Arc'teryx's new Venice store has a climbing wall, a lounge, a film series, and products from other brands, and a local climbing gym helped shape it. It is opening while the brand adds 30 to 35 stores this year. The format works only if a retailer hires for community, curation, and measurement, not just store operations.
Arc'teryx has opened its first concept store built exclusively for climbers, in Venice, California, Retail Dive reports. The store pairs climbing-focused Arc'teryx apparel and equipment with third-party climbing products, and it is built around activity rather than racks: a Grasshopper climbing wall, a Beta Board, a lounge stocked with guidebooks and magazines from Alpinist and Summit Journal, an outdoor patio, and an "Arc Presents" film and content series. It is the brand's fourth store in the Los Angeles area and fifth in Southern California.
The opening is part of a much larger build-out. Arc'teryx plans 30 to 35 net new stores in 2026. Its parent company, Amer Sports, reported that its technical apparel segment, led by Arc'teryx, grew revenue 32% to $674 million in the second quarter and ended the quarter with 305 stores, up 34% year over year. Amer Sports then raised its third-quarter growth guidance to 20% to 22%.
We wrote about store growth in general in Retail Expansion Is Back. Arc'teryx shows a specific version of it: a brand opening a lot of stores while also asking some of them to work as community spaces. That combination calls for people most store-opening teams do not have.
Each detail of the Venice store points to a different capability.
| What Arc'teryx Did | The Hiring Read |
|---|---|
| Worked with local climbing groups ABA and Long Beach Rising before opening; Long Beach Rising will keep setting the wall's routes and holds | Community partnerships are built and maintained by someone. That is a brand community or experiential marketing role, not a store manager's side project |
| Stocks third-party climbing products, with input from Long Beach Rising on what to carry | A brand store that sells other brands' products needs a buyer who can curate, negotiate with outside vendors, and manage inventory the brand does not make |
| Built a lounge, patio, events and workshops, and an "Arc Presents" film and content series | The store is also a programming and content venue. Someone has to run the calendar and connect it to the brand's marketing |
| Plans 30 to 35 net new stores in 2026; technical apparel ended Q2 with 305 stores, up 34% | Opening stores at that pace takes store development, real estate, and regional operations leadership, before the concept work even starts |
Stephanie Jamieson, senior director of brand community at Arc'teryx North America, said the company's best stores are shaped by the communities they serve. Delaney Schweitzer, general manager of Arc'teryx North America, said the shared connection to climbing with the Los Angeles community inspired the new concept. The job title matters as much as the quote. Arc'teryx has a senior leader whose function is brand community.
Most retailers that try community-led stores give the work to a store manager or a regional marketing generalist, and the partnerships fade after the grand opening. Keeping a local gym engaged enough to reset a wall, sourcing guest speakers, and filling an event calendar every month is ongoing relationship work. It sits closest to our Brand Management practice, and the best candidates usually come from brand marketing roles with real field and partnership experience, not from social media alone. It also connects to the design-led brand work we covered in Target's Inside Out campaign: the brand promise has to show up physically, in the store, every week.
A climbing wall gets people in the door once. Fresh routes, events, and partners bring them back, and every one of those needs an owner after opening day.
The Venice store carries third-party climbing products alongside Arc'teryx's own, with a local climbing partner helping decide what goes on the shelf. That is a meaningful operational change for a brand store. Allocating your own product is a planning exercise. Buying someone else's product means vendor negotiations, open-to-buy decisions, margin management on goods you did not design, and markdown risk you cannot solve with your own supply chain.
Brands moving in this direction need a buyer with specialty retail or multi-brand experience, not only a merchandise planner from a single-brand background. We break down what to look for on the planning side in How to Hire a Merchandise Planner for Omnichannel Retail. For curated, third-party assortments, the buying side of our Merchandising & Buying practice is usually the better fit.
A single concept store is a creative project. Thirty to thirty-five new stores in a year is an operations program: site selection, lease negotiation, build-out, hiring and training store teams, opening inventory, and systems that have to work on day one. Few companies can do that at pace and also customize some of those stores around a local community.
