Good morning, everyone. To everyone here in person, and online, and the webcast, thanks for joining us for the Amer Sports 2025 Investor Day. My name is Omar Saad, and it's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Nest, the most recent addition to the Arc'teryx headquarters in North Vancouver. This dynamic community space was created to inspire the team, connect people across the functions, and showcase the brand, perfect for large meetings, company events, and conveniently an Investor Day.
I would especially have you take notice of the climbing wall to your right. This inclines down to a 70-degree angle, and the Arc'teryx design team is full of expert professional climbers who can go up and down that wall at any angle. Maybe some of you get to try it later. So first, the Safe Harbor Statement
A quick reminder that during today's Investor Day presentations, you'll hear forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements reflect our current expectations and beliefs only. They are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to materially differ. Please see the Safe Harbor Statement of today's press release and SEC filing.
We will also discuss certain non-IFRS measures. This will be our first Investor Day since returning to the public markets last February. The idea to hold an Arc'teryx-focused meeting here in Vancouver began about a year ago when the global leadership team was here for board meetings. The Arc'teryx team put together a great day of presentations and product tours.
Personally, I was blown away by the quality and experience level of the Arc'teryx team, their ability to frame the commercial opportunity by category, by region, and of course, the amazing products and innovations, as well as the unique culture and community here. Before the day was over, I'm pretty sure I had James, Andrew, Stuart, the Arc'teryx CFO back there, Chris Tham, who many of you may know already, and our Arc'teryx head of comms, Lindsay, signed up to come back here a year later and do it for the public. So here we are, very excited for you to experience the investor version today. Before we get to the content, a few points of order to consider.
First, please hold your questions for each speaker until the end of the day. We should have time for about 45 minutes of Q&A after all the presentations with the entire management team available to answer. Also, hold your applause as well. You don't need to clap after every presenter. We have a ton of people coming to the stage today. And for those online, please email ir@amersports.com with your questions, and we'll try to incorporate those, as many of those as we can.
And also, just for those of you in person, we're going to be conducting guided product tours right after the lunch hour. We'll break you into six different groups, one for each of the product stations. Please check the back of your lanyard card and start at the station marked by that colored sticker next to which station you're going to start at.
There's also a map of the space here on the back of the lanyard with your six stations. So now I'm going to turn it over to our Group CEO, James Zheng. As many of you know, James has a great track record from Adidas to Anta and now Amer Sports. He's one of the most experienced and successful executives in the global sports and outdoor industry over the last 20 years. James?
Thank you, Omar. Hello, everybody. Good morning. Okay, analysts. Okay. So lack of level of passion. So good morning, guys. [crosstalk] .
Thank you. Okay. Welcome. Warmly welcome everybody to Amer Sports Investor Day. I'm very excited to be here, and I mean, this is the first-ever Investor Day since our IPO last February. Okay. And as you saw in our recent latest press release this morning, we expect Amer Sports to deliver another very strong third quarter result across all three segments, led by continued exceptional growth from Salomon Soft Goods, and Arc'teryx acceleration. This is the track record we built up in a very still small period of time, only six quarters.
Obviously, we are in the seventh quarter since IPOs. I think the company is really doing a great job to deliver what we committed to the street, and we all have the good level of confidence to continue to carry on the same track record in the past six quarters. Okay.
So that's pretty good milestones for us. So I would say later on, in addition to our strong near-term performance, we also expect great things from our unique portfolio of premium sports and outdoor brands long-term. So we are, at the end of the meeting, before the end of the meeting, we are also happy to share our update long-term financial goals. Okay. So I know, I mean, today we are in Vancouver, the headquarters of Arc'teryx, our flagship brands, as you guys all are aware.
So Stuart and the other Arc'teryx executive team have planned an excellent and informative day for you guys. But before I turn it over to them, I'd also like to take a moment to share with you guys my perspective on the Amer Sports journey since I joined the company in 2020.
I think it's a very unique 5 year journey I have experienced in the sports industry in my careers. I mean, I'm very happy to report to all of you, we really made tremendous milestones and successful stories in the past 5 years. First of all, obviously, we more or less more than doubled the size of the business to over $5 billion in 2024. Based on that, we also built up, made our major three brands, Arc'teryx, Salomon, and Wilson, exceed $1 billion in 2023, and Arc'teryx brands achieved $2 billion in 2024, which is more or less four times bigger than in 2019.
It's a tremendous achievement in the past 5 years. On top of that, we really strengthened our direct-to-consumer business substantially, and now direct-to-consumer channels represent more or less 50% of Amer Sports business versus only 15%, 1/5, in 2020.
Right now, the company, the group, is operating approximately 550 owned retail stores globally. Another big story is all about China. We really accelerated our business in China markets, and by the end of last year, Amer China represented one quarter of the whole group of sales. You know, I mean, 5 years ago, it's less than 10%. Obviously, last but not least, we had a very successful IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in February 2024.
Beyond this, okay, we also executed a second capital raise at the end of last year, which helped to significantly reduce company debt leverage. Okay. These are pretty much the five major achievements in the past 5 years. How we do that? Okay. I will call out four major measures to help us to achieve these kind of milestones.
First, okay, so I always say, okay, the portfolio brand we own, there's one distinguished advantage, or I will say competitive edge we own. It's all about the products, so products is always the root of our brands, so in the past 5 years, we have been heavily investing in high-technical, innovative product pipelines so that we can always distinguish ourselves from peers by consistently offering the best technical and design products to satisfy, not only satisfy, and to lead the consumer needs in defined sports segments. This is obviously the competitive edge the group and our brands own, and obviously, Arc'teryx is the role model for this.
So later on, the Arc'teryx team will give you a more detailed introduction throughout the day about how we create the very compelling, innovative product pipelines in-house so that make the brands become one of the most distinguished, favorable brands in outdoor segments. Second, I think it's also something I always mention in our roadshow before IPO. The major unlock for our business is coming from the change of our business models. So we really make a big change after acquisition.
We really make a big change from our business model, from a matrix management structure, to what we call the brand direct operation models. Now, the brand CEOs in the company own full responsibility and accountability for whole brand business results and end-to-end value creations, which also includes product innovation, design development, brand marketing, go-to-market strategy development and implementations, and relevant sourcing management.
So in our portfolio, each brand is unique. So there's no one-size-fits-all model that can apply across portfolios. So group functions, as you guys also know, are acting as enablers to support brands to deliver the best business outcomes. This is the most critical change we have made for us to unleash the brand potential in the markets. So that's the fundamental base for us to make the successful story for Amer Sports in the past 5 years. The third one, I still want to raise hands, the successful story we made in China, starting from Arc'teryx, followed by Salomon and Wilson Tennis 360s. Our business in China today is 10 times bigger than we acquired the company in 2019.
We have built up the most advanced retail and marketing operation infrastructures and the best team in China markets with strong digital and supply chain backbone to support commercial activities there. So today, Arc'teryx has become the number one outdoor brand in China markets since 2024, and Salomon is becoming the fastest-growing outdoor sneaker brand in China right now, outperforming other major sneaker brands, including some rising new competitors in China markets.
So this is the cornerstones for the group in the past 5 years to help us to make a successful story in the world. Last but not least, I still want to enhance one important matter. So no matter how effective business, how effective or efficient business strategy you build up, it's all about execution, quality executions. So quality execution coming from what? Coming from the organization, coming from people.
I also will be very proud to say we have assembled most innovative and talented leadership teams across the portfolios. We incentivize them, have a very good incentive mechanism to motivate our people to maximize the long-term brand value creations. 80% of our top management teams are new to the organizations and have joined the company since 2020. We are still the new team, but we are very committed for our future. This is the kind of five-year past journey for us. I still want to mention one more thing. We made a great story, but we still believe our brands are truly in the early stage of growth.
Our top three largest brands are still small to medium players in the sporting goods markets. They all have relatively lower brand awareness in key markets, including Arc'teryx in the United States and Europe, Salomon in North America, and Wilson in China. So there are still big runways for us to unleash the potential for these brands in the future if we can really amplify our brand's awareness and equity in these kind of important markets. Secondly, I think we also see a very strong commitment from the management team.
Given the successful models we've built, the management team has a very high level of confidence to continue to implement, define the strategic pillars with high-quality outputs so that a company double-digit growth pattern can be well secured for the coming 5 years. And last, I will say, okay, we will continue to develop and elevate our overall organization capability and capacity to support our future development needs.
So these are kind of things I also want to enhance in front of you guys. I mean, because you are great and understand the investors, and you really like to understand how we want to move forward in the future. Before I turn the stage over to our Arc'teryx CEO, Stuart Haselden, I still like to take this opportunity to thank you, thank all the Arc'teryx executive teams here.
Thank you for your great efforts and the contribution to creating such an incredible business journey for Arc'teryx brand and the exceptional leadership from Stuart, and also really appreciate your preparation and support to make this event more impactful for our investment community today. So with that, it's my pleasure to introduce Arc'teryx CEO, Stuart Haselden.
Thank you very much. Okay. Welcome to North Vancouver. It's great to have everyone here and excited for this day. I've been looking forward to it for a while. As you heard the story from Omar, we had done a version of this for the board last year and immediately thought, "Wow, this would be a great format to share with investors," and so you're going to see a version of it today, and you've seen the agenda. It's a great agenda. You're going to get to meet the team. I'm excited for that in particular.
You're going to hear the details of our story. I did want to just begin also with acknowledging that we're meeting today on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples, and so this is a tradition or practice we have in Canada to acknowledge the Indigenous community in that manner, so I'm going to get us going.
I'll have some introductory remarks, and then we'll dive into the more sensitive discussions with each of the areas, and I'm old school, so I'm going to use my notes. I've been in the business for 25 years in the industry, I should say, and I've been a part of some great brands and some good growth stories. Arc'teryx is special, and I hope you'll get a deeper understanding of that today. It's a unique brand with a unique market position. We do not see a direct competitor for Arc'teryx in how we're positioned.
We span at least three distinct market segments. We are the pinnacle, the outdoor market. We compete and win share in the luxury and premium outerwear segment, and we are entering and taking share in a new way in the broad athletic footwear and apparel market, so it creates a very large TAM for us.
The potential for this brand is large. And we're going to talk today about targets. We're going to talk about a $5 billion, five-year goal to reach that number in top-line sales by 2030. The potential of this brand is well beyond that. It's a compelling growth story. And the word I would use to describe it is structural. So we'll be able to articulate the building blocks of how we will build the business over the next several years across channels, geographies, and categories.
And again, we still see this as the early innings of the potential for Arc'teryx. And again, the team that you're going to hear from today, these are seasoned veterans. Many of them have built brands that are multi-billion in scale, so not rookies. And I view it as really an all-star team. So I think you will as well. Okay. Next slide.
So a little bit about where we began, the origin story of Arc'teryx. And so some of you may know this. I'll share a bit. Just it's important context for where we are today even. So we were founded by two climbers, one really good climber named Dave Lane and his business partner, Jeremy Guard. Dave was the engineer. He built the first harness that Arc'teryx produced in his basement. He is a passionate climber and was a figure in the '80s and '90s in British Columbia in opening the sport. And he opened many routes across British Columbia. Again, he was the engineer. Jeremy was more the brand visionary, the business leader who helped partner with Dave to really create Arc'teryx as we know it.
They were the two of them together, the tension that existed between them has really been noted as what really made Arc'teryx possible, that either of them on their own couldn't have really created the brand as we know it. And so Dave's passion and how he built that first harness to solve a problem, to create a product with a solution that he couldn't find in the market is really at the very heart of the company even today.
And so that uncompromised manner in which we design products for the mountain athlete, for the mountain sports that they love is really very much who we are. I've gotten to know Dave. He's still around here. He's 66 now and still climbing at a high level. And I saw him at the beginning of the summer.
We went climbing together in Squamish, and he had just gotten back from Greece where he'd been climbing for six weeks. And he's worked with us over the last 3 years on a couple of different projects. So it's been great to have him in the business and to hear his feedback on what we're doing and the validation that he's offered us and some sharp criticism as well. So he's not a shy guy. But many of the people that Dave recruited are still with us. And so in our design center today, you can find folks that have been here for 25 years who helped build these products in an uncompromised way aimed at solving problems for the mountain athlete. And oftentimes, it's themselves.
And so our design team is composed of world-class athletes across all the disciplines that we focus on, which creates a very unique design process where they're building products. Our design center looks more like a factory floor than a design studio. But they're building products. There's stuff everywhere. They're taking it on a mountain. They're beating it up. They're breaking it. They're coming back to the design center, and they're improving it. They're iterating on it. So this is part of the secret sauce.
And that focus on solving problems for the mountain athlete is central and seminal to our identity. And it is what creates the appeal of Arc'teryx. And so if we fast forward to the current chapter of the business in the last 5 years, I would say, we have continued to build on this position as the pinnacle outdoor brand in the world.
In 2021, we declared a vision that was aimed at this specifically to lead the world in climb, snow, and trail products for the mountain athlete everywhere. Embedded in that vision was the focus on the mountain athlete, the focus on climb, snow, and trail. This importantly enabled our teams to say no to things. We were, at that time, making flannel shirts and dresses and lots of things that didn't fit within that definition and that vision. It enabled us to divest ourselves of things that didn't fit within that vision. That continues to be the case. It's an important part of how we operate the company.
That authenticity of focusing on the mountain, I am more convicted than ever that that is what is creating the appeal of the brand. The world does not need Arc'teryx to make athleisure products. The appeal of our brand is that we are focused in a disciplined way, in a committed way to making these performance products. And as we have expanded aggressively in China, I believe very deeply that that is part of our success and that that is part of the appeal to our Chinese guests the same way it is in North America, Europe, other parts of Asia.
Yeah. Okay. Next slide. And this is really aiming at that exact point. So the authenticity that is a central part to our identity is really how we earn the trust of our customers. And the broad appeal that we have is not only to folks who are hanging off the side of a mountain, but it's to folks who are never going to see a mountain.
But the appeal of the brand is such that they still want that bulletproof hard-shell jacket just to keep them dry as they work their way across midtown traffic. So it is central and integral to who we are. Next slide. Okay. So inside the company, my teams heard me say this a lot. I see Arc'teryx on a journey, and we're now at the end of the second phase and entering the third phase to become a truly global brand. The first phase started really when the consortium of investors led by ANTA took the company private in 2019.
And you heard James describe the brand direct strategy that emerged. That was the investment thesis that dismantling the old matrix structure that Amer had operated and creating these stronger autonomous brands would create more agile businesses that could really capture and deliver the potential of the brands.
A part of that was recruiting new leaders. As you heard James mention as well, in the last 5 years, we've recruited a lot of new leaders into the company. That's been an important part, not without its own challenges, but an important part of how we have created this new direction under the brand direct strategy. The second phase for Arc'teryx has been from 2020 to 2024, the vertical transformation, the D2C transformation.
To take the company from 80% wholesale distribution to 80% direct-to-consumer was a monumental effort and remarkable in its own right, and the success of which has been the catalyst for our accelerated growth trend. We've always been a great product company. In this phase, we became a great retailer. That is the difference in the trajectory of our business.
Now, as we've largely completed that transformation, we now turn our attention to growing globally as a truly global brand, creating greater consistency in how we execute, investing in a stronger brand voice around the world, and also investing in the infrastructure, supply chain technology, as well as the structure of our teams that will enable us to continue to scale. Culture. You hear a lot of companies talk about this. I was just in New Zealand, and I was in Auckland, and I met with one of the legends of the All Blacks, Ian Jones.
I don't know if there's any rugby fans in the room. But the All Blacks are arguably the greatest sporting franchise of all time. And it's a country of five million people that dominates the global rugby scene. And I was intrigued to learn more in the homeland there of the All Blacks.
There's a museum that's an experience that Ian actually manages, and he took us through it. The theme that came out over and over again in his talk in describing how the All Blacks have achieved their great success is culture, is that the culture of the team is more important than the individual. It was informative, instructional, and it validated, I think, our focus on building culture here at Arc'teryx.
For a growth company, culture is critical. As we were in the early parts of this D2C transformation, we were struggling with how do we convey the message of who we are to recruit talent, how do we compete and secure the best talent in the market. Delaney Schweitzer, who is unfortunately not here today, her daughter's getting married on Saturday. You'll hear from her in a video later.
