Last month, Brisbane-based athleisure brand LSKD launched its first physical store in Loganholme, Queensland, completing the journey from being a predominantly wholesale brand in the 2000s to a self-sufficient omnichannel business. The store is located on the same 4000-square-metre site as LSKD’s fulfilment centre and its headquarters, with customers able to see into glass meeting rooms containing the brand’s management in video meetings while perusing the shop floor. And, while the store is
ore is only two months old, it is already serving as the basis of what could be a wider physical network.
“We haven’t got the experience in physical retail, so we really want to use this store as a learning experience around how to work with our community,” LSKD founder and chief executive Jason Daniel told Inside Retail.
“And, to be honest, it’s been exciting to see what’s possible here. We’re actually outdoing what we had expected [in sales], and it’s really taught us that we don’t know everything.
“We’re really trying to learn how to grow and work with our community. It’s really a testing ground, because we’re definitely looking at more stores in our future if I’m being transparent, but we are using this store as a learning opportunity.”
As Daniel explained, the challenge of launching more stores will be finding the ideal locations that lend themselves to the experience LSKD wants to deliver.
The fitness brand’s store houses a gym for the LSKD team to train in, but it’s also available to the public and sees around 70 people utilising the facilities on the weekend.
LSKD also holds events each weekend, such as Open Yoga, which regularly sees more than 60 members of the Logan community coming together at the brand’s premises, complete with a coffee cart in the parking lot.
“I think that physical retail is a phenomenal opportunity [for LSKD], but it’s got to be more than just clothing on a rack,” Daniel said.
“It’s going to depend on the size of the store as to what we can do in [it], and how you make an experience where the customer… can get a community-first experience.
“But we’re not even two months in from our store opening, so it’s still very early days.”
Chasing the vibe
According to Daniel, part of LSKD’s community-first mindset comes from the business’ six values that define the brand’s purpose: enjoy the journey, create a community, no-one is too good to sweep the sheds, find a better way to do it, move fast and break shit, and aim to be 1 per cent better each day.
These six values are openly shared everywhere, from LSKD’s website, its meeting room walls and on its ‘Trust Me’ mystery boxes.
“Where I think [retail] has evolved is that you need to stand for something, and you need to stick to it,” Daniel said.
“I really didn’t know what we stood for in the early days [of LSKD] and I didn’t know what our mission was, or what our purpose was as a team. But you’ve got to have a ‘why’. It’s really important, especially with where the world is going at the moment.”
The business also celebrates diversity and individualism, and is transitioning most of its ranges away from being mens or womens focused to being unisex.
“That’s something that we feel has given us some uniqueness to our brand, and came from talking and listening to our models and customers,” Daniel said.
“It’s not about being male or female, it’s about clothes that are made for everyone to wear.”