OluKai’s taken a big step with its first U.S. Mainland store located at the Irvine Spectrum Center.
“After successfully operating six stores in Hawaii, this is such a unique way to share our story and an opportunity to take an even more in-depth approach to storytelling,” Chief Marketing Officer Kerry Konrady said of the new store.
The Irvine premium footwear company sought to tie together Irvine’s farming history with that of the Hawaiian A-frame structures called Canoe Hale in designing the 1,600-square-foot store. The team spent months on the research and then buildout to incorporate elements such as wooden beams hung from cathedral-like ceilings, light fixtures to mimic the shape and movement of fish nets, and lava and coral tile to represent the land meeting the ocean.
“We try to find the balance between an efficient design process and execution, but really are committed to ensuring each store has its own story and has its own sense of place,” Konrady said.
Inside OluKai’s Irvine store. Photo courtesy of OluKai.
Test and Learn
Irvine joins OluKai’s six other stores in Hawaii, with the Orange County location five minutes away from headquarters, making it easy for executives to test, learn, and iterate moving forward. The real estate also made sense for how OluKai approaches site selection, Konrady said.
“(The Irvine Co. does) a great job of curating, and the wing we’re in at the Spectrum is one of the best we feel around,” Konrady said. “The proximity to the office creates a really convenient way for us to express ourselves more at the store level, to learn about our consumer and create an opportunity and platform to take in even greater insights and do things like testing new products or new ways of merchandising, all this stuff that a premium brand does really well, to create an incredible consumer experience.”
OluKai sits between Vuori and Heat at the Spectrum, with other nearby brand neighbors in Warby Parker, Roark, Brandy Melville, and TravisMathew.
Konrady said the company is currently learning and observing traffic patterns and buying preferences from shoppers before acting on that information.
Given the interest from consumers in Irvine, it could mean more stores for OluKai in the future.
“We’ve always looked at our distribution strategy as being the best in class, omnichannel distribution,” Konrady said. “We want to create the best consumer experience that we possibly can, regardless of the distribution channel. So wholesale is a big part of what we do. We’ve got great retail partners in various trade channels. Our online channel is very strong, and owned brick-and-mortar is something important to that mix. So, we’re certainly going to take opportunities where we can invest in a brand experience at prime locations across the country. We see that as a viable way to invest in OluKai.”
Assortment and Cross-Branding
Any future stores will also be aided in OluKai’s assortment, which has expanded over the years well beyond sandals to include casual shoes, boots, slippers, and resort. Two years ago, it entered golf.
ActionWatch Senior Director Eric Stanton recently called out the brand, along with Reef and Rainbow, as the biggest movers in footwear last year among the core specialty retailers the research firm tracks.
There’s also partner brands that allow for cross merchandising in stores where it makes sense. Melin hats, for example, are sold at the new Irvine store.
OluKai bought eyewear brand Kaenon in 2015 and invested in Melin a year later. In 2017 the company made an investment in Roark.
“Melin and Roark both have highly successful, growing owned retail footprints themselves and that is exceptionally exciting,” Konrady said. “You can imagine the knowledge base that’s being created here and really shared across our portfolio around what it takes to operate, first and foremost, premium brands that really have a direct strong connection with their consumers.”
Brick-and-mortar experiences offer one way of doing that, he added.
“As far as a house of brands, that’s not necessarily the way we’ve chosen to go to market right now,” Konrady said. “Each of our brands have their own brand story and we’ve been fortunate to invest in their own brand experiences independent of each other. We do cross-merchandise where it makes sense and sell each other’s products as a complement to the main product offering in the stores. We found that’s an incredibly powerful way to leverage our portfolio of brands.”
