This month marked a joyous day for outdoorsy types: last Saturday, June 8, Arc’teryx opened its very first German branch, located on Rosenthaler Straße, amidst the hustle and bustle of Hackescher Markt. A second store, in Munich, is set to follow on June 27.
The Canadian outdoor brand is turning 35 this year; Arc’teryx products have been available in European retail for 20 years, and at least 10 in Germany, so one might wonder why now was the right time to open their first brand stores in this country.
“What shifted now is that Arc’teryx changed from a 100% wholesale model to a vertical brand, where we are expanding more with our brand stores,” reveals General Manager EMEA Sven Radtke. “And the reason being is we want to be able to show our complete product offer… Having a store also gives us an opportunity to anchor and create [a] local community.”
One facilitator of this shift, as those well-versed in fashion will be quick to conclude, might have been the explosive popularity of the outdoor-adjacent fashion phenomenon “gorpcore”. When the trend first peaked in 2022, Arc’teryx emerged as one of the leading lights – very much in contrast to its German competition. After all, you still don’t see cool people wearing Deuter jackets or Jack Wolfskin beanies.
This relevance gives the brand a direct touching point not just with outdoor athletes but also fashion enthusiasts and might also explain why the Berlin outpost puts a special focus on the brand’s subsidiary Veilance collection, an undeniably more fashionable line for the urban terrain.
Fashion, however, is not Arc’teryx’s bread and butter, and the outdoor giant also doesn’t bill itself that way. The shop is broken down into three main categories of activity – trail running, snow sports and climbing – and boasts everything from gear to equipment: overjackets of varying degrees of robustness (thank you, GORE-TEX), body warmers, tops, trousers, shoes, backpacks, harnesses. Some fern at the back aside, the store decor is minimal and stripped-back.
All products serve a specific use and are tried and tested by – and even partially developed in collaboration with – Arc’teryx’s athletes, like the acclaimed German alpinist Ines Papert, who attended the opening. The climbing jackets, for example, feature sleeves that don’t slide down when scaling the wall of a mountain, while the enlarged hoods comfortably cover the helmet and keep its wearer dry.
So far so good, but how exactly does a brand specialising in extreme mountain conditions cater to outdoor athletes in this flat part of the country? Easy: practicality.
“We know Germans resonate with putting function over fashion,” says Senior Brand Marketing Director EMEA Stephane Tenailleau. “And also, because of our innovation and the quality of our products and the quality standard we have, our products are very long-lasting. They have a very long life cycle, and that’s also something that really resonates with the German audience.”
Emphasising this approach in-store is the ReBIRD™ centre, a light-touch repair service that helps customers get their Arc’teryx products patched up, washed and re-waterproofed free of charge. Next to that, Radtke says, the brand aims to become “fully circular” by 2030, by reintroducing discarded products into the production cycle.
But it’s not just sustainability that might prove attractive to Berliners. Germany may not boast any glaciers, but hiking is by far not the only outdoor sport its residents enjoy, as Tenailleau observes. “Berlin is a big trail running place, there’s lots of bouldering, so people are climbing, and they go on ski vacation,” he points out. “These are exactly the three areas we do.”
“That’s our point of difference,” adds General Manager Radtke. “You have a lot of brands that cover the regular hiking part, but we are not the regular outdoor brands and we cater more towards the pinnacle activity level. And I think that’s what the German outdoor enthusiasts really [like] about us.”
To really reel their desired audience in (and then cast them back out), the Berlin Mitte outpost (whose crest is a Berlin bear skeleton modelled after the fossil in the Arc’teryx logo) is planning on offering a regular community programme at the shop, from yoga classes and film screenings to keynote speeches and safety workshops, which are free of charge and will be announced on the their social media.
There will also be larger outdoor excursions on offer, like Grunewald trail runs with the Arc’ Run Club or trips with the brand’s snowboarding and skiing groups. And Radtke and Tenailleau tease philanthropic initiatives, with which Arc’teryx hopes to give underrepresented minorities access to the world of outdoor sports – which often comes with a price tag attached.
In particular, Tenailleau references the brand’s ‘Apart’ project in Paris from two years ago: “There was a group of girls, aged between 16 and 25, and they had never seen mountains. They never went to the outdoors and after months of training, they climbed the Kilimanjaro in Africa.”
It’s clear as a day out: with incentives to flaunt your new gorpcore, join a group run, or see mountains for the first time, Arc’teryx is on a mission to get you outside.
- Arc’teryx Berlin Mitte, Rosenthaler Str. 49, follow them on IG at @arcteryxdach and visit their website to find out more.
