Fabletics To Increase Offline Presence With 100 New Stores

MINNESOTA, United States – Kate Hudson’s athleisure label Fabletics has announced plans to open 75 -100 new stores over the next five years as part of a new brick-and-mortar strategy.

Kicking off the campaign with a 2,000-square-foot store at the Mall of America in Minnesota, set to open in spring. The Fabletics store will also carry FL2, its new line of men’s high performance athletic gear and perfected lifestyle basics.

“With more than 40 million annual visitors and an incredible assortment of retailers and entertainment experiences, Mall of America was the clear choice for our next brick-and-mortar location,” said Gregg Throgmartin, President of Retail for Fabletics.

“We will be unveiling a new store environment at the Mall that will offer a best-in-class shopping experience that will introduce our fast-fashion activewear designs and our unbeatable prices to millions of customers.”

Mirroring the brand’s ecommerce operation, which generated almost all of Fabletics’ $150 million in revenues in 2015, the new set of stores will sell a selection of leggings, sports bras and tanks.

However, the brand’s push into the retail sector doesn’t mean it’s subscription service is on the out. Instead, staff will be employing business tactics in order to recruit shoppers to join the original subscription model.

Steadily recovering from criticism surrounding Fabletics’ membership terms, in which customers took to the brand’s social media pages to label the service a scam, Adam Goldenberg, co-founder of Fabletics’ parent company JustFab, told Forbes how Fabletics now receives a much lower number of complaints.

“Largely speaking, customers really like this program,” he said.

And with approximately 40% of sales in Fabletics’ current six stores coming from existing online subscribers wanting to try on the brand’s activewear in person, the demand for more retail outlets is certainly there.