But she made a comment of, "We need to start a movement." And what was embedded in that comment was, "If we are creating something that's bigger, that has purpose, and a part of that is the culture of the company, it'll make it easier for us to attract the very best and to retain them and to grow them." And so we invest in culture and leadership development for everyone in the company at all levels.
And this is an important part of how our growth story has been sustained. In order to attract the amount of people and integrate them into the company in an efficient way, we need to have a very strong culture. And it's something we invest in intentionally. And I'll mention next week, we're hosting in Vancouver our annual leadership summit. We'll have 300 leaders from around the world that are coming to Vancouver.
We do this every September. All of our store managers and all of our director and above leaders and it's three days of not only understanding what the business is, but really leaning into our culture, strategic priorities, so you're going to hear the deep dive on each of these from the leaders in each of these respective areas today. You've heard about these as we've shared the overarching business strategy for Arc'teryx in the past.
Our investment in footwear has been a big success. We began that in 2021 and 2022 with the new office that we established in Portland. You're going to hear from Renee Augustine today, our new GM, and this year, we have established a business unit inside the company, speaking to the structure that we need to create to continue to scale. That's emblematic of that future.
And so you'll hear from Renee, and excited to hear more of the details on our great footwear business. Veilance. Veilance is not a new concept. Veilance was created over 10 years ago as a vehicle to leverage the know-how and the technical excellence of our performance products into city apparel, everyday lifestyle apparel. And so we're excited for this business.
We've likewise created a new business unit around Veilance, recruited a new leader, Marissa Pardini, who you'll hear from later today, recruited new design talent, Ben Stubbington, someone I worked with previously. So we're really bullish on Veilance and the potential for this business into the future. Excited for you to hear more about it today. Women's. We've talked about this on the call as we have footwear in particular. It's a fast-growing category.
We really view women's in many ways as the deep end of the pool in terms of the potential growth within the apparel category, and we're excited at the momentum and the traction we're gaining by expanding the assortments and the women's-only designs that Katie and team have brought to market, so you'll hear from Katie Becker around our women's business as well, so really exciting area for us also, and then circularity.
You'll hear from Kyle Wood, who leads our circularity effort inside the company. We launched ReBIRD in 2021 as our branded care and repair program. It's been really successful, and why we're excited about this is that it's something that's personal for us. As folks who are passionate about the mountains, live in British Columbia, preserving the environment is preserving what we love.
From a business standpoint, our DTC footprint gives us a platform to really bring this concept to our customers or our guests directly. Most of our competitors in the industry don't have an 80% owned distribution model. Because we have this, we've created this unique point of engagement with our guests, which is resonating around the world. As you visit our stores in China, in Australia, in Europe, and all across North America, this is an important way in which we're engaging with our guests.
We have been working for the last 3 years on more circular technology and designs. I'll be in New York next week announcing an exciting new evolution of our circular design efforts. And we'll be able to share all those details with you today. Suffice it to say, we're super excited about what we're going to unveil. Okay. Growth and transformation.
I mentioned that I view our growth story, the word I would use is structural, and what I mean by that is we can break down the building blocks of how we're growing across channels, across geographies, and across categories in a way that is very objective and measurable. There's not a lot of hope in this plan. There's a lot of substance, and so as we look at our channel growth plans, we're looking to double our store count from around 150 stores, brand stores this year to over 300 or approaching 300 by 2030.
We see the potential for our brand stores globally at five to 600. So we're not yet in the next 5 years; we'll begin to approach the halfway point of what our full brand potential is from a store rollout standpoint. E-commerce business in North America is 39% today. It's not a small business. It drafts off of our store expansion. Where we open a new store, we see our e-commerce business increase. Importantly, it's also part of how we drive brand awareness. We are just getting started in the United States. Part of the focus we've created has been on brand awareness. You'll hear more from Karl Aaker around this in a bit.
We focus on New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, as you might imagine, and where we've invested with increasing our store footprint, increasing our brand marketing investments. We've seen our brand awareness follow, and we've seen strong results. We're confident we have a really successful algorithm that will continue to show an accelerating trend in the United States. This is an important market for us. As a Canadian brand, everyone knows us here in Canada.
It's sort of the hometown, the home market for us. You go to Whistler, I'd say I'd argue about a third of the folks on the mountain are going to be in Arc'teryx. And that's pretty much true across Canada. We enjoy that strong brand awareness. The US is more competitive, and that's a big focus for us to overcome. From a region standpoint, kind of along those lines, we see an accelerating trend in North America and Asia-Pacific. Asia-Pacific has been our fastest-growing region, really incredible numbers.
The acquisition of our Korea franchise partner opens the door for us to invest in Korea in a new way. You'll hear more about Korea from Ken Lee, our APAC leader, a little bit later. But it's a fantastic outdoor market that we're just scratching the surface on now. We have a great business in China.
Given how fast that business is growing, we do expect to see growth rates moderate in our China business, which over the next 5 years, we'll see a very balanced picture regionally between China and North America in particular. We expect those businesses to be about the same size by 2030. And Europe remains a fantastic opportunity. We only have 12 brand stores in Europe today. So again, really just getting started, huge potential there. And from a category standpoint, we've already hit on the priorities around footwear, women's, Veilance.
Those investments, building out the strategies around those product categories, creates the building blocks, if you will, the structural growth in our comp so that we're not only opening new stores, entering new geographies, we're building the business momentum within the stores that we already are operating. Next slide. Yeah. So the opportunity ahead, really exciting.
As I've mentioned, we're focused on this $5 billion number into 2030. Again, that's not the end of the story. The potential for the brand beyond that is significant. Structural growth and leadership, proven track record, really what I would call an all-star team that I'm excited for you to meet today, and with that, I think we should get started and dive right into the next part of the agenda. We're going to hear from Katie Becker on our design vision.
Interesting music choice. Thank you. Okay. Just teeing this up real quick. First off, my name is Katie Becker, and I am the Chief Creative Officer here at Arc'teryx. I like to say that I have the best job not only here, but in the industry. You're going to hear from others today. They're going to say they have the best job too.
We debate this all day long. But since I'm going first, I get to say it first. I've been here for five and a half years leading the charge of the creative team and the strategic initiatives that Stuart talked about up there. I'm really excited because, obviously, product creation is embedded into every single one of those. So I've been in this industry my entire career, and I like to think that Arc'teryx is the best brand in the industry. I've always thought that. The first time I was introduced to Arc'teryx was back in 1998. It was at the SIA, the Snowsports Industries America Trade Show. I was in the snowboard industry. I was making big, baggy, bold, printed products. It was a fun time. It was crazy.
The last day of the show, I would always go walk around and just see what else is happening out there. I remember stumbling across this little tiny booth, and there was a jacket on a pedestal, and it was kind of ergonomically set. It was really unique. It was simple. It was clean. It was modern. It was monochromatic. It was very different. It was really disruptive in the industry. As I went in there, the people that were in there were just so excited about what they made. They started telling me everything they were doing. They had invented a new material with Gore. It's called GORE-TEX Pro, invented here with Arc'teryx.
They had waterproof zippers, never, ever been seen before, created with Arc'teryx and YKK. They had micro seams. Everything about it, ergonomically designed, was disruptive. It was so unique in the industry. I remember that being a game changer. It was the brand that everybody in design, anybody who was obsessed with products, would always go every year to get into the Arc'teryx booth to see what was happening there. So it was pretty cool. That way of making hasn't changed. It's actually still the heartbeat of the brand today.
It was Stuart was talking about, Dave Lane, Jeremy Guard, the whole team here. That way of making and that soul is still here. Super excited. You're here in Vancouver. You're at our offices. We have our design center across the Street. Unfortunately, we can't get everybody over there. I've got a video to show you that just kind of shows a little bit about how we create and how we're set up here. Arc'teryx began in a garage in 1989. First thing we made, harnesses.
That led to making packs, which led to making jackets, and so on and so forth. But it all started with harnesses. Over the next three and a half decades, we made lots of them, and each one was better than the last. The Vapor. And we came up with Warp. The Warp did go through a few generations. This was the Gen 3. Hey, we could maybe. I can't do that. Still have the monocoque construction.
No spread and no stitch cost. Yeah, see? A lot of harnesses. So how do we actually make a harness? It's complicated. That's Tom. He and his team look far into the future. And there, they come up with an idea. Mike joins Tom to find a way to implement this new idea. Together, their goal is to create a new platform. The platform is the foundation of any harness.
As you can imagine, making a new platform isn't easy. After rounds and rounds of paper crumpling, it's time to make a prototype. Here, it's worth noting that our harness platforms come from iterations on our patented Warp technology. Warp technology is. Okay, so our lawyers would freak out if we showed you exactly what Warp is, but simply put, it allows us to change the shape of the webbing while maintaining full strength.
Okay, so back to the prototype. Our designers don't just make one. They make this many. Why do they make so many? Because we break a lot of things. Also known as testing. We do a lot of tests. So testing starts with fan favorites like this one, the pull test. And this machine pulls hard. How many kilonewtons is that, Bill? 15. So it'll hold like a midsized car. Yes. Nice. Now it's safe to go outside.
Okay, full disclosure. I skipped a bunch of steps where Mike uses laser cutters, then the pattern stitcher, and does this really cool move. But we could be here a while. Let's just get outside. This is where two of our advantages come in. In 45 minutes, we're on some of the best climbing routes in the world. And secondly, our designers aren't just designers. They're also climbers. And they climb with our world-class athletes like Jordan and Jonathan.
That means we can do this over. This is not quite right. And over. This feels a little bit too soft. And over. And over again. Good effort. Thanks. This really feels like it's it. Okay, cool. But that's not it, though. Hi, I'm Anna. I'm a pattern maker. Anna has to figure out how to make this one perfect harness perfect a thousand times.
We essentially help designers to take apart their units and recreate individual pieces that can be made production-friendly, and then it goes to ARC'One, our manufacturing facility. Here, we figure out how to manufacture everything, and once that's done, our new harness is approved, validated, and manufacturable, so we're done, right? Just want to change a couple more things. It goes to Mike, and then ARC'One, back to Anna. I know he had an idea of, and ARC'One again.
We should break another one. A couple more things. We're just getting started again, but eventually, after all that, our new harness is in the field, and even though it has the most advanced tech possible, it still holds that exact same spirit that we had in that garage in 1989.
I love that video. If you go on YouTube and you look up Arc'teryx Obsessive Design, you'll see many other videos as well, all different product types. So I want to thank the brand team. They do an amazing job of that. And it's actually a true representation of how we create. It's really exciting. So Stuart talked about Dave Lane and the founder coming back 3 years ago.
He actually came in and just kind of started being a little grumpy about some of the product we were making. And so I challenged him to come in and actually make some stuff. So he's back in there, and he's innovating. He's working with some of his old buddy. He's also inspiring some of the new team as well. So the team as a whole consists of designers, makers, tinkerers, athletes, engineers. We have cut-and-sew experts.
We have pattern makers, and we have developers all sitting together, all working collectively on product. Not one person works on product. It's usually a collection of people. We are focused now. We've got a footwear team set up in Portland. Really excited about that. We've got a hard goods team, accessories team, an inline apparel team, and we have an Advanced Concepts team.
When I started, we had a city director, and we had a mountain director. As Stuart said, city is really focused in Veilance, and now this gives us an opportunity to really focus and be set up to get after mountain product. We have 17 people on the design floor that have been there for over 15 years. People come, and they stay. They love the way we make. We get to get out.
We get to actually experience the activities that we make for as well, and we also, as we're growing and evolving and bringing in new locations and we're getting into more product, the team is evolving. We've got a lot of new talent joining the team, and they're both inspiring each other. It's really cool to see them solving problems together, so we are evolving. We're becoming a global brand, and we're making product for 365 days a year. We're one team. We have multiple locations. The first one, obviously, being here in North Vancouver.
This is where we were born. The Coast Mountains are where we test our product. It's a harsh environment, and we couldn't make the jackets that we make anywhere else in the world, and like the video said, we also have Squamish, 45 minutes away, some of the best climbing in the world.
We added Portland four years ago. We started talking about footwear and how we wanted to evolve our product offering. And if we were really in the outdoor industry, we wanted to think toe-to-head, head-to-toe. And so we knew that opening up a creation office in Portland was where we needed to go. It is the epicenter globally of footwear.
That's where the talent is, and that's where we were going to open up an office. So Renee's going to talk about that a little bit more and how that's turned into a full business unit. We're really excited there. But that will be really focused on footwear and innovation. And then Tokyo. We opened up a Tokyo Creation Center about a year and a half ago. We're really excited about that as well. Tokyo is such an inspiring place for the design team around make and craft.
When I first mentioned that to some of the people on the team, I was a little nervous about what some of the people would think about opening an office there. They were all like, "Sign me up. I want to go do a stint there. I love it. It's creative. It's Innovative." The synergy between these teams has been amazing. Tokyo also gives us that reach to really focus on what we need to do to win in the mountains in APAC and China and looking at hot and humid as well. Again, 365 days a year focused on mountain. We build product with our athletes. I think a lot of brands say that, and I've been at brands in the past that say that. I think it's really different here.
We don't just build product for our athletes to go out and shoot campaigns and the newest product. They're actually embedded into our design process. They wear first-round protos, second-round, all the way to 13- and 14-round protos. We'll give an athlete a 50/50 jacket. It might be half in one material and half in another material, and they're out there crushing it, trashing product, but we don't always give them the finished piece, and we like to say that it's ready when they don't want to give it back.
It's time to commercialize it now, so like I said, the athletes, the pro community, search and rescue, best in the world at Arc'teryx, and they are embedded into this team. We even have four of our athletes that have transitioned into full-time design positions, and it's amazing to see them really be part of the team.
And the design team, we have a lot of quiet crushers right there that can get out and actually do the activities with our athletes. So when I came in, as we're evolving and growing and we had a lot of new people coming into the brand and into the design team, we wanted to make sure that people could get grounded in who we are quite quickly. So I created really four very simple design principles.
And these echo back to how we created that first harness. This isn't wavering. It's actually narrowing and focusing. So the entire design team is hyper-focused on these and obsessed with the details. These are guidelines. They're not rules for new people that come into the brand. So we also apply these to everything we make, whether it's footwear, it's harnesses, it's accessories, it's a new innovation, it's an inline product.
This is for the entire team. This is an evergreen approach to how we build product. First, our very first filter is it authentic? Should we, at Arc'teryx, make this product? We have a lot of ideas that we kind of come up with, and we actually kind of have to check ourselves and say, "No, we shouldn't make that. Let's not make it." We want to make sure it's authentic and that it's focused within climb, snow, or trail on the mountain. We want to engineer solutions to real problems, and our design needs to persist to stand the test of time. This way of creating. It's unique to Arc'teryx. We know we can make a harness in a day. We can make a waterproof breathable jacket.
We can make a down jacket. We can go right out here and test it. A nd then we can come back, and we can iterate and test and iterate and test as many times as we want. The second one is very important. Is it functional? We're solving problems, and we want to make sure we're solving the right problem. We start with the needs, and then we drive with purpose. And we prototype, we test, we validate, we prototype, we test, we validate. I'm going to say that over and over again because it's a pretty cool way of making.
And our connection to the athlete and the user and our own intuition is really important as we're thinking about function. We never compromise. We push to advance materials, construction, and manufacturing processes. Function is what drives the value of our product and our brand. Beautiful. This is really important as well. Our aesthetic is clean, and it's minimalist.
Beauty is achieved when all resistance has been removed and the pure form remains. We use beauty to host new ideas and evolve technology. We keep stripping away everything that's not necessary. We'll go into a design review, and I'll ask somebody, "Do you really need that cut line? What is that function? What is it for?" and we go back, and we keep stripping it away. That alpha jacket that I saw back in 1998, it wasn't the function that drew me to it at first. It was actually the beauty. and beauty carries innovation forward. Fourth is responsible. This is a big one. Our products need to be built for longevity, for durability, and repairability.
We're committed to circularity, and through innovative materials, construction, and end-of-life solutions, we're obsessed here. This is our approach to everything that we make. You saw there with ARC'One that designers have the ability to go to the factory and actually see all the product that's returned, every single thing that's wrong, and they obsess on that. That's part of how we actually build better product into the future. We've got ReBIRD. At retail, we're also finding out what's coming back, what needs to be repaired, how quickly can we change, how quickly can we check and adjust.
