A cult-fave, eco-friendly online sneaker brand is expanding offline.
Allbirds will open 20 stores next year, with many of them in the U.S., the company’s co-founder and co-CEO Tim Brown told CNBC. Allbirds, which launched online in 2014, opened its first physical stores in 2018, in its San Francisco hometown and in downtown Manhattan. The company’s signature footwear is made from renewable Merino wool, which it says minimizes odor, regulates temperature, and wicks moisture.
Currently, Allbirds operates seven stores in the U.S., and six abroad, including three locations in China, according to its website.
“We’re hugely excited about the channel,” Brown said in the CNBC report. “It’s a great opportunity for people to touch our product, to try our product.”
Online retailers like Allbirds, Warby Parker, Casper and Everlane have begun to encroach on the real estate left behind as established retailers, like Sears and J.C. Penney, scale back their footprints. These e-tailers are garnering followings through social media and pop-up shops.
Amazon was recently accused of copying one of Allbirds’ popular shoes, but Brown does not think competition like this will stop Allbirds’ growth as long as the company continues to focus on innovation.
“We’re in a competitive space in footwear but, look, there’s 20 billion pairs of shoes made a year on average and we’re still very tiny,” Brown said. “We’ve got enormous potential to grow and continue to grow, but to do that we’re going to have to continue to innovate and continue to be good. The retail expansion is part of it, as is international, but at the core for us, it’s about product and it’s about material innovation.”
Despite the company’s store expansion, an IPO may still be far off.
“It’s premature to be thinking about that,” Brown said. “One day down the road, possibly, but at the moment we’re focused on execution and growing our business in a really, really sustainable way.”