for us. And we found that it definitely was.” Outcast Clothing is now considering a pop-up store in Miami.

Pop-up stores like Outcast Clothing’s can be a great way for brands to break into new markets like the U.S., Melissa Gonzalez, CEO of The Lionesque Group and principal at MG2, told Modern Retail. “I think consumers have higher expectations for pop-ups, but they’re still more of a change than a permanent store,” she said. “So it gives brands a lot more latitude.”

The equation of the equator

There are some nuances between the shopping habits in the US and Australia. When it's cold in the northern hemisphere, it's warm in the southern hemisphere, and vice versa.

Australian fashion brands are finding different ways to navigate this shift. Bared Footwear, for example, has brought forward its Summer 2025 collection to be available to US customers first, at the same time as it opens its New York store. “The range in the New York store is vast, and while we don’t have every style there, what’s not in store is available online,” Baird said.

Princess Polly, meanwhile, has become “very good at reversing or inverting seasonality,” Dres says. “We can take what’s currently working in the Southern Hemisphere and use that as a reference point for our Northern Hemisphere bookings.”

According to Dres, this approach allows Princess Polly to work on both collections simultaneously. For example, Princess Polly finds that lemon yellow works well. So, in the Northern Hemisphere, she uses that color for summer dresses. In the Southern Hemisphere, she uses it for cardigans. Red is also a popular color, which is why Princess Polly uses it for knitwear in the Southern Hemisphere and for tops and shorts in the Northern Hemisphere. Leopard print also works well on both sides of the equator.

A few years ago, Dres would have said that Australians were quicker to pick up on trends. “We felt like our Australian customers were much more aware of trends, whereas American customers were maybe a little slower to pick up on new trends,” she told Modern Retail. But, she told Modern Retail, that’s no longer the case.

“We can really tailor all of our trends to both seasons,” Dres said. “It’s just about making sure that the product itself is appropriate for the season… I think that reflects the strong creative direction of the brand identity that we’ve built.”