With ReBIRD as well, part of that being born was we have a lot of people that bring product back. They don't want to return it and get 30% off on something new. They actually want us to repair it. We have a cult-like following, and people want to keep their gear. They can tell you where they bought it, how much they bought it for, where they bought it, and all the experiences that it has had. My husband has a Gamma MX 2000 jacket that he keeps having repaired, and it's really old, but he loves it, and he will not let go of it.
We all have people that we know within the brand that are like that that covet their old product. It's pretty exciting. We think of our product as an investment to people, and we want to make sure that they can keep it in play as long as possible. On top of those four filters and principles, we have what's called our Design DNA. This is a Visual DNA, and it's also really important. There's deliberate proportions, balanced symmetry. We actually design product in a 360-degree way.
We don't design a flat front and a flat back. Every designer has a body form right there at their workstation and a cutting table, and we really design in this 360-degree approach. And we're also obsessed with the inside out. If you take our jackets or any of our product and you turn it inside out, it's just as beautiful on the inside. And color. Color is really important.
One of our main color designers has also been with the brand for 18 years. We do have some interesting color names, but we're also known for our color and the depth and the monochromatic. It's inspired by the mountains around us, and we also look at safety as a really important thing. So we're building a consistent DNA across fall, winter, and spring, summer as we expand, and also that 365 days a year.
So that same care and attention we took to that alpha jacket, we're taking it to everything we make, even including footwear. So then there's one final filter, and that's always in every final design or proto review is if we take the bird off, would you know it's Arc'teryx? If you don't, we go back to the drawing board. So our activity vision or positioning, Stuart talked a little bit about this, with being really clear that Veilance is that city expression. It gives us this opportunity to really hone in on the activities that we want to focus on around climb, snow, and trail. Our environment inspires everything we make.
We're experts in building for our environment, and we have access to test the products right here the day we make it. We have a sharp point of view, a pinnacle within each one of these activities that also gives us insights that we can take down into the others. And we know that these sports are evolving. We know that the athletes are evolving, and we know that the product constantly needs to evolve with them.
We always say we're never done, and we're always looking at new insights and how these activities are evolving, how our athletes are evolving. We're solving problems for them. We're solving problems for ourselves, and we're looking at it a full 365 days a year across climb, snow, and trail. So System of Dress. We were known for items, and that was great. But as we grow and as we have this D2C opportunity, we get to show up. We get to pick the product that shows up.
We don't have a wholesaler dictating where the line is going. We don't have to make five different beta jackets for different wholesalers. We get to decide, and in that, it gives us the opportunity within climb, snow, and trail to really look at what's needed, what's the product needed from the outside in and from the inside out. Now we can obsess every detail, how the product nests, how it functions, how it works together, so for climb, we're really focused on safety, durability, and mobility.
For snow, it's all about this concept of hot, cold, repeat, earning your turns. What's that ecosystem? What's that thermal regulation needed, and for trail, we're focused on lightweight solutions. Our athletes are going faster and further. We've got athletes here that do the Stein Valley Traverse, a part of it that's supposed to take three days. They're doing it in a day.
What's that kit they need? How are they evolving? How are we evolving with it? And we can look at that whole system as one. So full kits, full system of dress. Okay. So that's the evergreen approach to how we create product today and how we've always created product in my mind. And I just wanted to ground you. If you're here, I'm really excited.
One of the areas we have for product is some of our archive product. And this product that we have were really disruptive, innovative game changers throughout this timeline. And so we're excited to show that. We've got Darren here. He's our. I call him the librarian, but he's actually an archivist, and he's been with the brand a long time. But I just wanted to ground us in some of this.
And starting in 1989 with Rock Solid and that harness that Dave Lane made, he made it out of seatbelt material and aluminum from airplanes. It was so overbuilt. It was unbelievable. And that kind of created this little cult-like following. And then comes Arc'teryx. And in 1992, they created the Vapor harness, this 3D molded harness. Everything was patterned flat before that.
Now we were creating three-dimensional products. And Dan Jackson, who actually worked on that with Dave and a couple of the other guys, is still here on the design team today. Now he's obsessed with digital, but he's still here making and creating. And kind of a fun fact there is they actually made that harness, and they created that thermal molding out of a pizza oven. So very inventive. And then from that, they started looking at packs.
The shoulder and the waist belt, we could actually 3D form that too. This is all new to the entire industry born right here. The Alpha jacket, I talked about that. The Vision, it's a laminated synthetic insulation. You think of our Atom jacket. A lot of people have, sorry, hanging synthetic insulated pieces. It started here. You used to have to put that just like down into a baffle construction, but they figured out a way to laminate it to a scrim and let it hang naturally. The Alpha glove, first-ever GORE-TEX Pro glove articulated, never been done before. Your gloves actually leaked before that. LEAF in 2004.
The Special Forces started looking to Arc'teryx and the Alpha jacket and wanting our garments in these harsh environments. We started actually creating product for that. And then the Alpha Pack lamination, putting it on the outside of a pack, making it truly waterproof pack. And then we started making LEAF packs that were actually submersible. So again, you can see how this is—we call it kind of like this concept of surprise and delight. You never know what we're going to do or where we're going to innovate. It's not a linear line here.
And then Warp Strength Technology, you saw the video there on the harness in 2008. And then we got into footwear. The Acrux FL is also out there. It was a first approach shoe with a removable GORE-TEX liner. And then the Alpha Belay jacket, which is also out there. It's a baffle down construction where it's a box construction where you have no cold spots.
Then we also have the Alpha SL 30 pack, which some of you might have seen that we launched this year. It's a lightweight, repairable, no glue pack that we also have out here. This is just a little bit of a timeline. Alex is going to come up here after, who is the head of Advanced Concepts, to kind of talk you through a little bit about where we're going and what we're doing now. I also just wanted to let you guys know that Fast Company just ranked us as one of their top 10 workplaces for innovators. That's really exciting. It's not just in design. It's in every aspect that Stuart talked about earlier. It's marketplace, it's brand, it's product, it's all of it coming together. It's really exciting.
As a collective, we're always evolving, and we're always finding a better way. As we grow, creative thinking and innovation is happening across all functions, all initiatives. We are all problem solvers here at Arc'teryx. We're all passionate about the evolution of this great brand, and we're honoring our founding spirit. We celebrate the process. We're never done. We're always creating a new path. And that's kind of my part of it. And with that, I'm going to pass it over to Alex. So again, who's going to tell you more about what we're doing in advanced concepts and some of the future product? So thank you.
Morning, everyone. As you can probably expect, I'm now going to talk to you about how I actually have the coolest job at Arc'teryx. I get to work with these amazing projects. My name is Alex. I lead the advanced concepts team. I wanted to start by just sharing a story with you of our recent Climb Academy in Chamonix. We went there to demonstrate our new MO/GO Hike Assist project, which you probably have heard of. I like to call it Robot Legs.
We went there and hosted a clinic where participants could try and do a trek with our guided ambassadors. As we started the day, one of the ambassadors that we had hired came up to us. His name is David Sanabria. He has been an ambassador for many years, and he's a mountain guide, and he's been dedicating his entire life to the mountains. He wanted to approach us to share a story about how a few years ago he was caught in an avalanche, and our Micon LiTRIC Avalanche airbag saved his life.
So obviously, this was something that really touched us and is something amazing to hear from somebody who's so dedicated to the mountain, has been an ambassador of our brand for so long. So this guide actually was one of the guides for the trek with the MO/GO. As the day went on, he was really impressed by this MO/GO innovation and asked us if he could try it. So of course, we said yes. He shared with us that he had been having knee pain and was worried that his guiding days were coming to a close pretty soon.
As soon as he put on the MO/GO device, he got a bit emotional. He felt really supported by the device and actually immediately reduced his knee pain. He shared with us that he thought that with this innovation, he could be guiding until he was 75.
Think about that for a moment. He was able to use our innovations to not only extend and increase his ability to work, but also his sense of purpose, his identity, and his contribution. This is the value of our innovation portfolio. We're not just making products. When technology changes lives this profoundly, we're not creating customers. We're creating loyalty. We're creating continued authenticity and lasting trust in our brand. So these are the kinds of projects that we get to work on in Advanced Concepts.
We're solving problems on multiple ends of the spectrum, both at the point of extreme need, like LiTRIC in avalanche conditions, as well as creating access to the mountains for things like MO/GO. So who is Advanced Concepts? Katie talked a little bit about our team in general. We sit on the design floor with the creative team.
We're a team of problem-solving material scientists, engineers, futurists. All those original designers, including Tom that you saw on the screen, sit within the advanced concepts team so they can continue to apply that way of thinking and remove timelines from their innovation work. We really are there to solve problems until we get it right.
We also have some amazing emerging talents, such as Canadian Olympian and professional mountain climber, Alannah Yip, who happens to have a mechatronics engineering degree. We sit here in North Vancouver, but we take a global lens to our innovation work. Our goal really is to drive disruptive innovation at the intersection of mountain athlete needs and cutting-edge design materials and technology.
Beyond the two projects that I mentioned earlier, our pipeline of innovation concepts spans disruptive evolution, where we're continuing to tinker and improve on our products to groundbreaking big bets that really continue to position us as the undisputed leaders in the technical mountain performance space. We work on projects across snow, trail, and climb, summer and winter, hard goods, soft goods, and we play in areas in the physical realm, but also digital, as Katie mentioned as well.
The Alpha SL pack was something that we worked on earlier this year, as you probably heard, and that was a partnership with a local material manufacturer, Aluula. Those are some of the platforms that we're starting to deliver. We're excited to share a lot more in the coming months and years as well.
We're really focused on real problems, and we throw out the rulebooks when it comes to timelines. Our portfolio is really focused on pinnacle innovation to solve problems for the mountain athlete at the point of extreme need. It's really important for us to do that to maintain our strong credibility as the market leaders, and it's even more essential as we scale and grow and reach more guests. Katie mentioned the professional category.
This is an area that the Advanced Concepts team leads the research and design for. So this includes mountain guides, search and rescue, special operation forces. The reason this is important is that advanced innovation and technology for the extreme user and extreme environments, and those innovations can have a halo effect into our inline product.
We also do innovation work within the strategic priorities, as you heard from Stuart earlier today, including circularity, where we're working on product innovation and materials that exceed the expectation around performance but have no compromise to the environment, and that will help us unlock long-term value for the customer. You'll hear more about that later today from Kyle, and stay tuned, of course, in the coming days. We're very excited for more information in this space.
So this world-class expertise that is within Advanced Concepts and our deep historical context into the brand allows us to drive value through our new exclusive material platforms, intellectual property, and even licensing our technology and patent portfolio. One example of this is the LiTRIC pack. Anyone who's doing an avalanche pack that is electronically triggered in the industry is having to license Arc'teryx technology to do that.
There's much more to come in this space. We are continuously building our IP portfolio, and this is something that will drive long-term value for our brand. I want to take us back to David's story, the Chamonix guide from earlier. This is really where innovation starts and ends in the mountains. The mountains and the mountain athlete are what really inspire us and inspire innovation. It's really the boundaries of human possibility in the mountain. That mindset has also trickled to customers and our guests.
They are trying to go faster and further in the mountains. So it's really important that we keep obsessing that pinnacle mountain athlete need and apply the same level of scientific rigor that we do to develop product as our mountain athletes do when they're trying to train for a big objective in the mountain.
This is why we are introducing a new concept called the Mountain Athlete Lab. This is not just four walls. This is really an approach. So it starts with the athlete on the mountain where we discover and test and prove cutting-edge technology, as Katie explained earlier. It's where we can really bring the lab to the mountains. So we can measure traction in different run conditions. We can measure the performance of a three-layer system in the backcountry. This is where we prove the innovation with the athlete first. That's always been core to our brand. To complement that, we're now building a space called the Mountain Athlete Lab where we're bringing the mountain into the lab.
This will be a physical space in the heart of our design center right across the Street where we'll be able to continue to test and iterate, but now we'll be able to do that in a lab environment as well. So we're able to do rapid in-house prototyping right next to the lab where we can visualize, test, and refine our designs. We can do materials tests in the same day in the same building to test the performance and durability and thermal properties of our innovations. This will really allow us to set a new standard for how we research and validate our products. We can make cutting-edge claims around movement and climb, which is an area that isn't really highly researched right now.
We can have breakthroughs around the space of women's unique physiology where there's also a lot of opportunity in the space and thermal comfort for a range of conditions. Being right next to the Coast Mountains is an advantage for us. Having this lab will now allow us to replicate global conditions, mountain conditions, extreme conditions so that we can test and run through hundreds of hours of athlete testing in one space to really achieve that high-performance standard.
We also have the proximity to our world-class athletes here where that collaboration on our core design approach is really part of our long-term success. That world-class expertise and our reputation for solving big problems at Arc'teryx means that we also get a lot of requests for amazing partners for outstanding opportunities. We can't always say yes. We have to be pretty choosy with the things that we do.
We want to remain a small core team of experts within Arc'teryx, but we know that powerful partnerships with the right collaborators allows us to unlock and accelerate opportunities within the innovation space. One of those is someone we all know, Gore, which is where we have a really strong partnership with them, allowing us to continue to deliver proprietary innovation with them on materials for the future. Another example you may have heard of this company, Apple.
We've been working with them as their outdoor industry partner for their spatial video content. So if you have an Apple Vision Pro at home, you can go on it right now and access Arc'teryx content in their built-in platform. You may also know Google came from a partnership or MO/GO came out of a partnership with Google. They came to us seven years ago.
So this has been a long time in the making for our expertise around how we can make product that's compatible with the human body and for movement. That is something they knew and identified we were the world-class brand in and has wanted to partner with us. So we've been iterating with them. And as you know, our proof of concept launched last year, one of Time's innovations of the year, Fast Company Design Awards, and was one of the highest audience gaining stories for us at Arc'teryx. This is just one example, but we work with the world-class academic partners such as MIT, where we're doing research and technology work on thermal performance for the future.
So these powerful partnerships really help us unlock new potential and accelerate delivery of breakthrough innovations, something that we'll continue to do, and we're excited to share more year-over-year as we introduce new partners to our collaborations. So a few things I want you to take away from this part around innovation is that innovation has always been part of our DNA, but we've taken meaningful steps at Arc'teryx to protect and scale that unique approach.
Our portfolio is really strong around the products that we've already launched, but there's a ton more in the pipeline that we're excited to share with you over the coming years, months, years, including some powerful partnerships that we've been cooking up. The Mountain Athlete Lab approach is another one I want you to take away. This is not just a space.
It's also a mindset, and it's really going to solidify our world-class capabilities in the outdoor product innovation space. These things are all core to our strategy and help us with our competitive advantage and further what's possible for the mountain athlete and beyond. Thanks for listening, and I think I'm the last person before coffee, but I'll invite Omar to come up to hear that.
Thank you, Alex. Okay, everybody, 20 minute break for coffee and washroom. We'll see you back here at 10:40 A.M. Pacific Time. Buddy, welcome back in person and online in the webcast. We can't get enough Katie Becker. You guys can't get enough Katie Becker. I'm going to turn the stage over to her to talk about a really important women's opportunity.
Hi again. Welcome back from the break. Again, my name is Katie Becker, and I am the Chief Creative Officer here at Arc'teryx. You heard me talk about creative earlier, and now I'm excited to talk to you about the women's strategy. I'm up here actually representing a collective of passionate people who work on the women's strategy. We meet every week. It's cross-functional, and there's a lot of momentum happening inside the brand right now around women's and obviously externally as well.
Another fun fact is in 1998, when I saw that alpha jacket at that trade show, there was a men's and there was also a women's, which is really cool, so this brand has actually been making Technical Apparel for women ever since then. Okay, women's. Women's is outpacing the brand. For Q2 year to date, we grew over 35% year-over-year across all regions and all channels. This is a strategic white space that Arc'teryx is focused on, and we are positioned to own. So the foundation is set, and we've seen impactful results, obviously globally.
And not just those numbers and those results, we're also seeing that swell happen on the mountains. At our events, we're seeing 50% of females showing up to that. Karl's going to talk more about that later, but that's extremely exciting for us. And around 45% of our global athletes right now are female. And in mountain towns, we're outperforming our regional averages. In Banff, open a store there, it's pretty amazing. And in Chamonix, the women's share is over 40%. It's amazing.