The roles that make it possible are store development and real estate leads, regional directors who can open and stabilize several stores at once, and operations leaders who make sure each new location connects to fulfillment and inventory systems. That last point matters more as stores also serve as pickup, returns, and ship-from-store points, which we covered in How to Hire an Omnichannel Fulfillment Manager. Those operations hires sit in our Supply Chain & Operations practice.
An experiential store is easy to love and hard to measure. A climbing wall and a lounge take up floor space that could hold product, so the store's register sales will likely understate its value. The case for the format rests on what happens around the store: new customers acquired, event attendees who later buy online, loyalty sign-ups, and eCommerce sales in the store's trade area.
Capturing that takes two things most stores do not do well. First, a reason for visitors to identify themselves, through a loyalty program, event registration, or clienteling, which is the work of a VP of Loyalty and Retention Marketing. Second, an analytics lead who can connect store activity to online behavior and report a full picture to leadership. That second role sits in our Analytics & Data Science practice. Without it, community stores tend to get judged on sales per square foot and cut in the next budget cycle, whether or not they were working.
This is also where the full customer journey needs an owner. We covered that leadership gap in Hiring a VP or Director of Omnichannel Customer Experience: the shopper who climbs in Venice, browses on the app, and buys a jacket online should feel like one relationship with the brand, not three.
Not every retailer needs a climbing wall. But many brands planning store growth in 2027 are asking stores to do more than sell: host events, build local loyalty, and drive online sales. If that is part of your plan, the hiring question is whether the team behind the stores includes people who can build community, curate assortments, open stores at pace, and prove the stores are working. Senior brand, buying, and analytics searches often take two to three months, as we covered in How Long Should It Take to Fill a Commerce Role in 2026?, so a spring opening calendar means starting those searches this quarter.
| What the Format Requires | The Role to Look At | Practice Area |
|---|---|---|
| Local partnerships, events, and in-store programming | Brand Community Lead, Experiential Marketing Manager | Brand Management |
| Curated third-party assortment alongside the brand's own | Buyer, Specialty or Multi-Brand Buyer | Merchandising & Buying |
| Opening many stores in a single year | Store Development Lead, Regional Operations Director | Supply Chain & Operations |
| Store design, wayfinding, and content | Retail Environment or Visual Design Lead | Creative & UX/UI |
| In-store customer capture and clienteling technology | Retail Technology or POS and CRM Systems Lead | Retail Digital Technology |
| Proving the store's effect on online and regional sales | Analytics Lead | Analytics & Data Science |
Arc'teryx is betting that the right store can be part of a community, not just a place to buy gear. Building that kind of store takes more than a good concept. It takes people who keep the community engaged after opening day.
In October 2026, Arc'teryx opened its first concept store built exclusively for climbers, in Venice, California, according to Retail Dive. It carries climbing-focused Arc'teryx apparel and equipment alongside third-party climbing products, and includes a Grasshopper climbing wall, a Beta Board, a lounge with guidebooks and magazines, an outdoor patio, and an Arc Presents film and content series. It is the brand's fourth Los Angeles-area store and fifth in Southern California.
Arc'teryx plans to open 30 to 35 net new stores in 2026. Its parent company, Amer Sports, reported that its technical apparel segment, led by Arc'teryx, ended the second quarter of 2026 with 305 stores, up 34% year over year, and grew revenue 32% to $674 million. Amer Sports also raised its third-quarter revenue growth guidance to 20% to 22%.
Community-led retail builds a store around the people who already participate in an activity, rather than around product alone. Arc'teryx worked with local climbing groups ABA and Long Beach Rising before opening its Venice store, and Long Beach Rising will keep updating the climbing wall's routes and help select third-party products. Arc'teryx's senior director of brand community said its best stores are shaped by the communities they serve.
Beyond store staff, concept stores depend on a brand community or experiential marketing lead who builds local partnerships and programming, a buyer who can curate third-party products alongside the brand's own, a retail store development or operations leader who can open stores at pace, a CRM or loyalty lead who connects in-store community activity to customer data, and an analytics lead who can measure a store's effect on online and regional sales, not only its own register.
A concept store's register sales are only part of its value. Retailers also look at new customer acquisition, event attendance, loyalty sign-ups, and changes in eCommerce sales and brand search in the store's trade area. That measurement requires customer data captured in store and an analytics team able to connect store activity to online behavior.