So we've come a long way, but we also like to say we're just getting started. So the brand team and the community, the design team, everyone, we're all fully aligned. Participation in the outdoor industry among women is growing. Across climbs, snow and trail, the areas that we focus on, which is great, and she's showing up in record numbers.
In 2024, more than half of American females participated in outdoor recreation. This is a record high. In trail running, we have never had near parity before in sub-ultras, and now we have 47% female participants. The climbing gym market is growing, and it's being led by women. It's almost 50% women right now. This is a game changer for us because we're not only winning in the mountains, we can win in these urban environments where there are climbing gyms.
We can reach her, we can connect with her, and we can build products for her. And in snow sports, it's approximately 45% right now as female participation, with a huge emphasis on freeride. And again, that's perfect for us. That's where we're positioned. So also another fun fact is that women are expected to account for 75% of discretionary household spending by 2028. That's a big deal.
The global women's TAM right now is at $256 billion, with the outdoor segment sitting at $48 billion. That's 19%. This is our target. We will win in the mountains. This is the soul of the brand. This is our competitive advantage. We aim to own a larger part of this part of the market than to go after anything else. We want to be authentic, and we want to be relevant.
As Stuart talked about, that mass active and luxury segment, they're crowded and they're generic. It's not where we're going to win. We're going to win on the mountain, and we don't need to deviate from this for women either. The brand halo we know will follow. It's following. That's okay. We still have an opportunity to continue to ground ourselves in the mountains.
Our guest profile, we are obsessed with our guests, and we want to make sure that we're focused on our core audience. The mountain athlete, that's where we gain a lot of our insights on how we actually create product. We're also looking to those mountain lifers and the weekend warriors. I mean, most of us who have a job actually are in those other two buckets, but we're just as relevant, and we want just as technical products.
We're all united by a purpose, the love of the mountains, and a passion for performance. Whether someone's pushing their limits, like Michelle Parker, one of our athletes, who's also a Red Bull athlete, she's amazing. We had the opportunity to go out and ski with her. It was interesting. She's very thoughtful and sweet. She helped pick up all of our skis as we're tornadoing down the hill.
But her idea of fun and serious fun might look different, but we all have an idea of what serious fun is, well. And we want to make sure that our product works for her, works for us, is technical, and it also looks stylish. All of our athletes keep saying, "Yeah, we want technical product, but we also want to look good." So we are aware of that, and we are actually creating product around that.
So we want to continue to lead with the mountains, and we know that that halo will come along. And we want to keep reminding everybody that we are going to continue to make product for the mountain everywhere. So we'll win with one unified approach across product. We want to go from adapted from men's and takedowns to truly obsessed with her needs. So we're not going to retrofit men's product.
We're going to actually do women's first innovation. Alex talked a little bit about that. We're really excited where we're going there, and the women's design team is all set up, obsessed. We've got people focused on climb, people focused on trail, and people focused on snow with a women's lens. So we're prioritizing performance, fit, and versatility. Not only do we have a regular fit, we've got a fitted fit, we've got a relaxed.
We're really trying to make sure that we can do everything there, and then from brand, from product-centric marketing to connective storytelling. When we only created items and we didn't have this D2C opportunity, we weren't building these full systems of dress. We were really having our storytelling focused on one item. Now we can actually tell a story about the whole kit. Also, the community, the activity, everything. The narrative can change.
We're weaving product into that full narrative. And then from marketplace, going from transactions to consumer experiences. What Stuart talked about, and Delaney is going to talk about later, is what's that experience? What's that connection? How are we using our retail platform and D2C to reach women in a different place? And the omnichannel experience is really important, and we want to curate it.
We want to make it intuitive. We want to make it personal for her. And actually, ReBIRD is a really great example of our connection with women as well. So for products, we're obsessed with her needs, and every detail is informed by female-specific insights. Our DNA stays true to Arc'teryx. It's ergonomic fit, clean lines, balanced proportions, but it's also feminine.
And those details that are really starting to come to life, and you're starting to see this women-specific DNA happening, but grounded in those hard lines. When we have some new designers in, they start kind of designing all these crazy rounded lines. And one of the things that I always say is, how can you take the harsh, sharp lines that we create, the technical way we build, and actually make it feminine?
And if you look at some of the bras and some of the tanks, the design team's really looking at celebrating and making your back beautiful. And how can we take these things and actually make it feminine? So there's a lot happening there. And then innovation, obviously grounded in climb, snow, and trail. It's going to be purposeful, beautiful, but always high-performing.
Like Alex said, we have a lot of females joining the Advanced Concepts team as well and really focusing in that area. We've got Alannah Yip, like she said. We also have Kat Drew, who's one of our top mountain runners embedded into the design team as well. Like I said before, the design team, we've got crushers throughout every activity. It's amazing to see them.
They're all really stylish. I'd like to say we're bringing style to the mountain. Next, we're going to lead with our strengths: hard shells, soft shells, and wind shells. This is her entry point to the brand. This is where we can win. This is our strength. This is where we are the most technical, the most pinnacle. We want to continue to double down on that and make sure that with fit, silhouette, we're covering that.
And then we want to build loyalty through a complete System of Dress. How does the product nest together? We're looking at color. We're looking at everything she needs from head to toe and from toe to head. We're looking at versatility, layering, and we want to make sure we're style-driven. And then we want to have the right product at the right time.
So we want to align to her preferences and her shopping journey, looking at what D2C, what wholesale partners, the whole journey, the community. How do we show up for her? Next around product is our product evolution, looking at our product line architecture. So 70% of the line, we want to make sure we ground in our core. Franchises like the Atom, the Beta, the Solano, they're all up over 40% year-over-year.
And the Gamma soft shells are up over 120% year-over-year. So we want to continue to perfect these foundational icons and drive volume as we grow consumer awareness. Consumer awareness, we don't need to deviate and keep making newness. Sometimes we actually need to double down on what we know and what we're known for and continue to bring that to her.
And we know we have opportunity in newness. We've been doing a lot of testing lately of new product, and it's very exciting. So right now, we're declaring that 30% of the line, we want to make sure that we're bringing that newness to her. An example of a great win there is the Clarkia pant franchise. It's up almost over 250%.
This was born from a passion on the design team, and it's become a cult-like following not only inside the brand, but also in the industry. We've got the Andessa jacket. It's going to be 20% of our women's snow line buy, and it's going to be the number one insulated hard shell in EMEA and North America. There's a lot of momentum happening with this newness.
At Fall 25, we have models like the Lucifer and Nia pant, the Emiress, the Alterra crop jacket. Later during lunch, I know you guys are going to do walkthroughs. We've got Ashley Anson here. She's our VP of Design for Women's, and she's going to be walking you through some of the new styles and just looking at those full kits. We're super excited there. Then color. Color's up around 40% year-over-year for fall winter 25.
And our goal for women's, the average revenue per model, we want it to grow to 150% by 2030. So we are bringing style to the mountain, but we always want to make sure that we ground it in our DNA. Brand, from product-centric to connective storytelling, we will lead with her voice and her story. We'll lead with authenticity. We have a commitment to our female mountain community. We're making sure, like I said, the athlete roster right now is at 45% today, and our majority of our athletes in the future will be female. By 2026, we will double our female athlete storytelling as well.
For awareness, our top-of-funnel spend continues to increase as we move towards 2030. And we're on a path to 70% of brand-led content centered around her by 2030. Karl's going to talk more about that later. So we also want to reframe what community looks like. We want to have a channel and a philosophy across all touchpoints. Again, D2C, wholesale, online events, everything have this unified touchpoint. We want to earn loyalty. We want to drive engagement. We want to establish a lasting relationship.
And we're really excited on the path that we're doing there now. So also the events and the academies, like I said earlier, 50% female attendance. These are mountain academies. So we have a powerful opportunity right now to invite her into our world and create meaningful connections to earn her loyalty. Our message is a unified brand product experience all centered around her. She's not just part of our audience. She is our audience. Our channel strategy is going to be a unified ecosystem built around our outdoor lifestyle. It's going to go from transactions to consumer experience.
Retail, D2C, it's our strongest brand platform. And like I said, this is our opportunity to really show up and show how we want to show up. It's going to be immersive, and we're really starting on that path now. We've got in-store experiences. We're building community. And 50% of our staff right now at stores is female. So digital and e-com, we've got a women's first landing page, marketing and content. We're personalizing product discovery to boost conversion, AOV.
We've got a seamless cross-channel experience. And with wholesale, we have elevated brand partners. We're going to where she's shopping. We've got a big plan coming there. And our brand storytelling is going to remain consistent no matter where she shows up. Marketplace principles. So these are guiding principles for the women's growth. First, authenticity. We lead with who we are.
We are a mountain brand, and we want to make sure at every touchpoint it actually reflects that. Stories and experiences matter. Storytelling, both in-store and online. We want to build brand affinity and keep her coming back. That's important. And inclusive and welcoming. Whether you're a crusher or you're new to outdoors, we want to make sure that you feel welcome to this brand. It's really important for us to make sure that we connect and bring new people in.
And then tune to her shopping journey. We want to tailor our assortments. We want to have immersive storytelling and smart tools like fit finders and product comparisons. So each region will drive their focus, but this will give us a grounding and a center point that everything shows up the same as.
We're weaving product, brand, and storytelling that's relevant to her and curating our marketplace for her as well. We're on track to grow the women's business overall around 25% contribution this year and almost 30% by 2023. We're going to double down on our investment in talent. We're going to expand our CRM. We're going to have consistent product innovation and newness, as well as doubling down on our core icons.
We had a leadership offsite back in January, and somebody was saying, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe we need to do a new Atom." And I was like, "I don't know if we need to do an Atom. I think we need to do a little test there." So I ended up giving 30 white Atom jackets to 30 different women two days before the event. And I said, "Hey, could you just wear this?
Just show up in this. Style it however you want. Just, can you show up?" And they're like, "Okay. That's weird." So anyways, people show up. Everybody styled it different. And it was really cool to see such a simple, beautiful Arc'teryx product show up in all different ways, people styling it different, and everybody feeling really proud of how they brought the product to life.
So that's a really important part with women is making sure that we're not only building the product, but we're showing it how she might want to see it in herself and showing up where she might shop. So we're all committed to building this not just product, but this brand experience and this market experience as well because we want to be the most pinnacle women's mountain brand in the world. And we want to bring her with us every step of the way. Thank you.
Who's ready to go for a run? We have some mountains back here. Good morning, everyone. My name is Renee Augustine, and I'm the General Manager of Footwear here at Arc'teryx. It's a privilege to be with you today. I'm going to stand. I've got these trail running shoes on, and I feel like I just want to bounce. There's some super critical foam in these shoes, and so I'm going to stand. I hope that's okay.
It's exciting to be here with you to share the exciting journey that we are on in footwear, where we're going to go next, and why we believe this is one of the most compelling growth opportunities for a brand at Arc'teryx. At Arc'teryx, everything begins with the simple, powerful belief that the mountains make us better.
Arc'teryx was born in the mountains. You've heard a lot about that today and founded on this idea that there's always a better way. That same ethos now drives our approach to footwear, where technical excellence meets the real-world demands of mountain athletes. Footwear, it's more than a product. It's a catalyst. It unlocks innovation, deepens our storytelling, and strengthens our connection with our consumers.
Footwear is, after all, the first touchpoint on the mountain, and so it's where performance truly begins. What began as a project has now evolved into a brand-defining category. Footwear is a natural extension of our brand and a powerful growth opportunity. It's one that we're leaning into with intention and belief because we believe that Arc'teryx is uniquely positioned to lead the future of mountain footwear.
Our credibility is forged through decades of technical mastery in the mountains, and our momentum in footwear is powered by innovative design and uncompromising standards. We're grounded in athlete insights, powered by a team of footwear-obsessed experts and guided by a sharp, authentic brand identity. What sets us apart, though, is our commitment to solving for the way mountain athletes are moving today. They're pushing into the environments where performance demands are the highest.
Since launching Arc'teryx-c reated footwear just 18 months ago, we've driven over $250 million in revenue, and for the past three quarters, footwear has delivered the highest growth rate across the brand, with this last quarter delivering plus 43%. More importantly, though, we've laid the foundation for sustainable, scalable growth, and we're ready to lead the next era of mountain footwear. We've been living in this golden era of mountain footwear.
Participation in trail running, climbing, and hiking is growing faster than the outdoor industry average, bringing in new audiences and really expanding the total addressable market in meaningful ways. Iconic races, athlete influence, and strong community engagement are really fueling this cultural boom. Trail running, in particular, is thriving at an intersection between sport, art, and social purpose. Trail running participation continues to rise, with a five-year average annual growth rate reaching 8% in the US.
Many road runners are making the transition to the trails, seeking an escape from maybe the rigid training structure of the road. The global trail running market is projected to reach over $12 billion by 2030, a clear signal of consumer engagement and growth. Last month, I had the opportunity to be in Chamonix for UTMB, one of the most iconic trail running events in the world.
What I saw was incredible. Yes, athletes, incredible. They're awe-inspiring, pushing the limits of distance and of verticality. But what really stood out even more this year was the atmosphere. Thousands of people lining the courses, not just watching, but living it. Fully geared up, ready to run, ready to hike, or simply just be a part of something bigger in the mountains.
This is more than a sport. It's a movement, and it's growing fast. Brands are responding by emphasizing aesthetic and emotional design, investing in storytelling, and activating through races, athlete partnerships, and community-driven content. Challenger brands are capturing significant value in the space, proving that sharp brand positioning and high-performance product can cut through in a crowded market. In this environment, distinction is not optional. It's essential.
Credibility, connection, and consumer loyalty will be won by those who lead with innovation, authenticity, and a lot of grit. And our strategy begins with the athlete. We're inspired by this new generation of mountain athletes who are pushing the boundaries of sport, chasing fastest known times, navigating the most technical terrain, and venturing into uncharted adventures. These athletes aren't just participating in mountain culture. They're reshaping it. Today's mountain athlete defies traditional categories.
Hiking, running, climbing, they're all just different ways up the mountain. This new breed of athlete is faster, stronger, and more versatile than ever before. They're spending more time outside, covering more ground, and demanding more from their smaller, lighter, and more adaptable quiver of gear, especially footwear. Their missions, they're complex. Their terrain is unforgiving. And their expectations are uncompromising.
Whether they're scrambling up granite, racing alpine trails, or linking multiple disciplines in a single day, they need footwear that will perform. These athletes inspire us to aspire. They're embedded in our creation process, which you've heard, helping us to test, to iterate, and to refine every last detail. This is athlete-led innovation, and it's the foundation of Arc'teryx Footwear.
Our vision is bold: to defy human limits with the world's best mountain footwear engineered to go faster, further, harder, and higher. We're building the best connection to the mountain for every type of mission in every type of terrain, and our approach to growth is clear, following a tried-and-true formula. We will accelerate product innovation, create a footwear marketplace that meets the athlete where they shop, and turn up brand marketing to position Arc'teryx as a leading footwear brand.
This is Arc'teryx Footwear, engineered for the mission led by the athlete. Our footwear is engineered for the full spectrum of mountain terrain, from valley to summit. And as I said, today's mountain athletes are evolving rapidly. They're going faster and further, and often blending climbing and running. This shift is driving our innovation toward lighter, more adaptable, more efficient, and more durable solutions. And while it starts with elite athletes, it's resonating with a broader consumer base that expects the highest performance from their gear.
We launched the new era in 2024 with three models: Sylan, built for fast propulsive mountain running. Vertex Alpine, a lightweight shoe for fast approaches from valley to summit. And Kragg, designed for crag climbing access. In spring 2025, we expanded our mountain running line to include Norvan LD4, our mountain running essential. It's stable and adaptable across mixed terrain.
Vertex Speed, our most progressive model yet, sitting at this intersection of running and climbing, inspired directly by our athletes who are pushing boundaries. Now, in fall 2025, we've introduced Konseal, a modern take on the classic approach shoe, light, grippy, and built for long technical missions. Norvan Nivalis, a winterized evolution of the Norvan LD4, delivering high-performance running in cold conditions with a bold, modern silhouette. Looking ahead, our product strategy is shaped to balance innovation and growth.
Our product pillars focus on what matters most: creating edges, building franchises, and driving choice. First, we'll create the future by pushing the edges, delivering breakthrough innovations and new concepts guided by our North Stars for innovation of faster, further, harder, and higher. Models like Vertex Speed, which I mentioned, a progressive shoe that combines the specific requirements of scrambling into the efficiency of a trail running shoe.
In this shoe, you can fly up technical ascents and comfortably back down thanks to a zoned outsole that grips hard rock surfaces with traction on soft trail terrain and shock-absorbing underfoot cushion that keeps you feeling stable. Our second product pillar, we are focused on building scalable franchises. These are brand-defining, high-volume, high-impact products that drive growth and brand strength.
Our top 10 models account for approximately 80% of total footwear revenue, underscoring the strength of our core franchises. Norvan, our largest volume-driving franchise, and Konseal are both franchises with consumer pull today, and we believe that what we have in the pipeline will continue to scale into the future. We know this pillar of the strategy is crucial to igniting and fueling the market and driving growth for the long term.
We're heavily invested in developing the athlete and consumer-right franchises of the future and going from two to four brand-defining franchises in the next 18 months. Lastly, we create depth and breadth, driving choice through dimension by expanding the line through end use. Models like the Norvan Nivalis, which I mentioned, that extend a trusted franchise to a new use case. This is how we innovate: with intention and for scale. Every product we create reflects our commitment to the athlete, to the terrain, and to the relentless pursuit of performance. Arc'teryx Footwear isn't just evolving. It's setting the standard.
The next big step in our footwear journey will be transformative. We're building a curated global marketplace that meets the athlete when and where they shop for mountain terrain footwear. This is not just about selling shoes. It's about creating an elevated experience that reflects the Arc'teryx brand at every touchpoint. Our goal is to create an integrated marketplace where our Arc'teryx retail stores, our digital commerce platform, and our wholesale channel each play a strategic role in driving awareness and engagement. We're leading with the best expression of the brand in our own stores.
These spaces will showcase the pinnacle of our brand's experience and storytelling, setting the tone for the broader marketplace. Wholesale will be a powerful accelerator for our business. We're scaling with intention, building credibility through specialty and premium outdoor partners. Over the next 5 years, we plan to add more than 2,000 wholesale doors globally. We're developing deep partnerships with specialty retailers to amplify product credibility, elevate brand awareness, and drive demand for our most pinnacle footwear models, ensuring that our innovation reaches the athletes who need it most.
We're also focused on developing strategic accounts that expand access points and grow our consumer base. These partnerships will help us reach new audiences while maintaining the integrity and performance-first ethos of our brand. The response from our sporting goods partners has been incredibly encouraging. Early previews of the Fall 2026 product line have sparked a surge of demand. It's a clear signal that our vision is resonating and marks the beginning of a powerful shift in how the market sees Arc'teryx and footwear.
We recognize that building enduring wholesale partnerships requires time, focus, and investment. And we're fully committed to developing this channel as a long-term strategic pillar of our marketplace strategy. And lastly, we're prioritizing epicenters and key mountain towns, places where our consumers live, train, and explore.
Here, we'll build a more pronounced on-the-ground community and service model for footwear, deepening our connection with athletes, retailers, and communities, and reinforcing our commitment to mountain terrain. We're applying this marketplace strategy across our global regions, each with a distinct opportunity to lead in footwear growth. In every region, footwear is planned as the fastest-growing product category, and we're aligning resources to unlock that potential.
In China, we expect continued momentum as footwear continues to be Arc'teryx's strongest product association with consumers. In North America, we're focused on accelerating growth through targeted investment and expanded access to drive awareness. Europe remains a critical region where our technical credibility and brand equity are strong, forming a solid foundation for accelerated growth. In Asia-Pacific, we see significant untapped potential, an opportunity we're ready to pursue with increased investment and faster deployment of regional resources.
This is how we'll scale with purpose, and this is how we build a marketplace that services the mountain athlete and reflects the DNA of Arc'teryx. Our final priority is to amplify our brand marketing efforts, elevating storytelling to spark demand, drive awareness, and introduce new consumers to Arc'teryx Footwear. We're shifting from a product drop-driven approach to a consistent, pulsing, always-on marketing offense. This means that we will be always on, reinforcing our mountain positioning and staying true to our core identity.
We'll show up across key touchpoints, from digital to retail to community, and invest in our athlete portfolio to ensure our products are continuously authenticated through their voices, experiences, and stories. This is how we'll build an emotional connection and long-term brand equity in footwear. This is only the beginning. We're getting warmed up.
In April, we took a transformative leap by launching a dedicated footwear business unit, marking a major milestone in our journey. This move reflects our unwavering commitment to the category and sets the stage for focused, accelerated growth. We've validated strong consumer demand, and now we're investing with conviction. The creation of this unit is a powerful signal that we believe in the potential and we're building to win. We've assembled an exceptional team in Portland, Oregon, the epicenter of global footwear innovation.
This location gives us access to the industry's top talent and positions us alongside the footwear brand setting the pace for the global market. And we've already attracted some of the best minds in the business. The team we have assembled in Portland is world-class, bringing together deep expertise, bold creativity, and cross-functional leadership.
We're building the infrastructure and capabilities to scale with purpose, ensuring product excellence at every step, and with a fully integrated team spanning product, marketplace, and brand marketing, we're crafting a go-to-market strategy designed to fuel our next phase of growth and realize our long-term vision, so what's next? Footwear is projected as the highest-growth product category over the next 5 years, with contribution to total revenue projected to rise from eight to 13% annually, and we'll do this by delivering more innovation.
We've built a strong product pipeline, and we're poised to accelerate performance innovation, solving real problems for the mountain athlete and unlocking new opportunities for growth. More presence, as we build out our global marketplace, Arc'teryx Footwear will become increasingly available in the places our mountain athletes shop, train, and explore, and more connection.
With elevated brand efforts, we'll deepen our relationship with consumers, building community and creating meaningful engagement that lasts. We're not just building a footwear business. We're shaping the future of performance in mountain terrain. With relentless innovation, expanded presence, and deeper connection, we're creating something enduring: a brand that moves with the athlete, inspires the community, and leads with purpose. Arc'teryx Footwear is here now, and we're just getting started.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Marissa Pardini, and I am the GM of Veilance, and I started at the beginning of the year, so it's excellent to be here with you all. I'm really excited to share with you how Veilance is building on its heritage, tapping into a powerful market opportunity, and charting a clear path to become a major growth engine for Arc'teryx.
I'll take you through where we are today, the size of the opportunity, who our consumer is, how our product and our brand strategies are evolving, the proof points that we've already seen in the marketplace, and finally, the investment needed to unlock the next stage. Let's start with the numbers. So year-to-date through Q2, Veilance is up 22% versus last year. Today, we make up about 5% of total Arc'teryx sales, and we see a clear path to grow to 7% within the next few years. This is meaningful growth.
Every percentage point of penetration translates into significant incremental revenue, broader consumer reach, and stronger cultural relevance for the brand. And it's more than just top-line growth. It reflects Veilance's evolution. We're moving from a niche product line with really limited communication into a sub-brand with its own identity, a holistic city expression rooted in design, performance, and culture.
We've established a dedicated business unit with full P&L ownership to really steward Veilance's long-term growth and contribution to Arc'teryx. What began as a passion project transforms into a growth driver. So where does Veilance play? The lines between Outdoor Performance, fashion, and everything in between, those lines are blurring. Consumers no longer live in silos. They want products that flex from the mountains to the city and everything in between.
They need product that takes them from day to night, sunshine to rain, from work to traveling. And Veilance is uniquely positioned to meet that need. We design precision-crafted, versatile garments that transition seamlessly across those environments. Versatility is a key word here. And this space, it's underpenetrated. There's no true direct equivalent, and that's what makes Veilance such a compelling white space. So on to our consumer. Our consumer isn't defined by demographics. They're defined by mindset.
They live at the intersection of movement and expression, nature and city. They value design, function, and self-expression in equal measure. They're tastemakers. They're the people that others look to for what's next. Women's represents a critical growth driver for Veilance. Within 5 years, we expect women's to represent roughly half of the Veilance business.
Their desire for newness and self-expression makes them a natural fit for the Veilance business. At every touchpoint, from product to storytelling to our retail environments, they must connect authentically to these aspirations. So Veilance is positioned to win in a really unique space. Veilance combines Arc'teryx's minimalist aesthetic, the technical mastery, and the modular approach to dressing. We occupy a unique space between fashion and performance, form, function, and city and the outdoors. And this duality is our edge. It makes Veilance culturally resonant while staying true to that DNA that built Arc'teryx.
It positions us for unparalleled growth potential. I want to talk about the images that you see on this slide. These are from our most recent campaign that was shot in London. This year, we've been connecting with communities and creatives in tier-one cities. We started in Los Angeles. We had a group of creatives that we participated in a campaign, but we're still connected with them. We moved on to Paris, and then this was our latest campaign in London. It's a really great way for us to connect with these consumers, these communities, and be able to bring them into our family. Now on to the product strategy. I do want to introduce Ben Stubbington.
He joined us about a year and a half ago as the Creative Director, and he's had a major impact on the products that you'll see today. Veilance started in 2009 as a collection-based line. It was elevated. It was limited designs for insiders. Some referred to it as a designer's designer brand. Today, we've expanded that into a clear product architecture with four pillars. The first one is our fundamentals, which are elevated essentials at more entry price points that help us to broaden reach and to drive new consumer acquisition.
I'm wearing the Coeneg Knits, and this is a fundamental piece that you'll see in the line across men's and women's, but this is an example of those products. Next is city outerwear, which is our anchor. So we must cement our authority in technical outerwear for urban life. Hero products like the Monitor Parka and the Parka are some outerwear pieces that we want consumers to know from us. We want to be that go-to outerwear brand within the cities.
Massive opportunity for us. We're also expanding our women's offering, and we believe it will dramatically expand our addressable market. And then finally, we're advancing our materials innovation, both natural and technical fabrications, to really help to elevate from a quality perspective and sustainability. This gives us more depth, breadth, and relevance than ever before while we're able to stay true to our Design DNA.
Okay, on to our commercial strategy. So our commercial strategy is about expanding reach and deepening our conversion, making Veilance more visible, more accessible, and more compelling to our consumers across multiple touchpoints. I'm going to talk about, so during Paris Fashion Week, we had a Paris showroom this past June, and it was a major milestone for us. It was our first standalone Veilance space, and the results were really clear and exciting.
First, our pre-bookings were up, media coverage was strong, and our retail partners gave us highly positive feedback. This moment was important because it helped us validate Veilance's potential as a business in its own right. Importantly, it gave us a vision of what a standalone pop-up store could look like in the future. The event showed us how Veilance can express itself outside of Arc'teryx, and it gives us confidence in pursuing dedicated retail environments.
We will continue to leverage this cultural moment to connect with consumers and communities moving forward. From there, our broader commercial strategy is threefold. First, standalone destinations. We've been exploring pop-up environments in tier-one cities like New York City, Paris, Tokyo, and Shanghai to really help us to serve as a cultural anchor, building community, storytelling, and driving brand awareness. Direct-to-consumer is also really important to our expansion.
We'll be leveraging our city-based Arc'teryx retail fleet for awareness and consumer education. And we do have larger shop-in shops in larger stores, and we'll continue there. Digital commerce is also a massive opportunity for us, and it will help us to increase discoverability, conversion, and loyalty. It also serves as that ultimate brand expression. Finally, tier-zero wholesale accounts. They're critical to extend our reach and to help us drive awareness. We're strategically partnering with influential retailers globally to help us drive aspiration and credibility.
And multi-brand environments will help us to also drive that commercial legitimacy. This multi-channel approach ensures Balance is accessible, it's visible, and it's really compelling to our consumers. Balance creates unique enterprise value for Arc'teryx, and I'm going to take you through those values. First, the shared ecosystem. Balance is able to leverage Arc'teryx's existing global retail fleet, supply chain, and digital platforms.
That means that we can scale more efficiently without needing to build an entirely new infrastructure from the ground up. Second, audience reach. Sorry. Audience reach. So Balance unlocks tastemakers, creatives, and cultural curators who may not naturally buy into the mountain aesthetic. These consumers are highly influential. They drive culture. And when they adopt Balance, we're able to bring them into new spaces and new conversations for Arc'teryx. Third is brand protection.
By clearly differentiating Balance as the city and lifestyle expression, Arc'teryx can expand into new arenas without diluting its mountain core. That's really important. Balance is able to protect the purity of the mountain brand and help extend the company's cultural footprint. And then finally, the innovation halo. Balance elevates Arc'teryx's credibility in design, in material innovation, and in cultural impact.
It positions Arc'teryx not just as a leader in performance, but as a leader in design, influencing both the industry and consumers' imaginations. Together, these value drivers make Balance more than just a growth engine. They make it a strategic multiplier for Arc'teryx's long-term success. And this is where the investment comes in. Standing up a Balance dedicated business unit with leadership and resources positions us to deliver the next stage of growth. First, we can grow our penetration.
We're currently at 5% of Arc'teryx's sales, and we see a clear path to 7% in the coming years. Second, we'll expand across key regions, particularly in APAC, North America, and EMEA, where the appetite for Balance is strong and we're underdeveloped. Third, we're ready to explore new Balance-led retail experiences in tier-one cities.
These environments will allow us to express the brand on its own terms and help to build deeper consumer connection. And finally, we will build brand awareness from a low base into a global force, establishing Balance as both culturally resonant and commercially powerful. This isn't just about scaling a sub-brand. We're positioned for a sustained double-digit CAGR through 2030. It's also about unlocking a new growth engine for Arc'teryx, broadening our consumer base, strengthening our cultural resonance, and creating long-term enterprise value.
So what began as a passion project, today it stands as a powerful engine for growth. It's built on design curiosity, cultural insight, and technical mastery. With a focused investment, Balance has the potential to scale into a globally recognized business, amplifying the entire Arc'teryx ecosystem. Thank you so much. Now you're going to hear from Matt Bolte, our Chief Merchandising Officer, and he couldn't be with us today, so let's take a look at a video. Thank you.
Hello. I'm Matt Bolte, the Chief Merchandising Officer at Arc'teryx. I'm going to walk you through our product strategy. For 35 years, we've been myopically focused on the same thing: the mountains and serving the people who play and live there and supporting the amazing athletic achievements that happen in the world of climbing, skiing, boarding, running, and hiking.
Our growth is based on this commitment: stay on the mountain and serve the mountain athlete. Drive innovation and exp ression into every product we create. The results have followed from approximately $500 million to over $2.5 billion and a balanced portfolio of regions, all driving strong double-digit annual growth.
As we plan the next 5 years, we see the following path to growth. First, get the brand in front of more consumers. We are still underpenetrated in many markets, and we'll expand our reach with DTC and strategic wholesale with no need to deviate from our current product strategy. Second, center that product strategy on our most important models, our franchise portfolio, voted on over time, over and over again by the consumer.
We have an editor mindset. This allows us to amplify our investment in our foundation. Third, drive to our goal of 50% of our business coming from circularity. And fourth, invest in focused strategic opportunities: women's, footwear, and Veilance, all of whom you heard from earlier today. Let's double-click into two important elements of our product strategy. First, what we call System of Dress.
Think of a complete head-to-toe outfit, every component built to our standards to support the mountain athlete. Our trail athlete, this is about breathable, durable systems for fast movement in variable conditions. For our climb athletes, it's balance protection and mobility for varied alpine environments. For snow, uncompromised weather protection for the stormiest of winter days. Our core product principles: head-to-toe solutions serving the mountain athlete in moments of extreme need.
Think shells, insulation, base layers, and all the other components. We're technical. We're innovative. We're expressive. Our layering system for the mountain translates to everyday versatility in whatever environment our consumers are playing in. This is our secret sauce. Arc'teryx is authentic and commercial. 20% of our products do 70% of our business. Icons and franchises anchor the brand. This 20% is our foundation, our franchise, and icons.
Product born from the mountain and athlete insight that has been adopted for use often beyond its original intent. We've earned the luxury and responsibility of having over a dozen of these models. You've seen them displayed in the room, and I hope you try them on during your store visit tonight. Many brands are born on one item. I'm not going to list them, but I'm sure you're thinking of a few of them now.
The power of our arsenal allows us to plan every quarter with financial confidence, supply chain precision, and DTC execution, all centered on our consumer and their favorite Arc'teryx models. Though only 20% of our model count, we orient over half of our work, our energy, and brainpower on keeping this portfolio healthy and evolving. Relatively new for us is our formation, our intersections, our protocols, and our global regional formation, a global-to-local flywheel.
We balance global scale and regional relevance. Local insight informs capsules, energy, product innovation. Insights loop back to the global product creation team to shape line plans. This ensures product and storytelling meets the consumer where they are. We focus on similarities across regions first while allowing strategic space in our product plan to act on local insights and nuance.
Our macro consumer insight says they want to be connected to a global brand. They also want one that sees them locally and supports that with localized product assortments. You heard this morning about our growth zones of women's, footwear, and Balance. This focus and energy will undoubtedly generate new franchise models. The 20/80 rule, the Pareto, is real in this industry, and it's real for Arc'teryx. Our distinct position, our competitive advantage is the breadth of this portfolio, current state and future state.
Our approach is to manage these franchises and drive a strong foundation for our business while growing these at the rate of our overall growth plan. Right product, right place, right time, building the most pinnacle mountain brand in the world. Peak by peak, city by city, this is our mission. This is our moment. This is how we win. Thank you.
Welcome, everyone.
Hello. My name is Kyle Wood. I am the Senior Director of Strategy here at Arc'teryx, and I have the pleasure and the privilege to represent the large team driving our circularity strategy.
And I'm Dominique Showers. I'm the Vice President of ReBIRD, and I have the pleasure of overseeing our guest experience related to our service, care and repair, and our circular business models. Kyle and I are here to share how circularity is our strategic advantage here at Arc'teryx.
For over 30 years, we've built gear that lasts, that's rooted in authenticity and innovation. It's designed to perform in the harshest conditions and to be repaired and not replaced. Over the last few years, ReBIRD has proven that circularity is more than a sustainability initiative. It unlocks long-term value through new innovative products, revenue streams, deeper engagement, and lasting relationships. Now we have the opportunity to really scale that impact.
Arc'teryx was built for circularity way before it was cool. It's embedded in our origin story. There's a really great story when I started here at Arc'teryx in 2018, where I learned that there was a mountaineer that had bought an early-era Alpha SV jacket, and this mountaineer had summited all these peaks, and every time he did, he would write the name of the peak on the inside of his jacket.
Every time his jacket needed repair, he would send it in to us, and then the team that was working on the repairs would see the new peaks that were added. His caveat was, "I don't want you to replace my jacket. I want my jacket back." For him, it held all of his memories. This is the kind of product relationship that we designed for. Katie Becker also mentioned this in relation to the relationship with her husband and the product. This is the kind of relationship we want to build for. We want our gear to hold up. We want it to be loved, and we want it to be used well past the first adventure. Making durable product is not enough. How are we going to keep it out of landfill?
Arc'teryx has the credibility, the product, and the customer behavior to lead in this space, but globally, the circular economy is nascent. The market is there. The expectation is rising, and we are ahead. The opportunity is to develop and scale the full circular ecosystem. This slide. This is our circular flywheel. You can see how it moves through. The traditional linear model, it would be a straight line across, and what we're designing here at Arc'teryx is an evolution of this.
Circularity is more than just closing loops. It's about extending relationships. For us, it starts with the product and the design. We create beautiful, durable, high-performance gear that holds value. With ReBIRD, then, we take the learnings on where our gear fails, and we apply that back upstream to future designs. Through care and repair, we build trust.
ReBIRD services help our guests keep their gear in play longer, whether it's washing, rewaterproofing, or tailoring. The result is increased brand loyalty, more frequent interaction, and higher retention. That same approach fuels our resale program. You'll see an example of that outside, our full booth, and what you'll see is that our products really last and hold value regardless of their age. We're opening new revenue and deeper engagement. Resale brings in a younger audience, often more female, and often first-time buyers to the brand.
We're turning end of life into the beginning of the next cycle, and then membership ties it all together. Karl will talk about the ReBIRD membership program in the brand presentation, and we will be rewarding circular behaviors, turning action into a lifetime value. We've made significant investments into our own repair innovation in partnership with our advanced concepts team.
We've made significant investments in our circular sourcing and advanced recycling and end-of-life material processing to ensure that gear doesn't just end. It comes back into the system. The more that guests engage, the more we service, the more inventory we recover, the more value we generate. And that's the power of the circular flywheel. Durability and repair has been in our DNA since the beginning. And in 2020, we learned something. It was a bit of an aha moment for us.
The most searched question in Google was, "How do I wash my Arc'teryx jacket?" People didn't know how to wash GORE-TEX. And the question told us two things. Our guests wanted to care for their gear, and we hadn't done enough to empower or educate them.
When we launched ReBIRD in 2021, we brought this product care education into our circular services under one platform with a goal to deliver and scale key services globally. So now we offer technical wash, rewaterproofing in our stores. We offer resale, and we're moving into upcycling, all under one guest-facing experience. The demand has grown significantly. Year to date, we've serviced over 150,000 products, driving the highest level of engagement to our brand while extending the life of our gear.
ReBIRD is now more than a service. It's a relationship with our guests. It's how we show up post-purchase. It's how we keep it out of the landfill, and it's how we prove our gear is worth the investment. Again, in 2020, we had another problem to solve. Our best-case repair turn time was 46 days. Let that land for a minute. You're living in New York City.
You're going on a ski trip. You pull your jacket out. You realize, "My zipper's broken. What am I going to do?" You have to send it to Vancouver, British Columbia, to ARC'One. 46 days later, you get your jacket back. Wasn't a great experience at the time. We were replacing more than half of the products that were coming through warranty. Tied to that, the only accessible solution that we had at the time was a red Milwaukee toolbox.
And you'll see that toolbox at the ReBIRD Service Center outside. This red box was really our quick-fix repair kit, and it existed in every single one of our stores. And that was the aha moment. That was a realization that we really needed to put our repair and care services at the forefront and make it more accessible and to make it more efficient. So the good news.
In the last four years, we've opened over 30 front-of-house service centers embedded directly into our retail store footprint. We've also established over 10 regionalized third-party repair centers to handle more complex repairs, more capacity, more volume. You get your jacket faster. Turn times for complex repairs are now under 14 days. And we've also created our own innovative solutions with the AC team that will get you in and out of the door in under 15 minutes.
In the last year, we've added complex repairs to two key stores in North America: our New York City 580 Broadway store and our 50 Bloor store, which you see here in the video. This means that you can come into the store and take care of all of our complex repairs at our quality standards within two key stores. And we offer resale inside of those stores as well.
The ReBIRD platform has already serviced hundreds of thousands of units with a clear trajectory to serve over 1.5 million products by 2030, which is exciting. We've also launched resale in 2019 and rolled it into ReBIRD. We've learned a ton through the North American e-commerce business, and we've pushed it into our retail stores, as I mentioned. It's also become a cultural moment for our brands, bringing in this younger audience that I mentioned. It's become something that our guests really follow and look for, especially in our academies and events. And with that, I'll pass it over to Kyle, who's going to talk about how we scale.
Thanks, Dom. I had the opportunity to meet Dom a few years ago before I worked at the brand. I've been a customer of Arc'teryx for a number of years, but through a mutual collaborator in the U.K., I went to this design studio, and he had been working with a bucket full of excess material that he obtained from Arc'teryx, and he was redesigning lots of cool things with this material, and I asked him where he got it, and he mentioned this woman, Dom, at the time, and I reached out to Dom.
This was about four years ago, and I learned about the beginnings of ReBIRD, and it really set off a light bulb for me of an aha moment that, yes, I was familiar with the brand. They made amazing products, but they also thought about design and circularity and sustainability in a very different way and were years ahead of where most of the industry was at.
It really excited me, not just as a customer, but as a potential place to be a part of. I've been here for about a year and a half now, and I'm so excited about all the things that are coming because really, the future does demand better systems, not just more product. At Arc'teryx, circularity is no longer optional. It's a strategic imperative where our guests expect more from the brand: care, accountability, and meaning, along with great products. As Dom highlighted, we're already seeing the shift with a growing demand for wash, repair, and resale. This is more than a value shift.
We see this as a true business opportunity. The brands that win this space will scale the full circular ecosystem, linking product, service, and community to drive loyalty, innovation, and long-term value. We believe Arc'teryx is uniquely built for this. With our vertical DTC model and unmatched access to speed insight around our guests, our innovation engine and brand trust put us in a position of leadership, and our products retain value, making resale and repair profitable, so for us, this isn't a pivot.
It's part of our growth strategy, so circularity is how we transform our business and will lead the industry, and this is our formula for growth. Number one, we'll lead through circular performance product. We're going to lead through innovation and embed circular design principles throughout our most iconic products. By 2030, our highest volume styles will be re-engineered for circularity, leading with durability, repairability, and recoverability at end of life. There'll be no trade-offs, just performance with smarter design. Number two, we'll assess the guest journey.
In turn, circularity into an engagement and loyalty engine with ReBIRD care, repair, and resale scaled globally across retail and e-commerce. Our ReBIRD membership will reward behaviors and build deeper guest connection. The supply chain will act as a circular accelerator. We're already scaling preferred and next-generation materials on the front end, and we're investing in take-back systems, repair, and sorting infrastructure to enable downstream recycling at the end of life, and fourth, tech and data will power the system.
Digital Product Passport will launch in 2026, providing greater transparency, but also will connect every customer with their products to care, trade-in, and membership rewards. Together, these pillars will form a connected circular ecosystem and power the future of Arc'teryx. This isn't just a strategy on paper or plans that we've been talking about. This transformation is underway.
ReBIRD is scaling quickly: more stores, more repair capacity, shorter turnarounds, and new in-store services like wash and DWR. We've secured leading partners like Aquafil and Ambercycle to unlock circular materials and closed-loop recovery. As I mentioned, digital passport will launch next year, and ReBIRD membership soon to follow, linking product, service, and loyalty into one connected user experience. Our future product pipeline is already being shaped by circular principles: durable, repairable, and recoverable by design.
And the next chapter begins next week when we launch our most advanced product yet, a pinnacle piece that proves performance and circularity can not only coexist but can accelerate each other. So look out for some news early in the week, starting in New York, and then look out for more news thereafter. By 2030, this new system will drive significant business growth while also reducing environmental impacts across every part of Arc'teryx.
By 2030, circularity will be embedded across product, service, supply chain, and our guest experience, powering revenue, retention, and responsibility. As you've heard from Dom, ReBIRD resale will reach new heights with over $10 million in resale this year. But our vision for the future is far bigger, and we're building toward it. By 2030, over 50% of our apparel revenue will come from circular products and business models, with over $100 million coming through ReBIRD resale alone, powered by over 1.5 million units through the Arc'teryx ecosystem.
Two million-plus members will be actively participating in the circular system, resulting in over 37,000 tons of CO2 avoided. What began as a repair counter and a Milwaukee toolbox will become a full-scale business model. This isn't incremental. It's transformational, and it's how we grow.
So in closing, prioritizing circularity wasn't a small decision as a brand, and we recognize we have lots of work ahead. But we're positioned to lead this transformation, and we've set a bold goal of 50% revenue by 2030. But we're not just building better products. We're truly building a better system: a system designed for longevity, built for connection, and engineered to scale. At Arc'teryx, circularity isn't a pilot. It's not a side project. It's a platform. It's how we grow. It's how we lead. And it's how we win. Thank you. With that, I think I'm passing it to Omar for some instructions for the lunch hour here. Don't forget there's going to be a ReBIRD repair demo out in the parking lot.
Thanks, Dom. Thanks, Kyle. So just a quick announcement before you guys get up to eat. For those on the webcast dialed in, it's time to take a break. We're going to have an hour for lunch and an hour and 20 minutes for product tours. Join us. Please rejoin us around 2:20 P.M. Pacific Time, 5:20 P.M. for those on the East Coast. We have a lot of great content in the afternoon: brand, regions, and of course, the financial section and Q&A.
For those of you in the room, grab lunch. We have about an hour for lunch. We don't have much seating, so please feel free to use this space to eat. We'll all work together to make sure it gets cleaned up before we restart. And then at 1:00 P.M., head to your product station as indicated on the map on the back of your card. As Kyle mentioned, the ReBIRD station is outside. There we go. Thanks, everyone.
Right, you're calling. Five, four, three, one. Stopping. Thanks, everybody. That was just to get you excited for ski season. We're days away from dropping product. I know there's a few skiers. I heard some people talking about avalanche packs out there. So, you know, I love ski season. That's why we wear GORE-TEX jackets in the middle of summer. So anytime we can show a little bit of snow, that's good for us. My name's Karl Aaker. I lead the brand marketing function here. I've been here for the last 5 years. And you know, a theme you're hearing, I hope, is that we all feel very lucky to be in these roles that we're in, because this is an easy brand to fall in love with.
It's personal for us. These are sports that we would be doing, you know, products that we'd be making, with or without the paycheck. I mean, don't take that seriously, Stuart. I like the paycheck, but we'd be doing this anyway. So, you know, I hope in this section, the next 15, 20 minutes, I can share a little bit about why I think this is a one-of-one brand. There's just nothing like this out there. And maybe spend a bit more time on why I believe our opportunity is so strong. Before I do that, though, I do want to share a quick video. I'm the brand guy. I've got to show some videos, but I think you'll like this one. That was hard. Oh, shit. That was so hard. Oh my God. That was so desperate. All right.
Pretty intense. For the first clap of the day, this is awesome. I didn't like Omar's rule of no clapping, so I think we should break that. You know, actually, when we watched this video yesterday, Omar told me, he said, "Man, that looks a lot like the way I get in and out of my bed every day." Is that what you said? I don't know if I got that right. So, no, I mean, if that move, if that video doesn't move you, I don't know what will. That's Amity Warme, who's one of our incredible mountain athletes. She's a world-class climber, as you can see, something she'd been working on for a long time.
When I watched that video, when you watched that video, I hope you, I'd like you to kind of ask yourself, what is it that we sell as a brand? Right? You've spent all morning listening to our product team talk about the incredible design process and capabilities of this brand, which are very true. I fall in love with that every day I hear it. But it's so much more than that, right? What we sell, what we do as a brand is so much more than just jackets and hard goods and shoes, right?
They unlock an experience that I think, as you can see, is transformational. She's going through something right there, and I think we're all lucky when we get to a moment like that, even if it's getting in and out of your bed, Omar. So you know, in my 5 years here, which has been great, when I think about what we sell, I've gotten to a point where I truly understand that we sell experience, dream experiences.
I get the great benefit of being on the brand team. I get to share that with people, you know. So there's absolutely a world we're living in today where people are seeking this out more and more. So I think we're in a great position as a brand just because of where we exist and what we do. And I think over time, by delivering those experiences, what we become expert at is the real thing. That's, I think, what I hope you hear from our brand is that we are expert in the real thing. There's no smoke and mirrors here. My job as a marketer is not to make something up. It's just to tell the truth of this brand.
You know, share those life-changing experiences and bring it to the world in an interesting and unique way, right? So, it's really special. What's important to understand who we do that for, which we've talked about. We'll spend some time. 5 years ago when we got here, Stuart talked about that this morning. We were wandering as a brand. Our line was proliferating.
Our strategy maybe lacked some clarity. We, you know, at the end of the day, culturally, we lacked some focus. In the process of resetting our strategy, understanding who we are, we looked right in front of us. What are the things that we've made that have been most powerful in our time? What are the things that resonate most deeply with the consumer? And for us, it got really clear.
All of those tools for the mountain athlete are what's bubbled to the top of our business. So at the end of the day, our job became very clearly focused on delivering things for the mountain athlete. If we serve them, everything else tends to work. Why is that? With laser focus on the mountain athlete, one of the benefits, I would say, is that it gave us the courage to step away from the temptation that kind of every brand was facing. You know, by focusing on doing a few things really well, it allowed us to deliver with specificity, to deliver with purpose, best-in-class hard goods, layers, footwear. That focus on the mountain athlete really sharpened our strategy. Again, as you've heard.
But the idea that kind of is most important, I think, in understanding why that resonates so deeply are these two principles that sit in our brand. Stuart talked about them at the beginning of the day today. But as a brand leader, this is a true gift for us. When we look at how we resonate, there's a simple formula. When we design for the mountain athlete with performance in mind, if we deliver on that promise, we build credibility as a design powerhouse. And as we design beautiful, minimal, aesthetically driven product that revalidates the performance. And that exchange has really been the secret sauce of this brand from the very early days.
And committing to that is what's opened the doors for us. So why does that lead to broad appeal? When we look at our guest profile, which again, I know you've heard versions of today, by working with that core user group, the professional athlete, it really validates and builds trust with the outdoor community. By serving the outdoor community in a way that's unique to us, by delivering beauty and performance, we kind of plug into two audiences. The performance-obsessed audience, right?
Many of you, like I said, I know you're in the mountains on the weekend or you're maybe leaving the city to go on a ski trip. You know, I don't want to assume I know where you live, but there's athletes in this room, right, that value performance.
Simultaneously, by delivering beautiful product, it allows us to resonate with people who prefer and consider design and understand the beauty of product, understand the status and the relationship with the design community. And so by winning in those two spaces, we earn brand fans around the globe in luxury, performance, streetwear, and fashion.
That's where that broad resonance comes for us. When we say we're committed to the mountain athlete, that chain of influence becomes really critical for us. You know, in doing that, what is it that makes us truly distinct from a brand reputation standpoint? I hope these themes are consistent, but it goes without saying, authenticity for us is our lifeblood. You know, how do we do that? We've talked about that all day. That's kind of a loose term. A lot of brands use it.
A lot of people use it. For us, it starts with committing to the professional community, so it's not just athletes. We have incredible relationships in the guide community, search and rescue teams, professional mountain operators. We have a fleet of stores that connects to ambassadors throughout the world, and by serving them, working with them, and most importantly, like Katie said, ingraining them in the way we do business, not just in product design, but in the way we work with communities, make decisions of where we invest our money, in building infrastructure, the way we validate and reiterate our storytelling.
This is so important to us, and frankly, they keep us authentic by creating an accountability structure, so when we make decisions, we know that we're serving that community well, and it's an incredible formula for us to be able to do that. So authenticity, number one, that's the most important brand distinction for us. Number two, you've heard about this, performance.
Our ability to continue to win in innovation is one of the most fundamental pillars of our brand identity. So after a long history, 36-year history of iterative design, delivering new technologies, new evolutions in hard goods, outerwear, harnesses, now footwear, we bring that DNA with us into every story that we tell, right? So that is critical to our identity and foundation.
And three, this is where, you know, third element of our kind of distinction as a brand, community is a philosophy we talk about a lot of times. What does that mean, though? When we say community, what do we mean by that? For us, it's a currency that we build relationships with, one-to-one, organization to organization, community to community.
And we've created a formula that we think works incredibly well. One of the biggest barriers to outdoor sports is skill set and learning. It's these are sports that require a lot of time and energy put into developing the right understanding to travel safely and to have the right knowledge and tools to experience that. So we have a huge gift as a brand having access to this expertise.
So we've made it a pillar of our community to create learning experiences for people across the board, whether you're a first-time, you know, trail runner or you're a 30-year trail runner. There's still things you can develop. So progression learning is number one. Number two, we know that at the end of the day, people want to do things with each other. They want to experience the mountains in a group.
They want to be part of a community that shares an affinity. So we focus on impact projects, community development in terms of access to sport. And we've built a really amazing connection around service as we lean into those local communities around our store. And three, everybody wants to have fun. Luckily, the outdoor community is an incredibly vibrant one.
S o music, art, culture, storytelling have become a pillar. And every time we say community, we try to bring these aspects into an event or a series or a partnership in any way that we can. So where do we bring that to life? You heard Stuart talk about our academies. We have five academies globally, and these are three- to four-day events that happen around the world. We have Chamonix, France, Mammoth, California, St.
Anton, Austria, the Lake District in the U.K., and Yangshuo, China, and these are, you know, span the spectrum from alpine climbing, backcountry skiing, to rock climbing, and we embed trail running within many of the experiences, and these are often lifetime experiences for people where they travel around the world to a unique place to have a once-in-a-lifetime moment in the mountains.
Our guide communities, our professionals, our athlete team travel to these events. I would highly recommend any of you that want to get out, you can reach out to me directly. I'll make sure you get in. You know, in the last year alone, you know, we've had these deep learning experiences for over 2,500 people, 30,000 come through the events on an annual basis, you know, engaging in some way, whether it's through our film nights, our storytelling, or on-mountain experiences.
To give you a little bit of perspective on why we believe this is such a powerful idea, last year in Mammoth in March, when we were coming off the mountain, at the end of the day I ran into a women's clinic that was coming out of the backcountry. There were, you know, intimate small groups with a guide and an athlete. Of the seven women in the clinic, four of them told me it was the best day of their lives in the mountain. You don't hear that kind of sentiment often in a brand event. That's pretty rare. This is something I hear all the time. Every time I go show up to an academy, it's the same sentiment shared. We know we have some magic there.
And our efforts into the future will be to unpack that in a scalable way. Oh, here's what it overview, what it looks like. Good to go. Follow. Okay, one more. This one has to be fixed inside. Yeah, it's inside. This one and this one. All right, thank you. Yeah, incredibly fun to be at these events. Again, I, I hope some of you can take it, time to, to get out and see one of these. You know, from our top-tier academies, these major global moments, we create dozens of events at a local level that capture that same energy.
And we do it with brand partners like Natural Selection Tour. If you've heard, if you've seen that, any of you skiers or snowboarders out there might have, might have seen that. All Rise, which is an amazing climb partner. This is an All Rise event here. Tons of youth energy. It's a collision of kind of music and art culture and the movement around gym climbing. We've been working with them for three or four years at this point. We have gym climbing partnerships around the globe. So we create one-day experiences that capture that same energy and bring it to local markets. And that's been a key for us as we've scaled our store fleet.
It's allowed us to step into community in really powerful ways throughout the market. And maybe the most important aspect of community when we think about this, and this is why I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking here. As a brand leader at Arc'teryx, it's an incredible gift to be able to look inside the company and see the same culture internally that we promote and we engage with externally.
So our employee experience is often blurred with our consumer experience. It's pretty special. Many of the same activations, even at an academy, we know that it's very similar to what we do with our employees. So learning, celebrating the culture, creating moments of connection in the mountains, very much part of the same DNA. All right. Beyond community, our fourth kind of pillar of distinction is our storytelling.
You know, it's central to our women's strategy, our footwear strategy, our Veilance strategy. And we've got an incredible story to tell, whether that's through our design process and our design efforts or the incredible films we have. We produce dozens of films a year that I think stand out in the market as narratives that drive culture in the outdoors. And they're very unique and special. You know, they're varied. We focus on localized storytelling.
Film storytelling is where we develop our point of view. And, you know, we're recognized broadly. We've received many awards in the last couple of years for the work here. It's something we're going to continue to do deep into the future. From this kind of distinct identity, you know, that's great. We've gotten to this point. But why are we so optimistic, especially from a brand side, on what's ahead of us?
Why do we see such a powerful ramp? You know, 36 years of steady growth have been great. 5 years of incredible growth have been even more exciting. And, you know, we see a series of trends, consumer behaviors that signal we're just at the beginning. I think that's, you know, when we see huge upside. I want to unpack a little bit about why that is.
So, you know, across the board, we're seeing an incredible movement from our consumer to spend more on experience. And that's, you know, that's validated through multiple surveys. Mastercard's done some great work here. You know, we see obviously people willing to spend on experience. But more importantly, there was one study with Mastercard in the U.K.; 80%, over 80% of consumers in the U.K. have at the top of their list outdoor experience as one of their main priorities of purchase, right? So, as I said, we don't just sell products; we sell experience.
And our position in this industry is primed to kind of capture that behavior in the consumer. Let's see if I can click forward too. You know, brands that deliver products that last are winning right now. And there's a good reason. Obviously, sustainability is a big part of that. But at the end of the day, people want stuff they can trust, things that are going to simplify their lives. And so, across the board, we're seeing great, great, indicators that this is not just a trend. Obviously, this is a part of people's value system. It's part of the way they're choosing to spend their dollars. And this is not new to us.
We've been in this game since day one as a brand that delivers exceptional quality. And so we're really confident that we're in prime position to be the answer, kind of give them what they're looking for. And then lastly, you know, I think Stuart touched on this 15 years ago, you saw the explosion of athleisure.
And with that, many brands in the industry kind of migrated to the middle into this very homogeneous space. Out of category brands were making apparel in new places. And, you know, we were even influenced by that at a time. But I think our long-standing commitment to delivering exceptionally specific performance products has kind of, you know, been on the opposite of that trend.
And as we see consumers react, start to move back into a space of buying things for performance, you know, even within the luxury space, we see behaviorally, just quality and craft don't do it anymore. You've got to deliver performance. So we're in an awesome spot to be able to, to leverage that, that position that we have. And it goes without saying, our biggest opportunity is awareness. We are just scratching the surface with the folks that we know need our brands.
You know, very few of them actually know we exist in certain markets. So this is the most exciting thing I can present as a brand leader because I'm super proud of where we are today. I'm incredibly proud of what we're doing, and we have all this ahead of us. So what does that look like? When we look across our markets, what we're seeing is a formula that works. In China, in Canada, we have incredible traction. Our brand awareness is strong. Our, you know, relationship in the community, our position is incredibly strong, and as we look to grow our business in the U.S. specifically and Europe, you can see the incredible upside.
Now, you know, it could be, I could be ashamed of these numbers because they're so small. The reality is we've doubled brand awareness in both of these markets in the last 12 months. We've doubled brand awareness, and we have this much more to go. So we've got a formula that works. We have momentum that's moving, but we're just at the beginning. So this is super exciting for us. I want to talk for just a minute. I know I'm running out of time here about why the formula that we've unpacked that really seems to work for us.
So how are we winning in these markets? You know, new audience obviously is an important thing for us, but the way we're doing this is by investing disproportionately in top of funnel brand awareness, you know, leveraging key narratives, product stories, great product cultural storytelling to be in the right place in the right time in front of the consumer.
You know, we have select, very select and specific brand partnerships that elevate who we are and why we're in this game, and we've worked closely with them on a local level to be able to drive great brand awareness. I think most importantly, the way we build our store infrastructure in our new markets is maybe the most important driver of brand awareness for us because it's real, and our desire to do this in a quality way is really important, so that fleet of stores, that infrastructure really pays off with presence and market.
Too, when we get people into our funnel, into our experience, we know we do incredibly well. Our digital team, our retail teams do exceptional work in maintaining customer loyalty, so we're going to extend on that, grow beyond that. I think one of the key, key elements there is developing our service model around care and repair. That allows us to move our relationship beyond the transaction and develop a much closer partnership with the consumer. Third to that is how we leverage a new membership program.
And then in the coming year, we're going to be introducing a new revamped membership program for the brand that allows us to connect the dots between ReBIRD, community, and our constant flow of innovative products. So we're really excited about how we build loyalty as a bigger focus within the company. But we're winning in that game right now. And then third, community for us is going to be a pillar wherever we go. We know that's how we separate. And so creating distinction and how we scale those academy experiences, bring them to market. It's working.
It's working in markets like LA, New York, Chicago, Paris, London, markets where we have a huge upside. We're seeing that growth and brand awareness and that growth in business outpace the rest of our business. So great indicators that we're in an awesome spot. So thank you. Yeah, thank you for sticking with me. Appreciate you watching all the videos. I love this brand. I'm excited to talk to you about it. I hope you walk out of this building with a little bit more passion for the bird. If anybody needs to get out into the mountains, I mean, a lot of beautiful suits here.
We'd love to get them dirty, get you up into these mountains right behind us, and maybe next time you come. But I'm going to hand it off to our regional GMs to talk about their businesses because they're the ones that are bringing this to life. So thank you.
Hi, I'm Delaney Schweitzer. I'm the General Manager of the North America region. Arc'teryx was born in North America, forged in the mountains, built for the athletes who live to explore them. From our earliest days in Vancouver, we've been defined by an obsession for performance, precision, the relentless pursuit of better, and a deep understanding of our guest and the mountain athlete. Today, we stand on the edge of our next summit. We began as a wholesale company rooted in climbing with a deep trust in the market for the most pinnacle gear for the mountains. Over time, we transformed from solely a wholesale business to a thriving direct-to-consumer brand.
But we will always remain focused on growing in a way that keeps that trust and remains the number one choice for our mountain athletes. Between 2019 and 2025, we've reshaped our North America footprint with a powerful D2C relationship, expanding our store count, building community, and a presence in key cities and inspiring our guests through physical stores and online brand experience. Today, Arc'teryx is a fully integrated retail, digital, and wholesale engine with North America at the cultural heart of the brand.
North America is our biggest regional market opportunity with the largest outdoor market and low penetration and awareness in the U.S. In U.S. retail, we have unmet demand in markets across the region with a relatively small store network. We have just scratched the surface in what's possible for new locations and markets. Within our digital footprint, we have so much untapped growth and opportunity.
When we enter new markets with a physical store, we see huge growth not only in our digital business, but wholesale demand as well. We lead with our strongest asset, outerwear. In the United States, 68% of consumers recognize us for insulation, 60% for hard shell. The categories that deliver more than half our revenue. We will lead with what we're known for, using the credibility of our pinnacle products.
This allows us to invite guests and new categories like women's, footwear, Veilance, and more. Participation and demand for Arc'teryx continues to grow at staggering levels. We have only just begun to unlock the full potential of the brand in North America. Our growth will be powered by three key opportunities. First, retail. Our stores are the most premium expression of the brand. They truly enable a quality, sustainable approach to growth.
When we enter a market, it's because we have something to add, something to offer, a shared vision or value. It's not just growth for growth's sake. We attract top talent in our stores, not only highly skilled store managers, but a team obsessed with our mission. These teams deliver exceptional product knowledge to our guests and can also offer mountain and trail knowledge. It's authentic and real, unlike any retail experience out there.
From epicenters in New York, LA, Vancouver, and Toronto to mountain towns like Banff and Whistler, we meet the mountain athlete where they are. Second is our digital commerce. Our digital channel extends our reach far beyond our physical footprint, delivering high-margin guest acquisition and personalized omni-connected journeys.
With our growing guest database and integrated D2C channels, we will find new ways to meet our guests where they are and inspiring them with not only our pinnacle jackets, but a head-to-toe System of Dress. Third, wholesale. Leveraging partners like REI, Nordstrom, and some new ones in the future, we expect to grow our North America wholesale door footprint from approximately 730 today to over 1,000 premium doors in 2030.
Wholesale partners will be important as we grow our footwear business. Each door is strategically picked and optimized with the right assortment and brand presentation. We know that our guests might find us first in our wholesale doors. This is an important arm in building our brand awareness and reach. We obsess over every market and find the best way to inspire our guests.
With our unique store formats, our Alpha stores and mountain towns, we can deliver incredible guest engagement while executing top performance. First, Alpha stores. Named after our top pinnacle jacket, this is our version of a flagship store. Alpha stores showcase our full product range, offer unparalleled product care through ReBIRD Service Centers, and provide a hub for community connection. Our Alpha concept shows up in key markets like SoHo in New York, Bloor Street in Toronto, Robson Street in Vancouver, and soon to come Rockefeller Center in New York.
These are high-traffic, visible stores that not only deliver top revenue numbers, but build the brand authentically. Our mountain town concept creates a fully immersive tribute to the mountains for the athletes who travel to them, to the communities who live among them. This concept is drawing more people into our spaces than ever before and guiding people to the mountains. Our ReBIRD Service Center is critical in creating trust and loyalty and getting good products back in play. Banff, our latest mountain town store, second after Whistler, has traffic numbers that are far exceeding our typical brand stores, even our high street flagship locations.
As well, they are delivering a profit margin well beyond our expectations. We are not only attracting new guests, but also deepening our engagement with existing guests. Over the past 5 years, we've focused on our D2C transformation with key strategies that have been the catalyst to consistent gains over the past 5 years in productivity, profitability, and revenue per store. We have improved inventory flow.
We've shifted from a wholesale model of two seasonal drops a year to a monthly flow, meeting our guest demands and enabling them to shop how they want to. We repositioned our stores to bigger, better locations. This move allowed us to showcase the breadth of our product and create community-driven experiences for our guests. We took on store operation transformation, focusing on three key areas. One, top store managers that are highly incentivized for top business results.
Second, an omnichannel integration with new technology for seamless online in-store transaction and product knowledge, and a product knowledge framework that brings our pinnacle design elements to the retail floor and our guest. This strategy is working. Our sales per square feet have more than doubled since 2019. Our store unit revenue had tripled, and our four-wall EBITDA margin has more than tripled since 2019.
Our success in business results is embedded in our community activations and connections. Community is who we are. Our stores and events are magnets for connection, spaces where people come to gather, learn, and share stories. Even in cities that are saturated with run clubs, Arc'teryx community events are drawing in numbers double that of our competitors. Arc'teryx events bring together those at the forefront of culture, the trendsetters. We combine art, music, style, and mountain sport to captivate and connect.
Every interaction reinforces what we stand for: pinnacle performance, timeless design, and an unwavering commitment to our guest. Through localized programming, mountain academy events, and a network of athletes and ambassadors, we're building cultural relevance that cannot be bought, only earned. The North America growth will be supported by our expanding store network from approximately 68 stores at the end of 2025 to approximately 110 in 2030.
E-commerce is also a critical channel for North America as we continue to grow at a similar pace with our store revenues. Looking ahead, our plans and expectations for North America are high. We'll drive growth through our continued store expansion strategy, lean into our digital commerce opportunity, and the right quality wholesale partnerships. We'll expand our reach in wholesale to grow our new category offers in footwear and Veilance and specialty stores. We will continue to drive highly productive stores, high-margin digital business, and bring new guests to Arc'teryx through our wholesale strategy.
We'll grow margins, leverage category mix, pricing, operational efficiencies, and a disciplined investment strategy. North America is more than a region. It's a proving ground. The place where our brand was built is tested and celebrated. With premium retail, digital innovation, authentic community, and our talent pool, we will reach more guests than ever before.
We are the leaders of Technical Apparel, mountain lifestyle, and have nothing but possibility for growth. While unfortunately I can't be there in person, a couple key members from the team that are leading the charge are in the room. Joe Granado, who leads our retail stores, and George Weetman, who leads our digital business and strategies, are both here and happy to answer questions. Thank you so much.
Okay. Greater China. So I'm filling in for Ivan Shi, who is our GM of China for Arc'teryx. Ivan, unfortunately, was not able to be with us today. And so I will do my best to share with you some of the important trends and dynamics and dimensions of our China business, which is, as you know well, a really important and powerful part of the story for Arc'teryx, and I would say Amer overall.
I've helped build three brands in Asia and two in China, counting Arc'teryx, and it is a really attractive place to do business, from not only just the attractive cost to operate in China, but also the depth of the consumer market, the depth of the appetite across many categories, especially where we compete, and so that translates into a very attractive landscape for us to compete and win market share.
I would say even within that backdrop, Amer and its brands, and Arc'teryx among them, enjoys a pretty unique advantage. Through our connection, through our ownership, our connection to ANTA, it has afforded us specific advantages that are part of how Arc'teryx has accelerated in China, and some of the ones I would point out include access to talent.
Something that the ANTA team has been able to lend talent and help create access to talent for Arc'teryx and the other Amer brands has really accelerated us. Also, landlord relationships. The retail landscape in China is very important, and it is the primary channel for our business development. Those relationships and being able to get into the best locations across the key cities is critical.
Then finally, I would say just the understanding of the Chinese consumer is another advantage that we enjoy. More so than other Western brands, the Amer brands have these advantages that are, I would describe, structural as a result of our ownership structure. There's another important structural advantage that we have: just how we're set up to operate.
We have a significant Amer team led by Jeffrey Ma, who supports Arc'teryx and the other Amer brands with functions like real estate, technology, logistics, human resources, recruiting. We have an expert team that's focused on that at the highest levels of execution across the China market, [which] frees up our brand teams to really focus on driving market share gains.
Those advantages, I think, are important to acknowledge and understand as we think about how our business has succeeded and will continue to. In this section, I'm going to share additional details around the Arc'teryx business to include some pretty impressive numbers that are definitely a part of the overall story. Mountain Athlete, you've heard a lot about this, not only from myself, but from other members of the team. Even I heard it over and over again in the breakout sessions.
This is central to who we are in every region where we operate. It creates the North Star for our business, and it helps us build one brand in every region, China included. As we began the journey 5 years ago with this latest phase of the direct-to-consumer transformation, we did a lot of work to understand our customer segments across North America, China, and other markets, and what we saw was that in each market, we saw the same customer segments.
Specifically in China, we saw the same mountain athlete customers that we saw in North America just in different proportions. We saw more of the folks taking our products on the mountain in North America, but we also saw these customers in China as well.
Likewise, we saw customers who might never take our products on the mountain, but were attracted to the brand because of its authentic identity, its authentic performance focus. We saw those customers in China as well as in North America. We saw more of them in China. And as we build a very inclusive brand, all those customers are welcome. But importantly, why I mentioned this, it enabled us to, again, create a singular brand identity. We weren't creating a different brand in different regions.
There's one brand strategy. There's one product strategy. There's one retail strategy. And this is an important way we've created that singular brand identity. Okay. If we go to the next slide. So as we looked at the growth strategy for China, we focused on tier one and tier two cities.
And this is important to note that we have a very disciplined strategy to have fewer, larger, more productive stores. Our strategy is different from Salomon, where our stores will be larger, generate higher volumes, and we'll have fewer of them focused in the higher-tier cities. Salomon's strategy is right for that brand. But I note that just so that you can understand how Arc'teryx is positioned.
Currently, we operate about 60 brand stores in owned brand stores in China, about the same amount of franchise partner stores. And over the next 5 years, we'll look to add about 30 brand stores as well as continue to convert a couple of two to three of the franchise partner stores each year over that timeframe. So we see the potential for around 140 doors over the next 5 years in total. This excludes outlet stores.
And we see the potential in China to have close to 200 stores ultimately with the full rollout of the brand. E-commerce is important to note is a smaller part of the business, about 13% of sales today. We see that growing to around 15% over the next 5 years. And that business is conducted over the marketplace platforms that we're familiar with: WeChat, Tmall, and similar.
Okay. Next slide. So retail is the main event for us in China. And we have built an impressive business. If you were involved in any of the conversations that we had around the IPO, at that point in time, we were talking about really attractive four-wall economics that had us delivering $6.5 million-$7 million of sales per unit and a four-wall profit that was over 40%.
We're pleased to report that these numbers continue to improve as we pursue this strategy of fewer, larger, more productive locations. Our stores now in China are generating over approximately $10 million per unit with a four-wall profit of around 50%. These numbers are among the most attractive in the industry and a big part of the success that we continue to create in China. Average square footage around 4,000 sq ft for those stores. We continue to evaluate how we will continue to evolve the retail strategy. I was just in Beijing and helped open a new store format in the Peninsula Hotel there, which is a luxury hotel that has some very high-end retail.
This was a new strategy for us that included a really interesting community space, which we're excited to test this new format and see where we may be able to extend it. But it's just an example of the innovation in retail that continues within our China market. If we go to the next slide. So product innovation. So as I mentioned, across all our regions, our assortments are consistent. And the priorities that we mentioned earlier on women's, footwear, Veilance, hold true in China as well.
And we actually see some of the highest growth rates for these categories. Veilance in China is the region with the highest proportion of Veilance for any region. And I think it reflects, again, the demand and the appetite for these premium products in that market. We are also looking to build China-exclusive products. And we do this in a few ways already.
We create capsules for the Lunar New Year, the Chinese New Year, each year. And you see an image of the capsule of the Alpha that we created last year for the Year of the Snake. And we've also executed a collab with a luxury hotel chain called Songtsam that's based in Tibet. And so we'll continue to look for opportunities for collaborations and partnerships like that across China.
And we also will look for exclusive products that we can introduce that fit the climate, that fit the customer appetite while still remaining true to the overall focus of serving the mountain athlete. Go to the next slide. Disciplined growth, efficient growth, as I mentioned, rather. We will have a careful expansion plan in China where we will have fewer, bigger, better locations.
We also have a very strong operations team there where we are managing SG&A quite tightly and efficiently while still investing in the business for growth. We have a strong team across merchandising. And we've led some of the work around CRM and understanding our guests in China and developing programs to engage with them have been some of our cutting-edge efforts that have happened in China.
And so continuing to scale the business, focused on, again, those tier one, tier two cities with a really powerful expression of the brand in fewer, larger locations. Okay. And so as we look forward, the growth for us in China has been robust. Some might say white-hot. It's been really exciting to see how the brand has been received and the enthusiasm for Arc'teryx and the authenticity of the brand over the last 5 years.
You see that reflected in this compound annual growth rate. We expect, just given the scale of the business today, that our growth in China will moderate to a degree, but still be very healthy and very robust. And so we see the business approaching just under $2 billion in revenue by 2030. And so we also see it balancing with our other regions. We see North America and China in 2030 being about the same size.
And this is important for us as we want to have a balanced growth story globally. But really happy with the degree of growth that we've seen in China, and it remains an important part of our overall growth algorithm. And then finally, just some statistics here. I mentioned around 60 brand stores today. We see that growing to 90 over the next 5 years.
Our e-commerce growing from 13% of sales to 15% by 2030, and our wholesale contribution. This reflects the franchise partner stores that I mentioned that we will continue to gradually convert those to owned locations. And when we do that, we typically move those into a larger, better store location where we see a meaningful increase in sales for that location. So there's not otherwise wholesale distribution as we might understand it in North America in China.
But a fantastic market for Arc'teryx, an important market for us, one that's been really a cornerstone and an important pillar of our growth and profitability. And we're excited to see that continue into the future. Okay. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Ken Lee, who is our GM of Asia-Pacific.
Good afternoon, everyone. I have a wake-up song. I'm excited to share the story about our fast-growing market. My name is Ken Lee. I'm running Asia-Pacific, just a little bit of myself. I have been managing a retail industry for probably 25 years. I've lived in the U.S. for eight years. Recently lived in Hong Kong for 11 years. I'm stationed in Japan, running this APAC region. I'm super grateful to bring the best A-Team to build this APAC. And it's a very exciting time in stationing in Japan.
And as a bonus, I don't know if you know, Japan is the snowiest country in the world. So I get to ski when I have time. So this is a special bonus to working out of Japan. Okay. So fastest growth is coming from definitely a D2C. Just give a brief history that our largest market, Japan, has started a journey a little bit earlier. And we just opened a new store last week.
So we have 17 doors that take up 80% of our D2C business. Australia is one of the newer journeys. So Australia opened our very first store on June 26th. It's very new. Before that, it was pretty much wholesale business to drastically shift into retail. So first store in 2023 had a very healthy growth. And we opened a second store, opened another healthy growth. And now every store just exceeding the target. We have now eight stores and take up another 80% of business from our D2C.
And also, I'm very happy to share that we have a new family member in APAC. Formerly distributor model of Korea, recently joined our APAC team and active in Korea. Yeah. Just sitting in Asia, I talked about Japan. Asia is undergoing such a huge outdoor awakening. Someone like myself in Asia, normally study comes out of focus.
The outdoor journey tends to start later in life. Things are changing. Things are changing in such a drastic way that probably two things that I noticed. The one is a few Olympics, whether it's a Tokyo Olympics or Beijing Winter Olympics, whether it's bouldering or downhill snow or ski that. It's outdoor became such a closer activities. New generation of heroes and heroines are just influencing to such a wide audience. Secondly, when we go outside, we tend to be just go to the gym, just maybe a CrossFit.
Outdoor became such a bigger and faster movement. It's a wider audience all of a sudden just coming to outdoor just for self-expression. It became a new way of social and a new way of connecting to the community. Definitely in a larger, faster scale to become a social currency for the region.
D2C, I mentioned we had a very intentional strategy to penetrate into the market. Instead of opening a store by store, we wanted to really hit the city strategy. So instead of opening a store, instead of opening a big store, let's win Tokyo. Let's win Sydney. So we wanted to just make sure we hit a very, very tier one strategy. Even tier one strategy is a very fast phase of the journey. So just giving proven record to that.
And e-comm at the same time the same. It's a relatively newer journey showing two-digit growth. But again, it's two-digit growth, but still a beginning of a journey to have upside potential. Numbers. To share that such incredible numbers make me very humble. But we have stronger financial results from the pretty much beginning of this earlier journey.
So similar sales plus profit, similar store productivity, and store revenue is very, very solid. One of the stores, I don't know if you have ever been to Osaka. That's where I was from. We have stores in the corner location, three stories. It's called Shinsaibashi. This is holding one of the highest international stores. So when we see high-performing stores, there was a lot of Chinese stores leading the way.
But this is definitely number one stores. Wait until we open Rockefeller. But yeah, it's a great place to be. The forward profit is definitely a big focus. We wanted to maintain the premium positioning. Inventory management or how do we liquidate our product is very, very intentional. We wanted to just create a premium model, create a higher margin so that we get to invest for the future.
Karl mentioned that community, but I'm going to just touch a little bit that the community is also definitely our biggest secret source, so this is the way we would bring a local nuance to connect really deeply with the local community. Roughly, we host one or two community events per week, per country, so we do a lot. We have grassroots community activities to kind of Chamonix like a mini version of academy style, clinic style event to brand event.
This was an image from Tokyo. We hosted to tell the story in such a holistic way. Just to illustrate, we showcase 107 mannequins and 107 products. The products are from actual guests, actual customers, actual Olympians, actual guides, and actual ambassadors. All through that has each lend us product and share the story.
One of the stories I remember is that there was a woman who lost in the woods under the thunderstorm. She had to survive with just one jacket and one bread. And that's how her alpha jacket saved her life. So it's just a story that we told that each product has a story. Particularly just sitting in Japan, we have still lower brand awareness. But if you ask if they know, people know the product, they say, "Oh, yeah, I know the product.
Oh, your product is the best. You have the best quality," which is great. It's awesome. It's incredible that we have the best product. We are known to be our best product. But what I'm trying to just bring is an emotional connection. So it's good to have a best product, but we are known to be an outdoor company.
So I wanted to be known as the best outdoor company. In order to do that, we need community activities. We need a brand story. We continue to tell the story to understand and connect more with our brand. We have a strong momentum, and we expect to carry stronger growth for the next 5 years. More number, just to articulate. So what I'm suggesting this is to double the store count.
But this is for Australia and Japan only. Korea is a little bit tricky because we have a lot of shop-in-shops and others. So recently, Korea became a part of it. So we will have a higher number to be expected, more than 50. Last slide to just share in the summary. In such a short period of time, we have delivered such a tremendous track record and proven result for this journey.
So this undoubted market, whether it's a new market or a new channel, new stores, digital investment, e-commerce, or category growth like women, we just have such a huge undoubted market. So very excited just to share. We're going to continue to invest on the focus area and excited to share more story, more exciting results from APAC region. Thank you. Arigato. With that, I will pass it to Sven.
Good afternoon. My name is Sven Radke. I'm the General Manager of Europe in Arc'teryx. I've been with Arc'teryx for over a decade now, and it's been an incredible journey that I was able to watch how the brand evolved in Europe. Europe is a region like no other. We have 450 million people living in Europe and 120 million with a strong outdoor affinity. The addressable market is vast.
If you look at the outdoor segment, it's valued at EUR 18 billion, EUR 12 billion on the apparel side, and EUR 6 billion on the footwear side, with the strongest growth in premium and technical products. But the real opportunity isn't the size of the market. It's the mindset of the European consumer. They demand the best, pinnacle performance, purposeful innovation, and design that works seamlessly on the mountain but in everyday life. And that is exactly what defines Arc'teryx: obsessive design, uncompromising durability, and continuous evolution.
And this is why Europe represents such a great opportunity for us. Arc'teryx in Europe has always been trusted in the mountains. For over 20 years, our wholesale partners in alpine towns and epicenters helped us build the credibility with mountain athletes and their community. That trust in outerwear is the foundation of everything we have become. Today, we are evolving.
With direct-to-consumer growth, we're showing up in a stronger, more meaningful, impactful way. In retail stores, we create immersive experiences. In e-commerce, we bring this even further, beyond physical touchpoints and offering the full product offer to our guests, and wholesale still matters deeply, preserving our authenticity and complementing our direct growth. Together, D2C, e-comm, and retail are already above 60% share in Europe, and for me, this is disruptive evolution, from the credibility in the mountains to high growth, direct-led future.
This future is built upon the following growth drivers. The first one I would like to talk about is our stores. Our stores are not just points of sale. They are anchors of community, storytelling, and trust. In 2024, we opened stores in London, Paris, Munich, and Berlin. This year in 2025, we started opening in Germany, Milan, Stockholm, Manchester, and Hamburg in Q4.
Each opening has exceeded expectations thanks to meticulous market preparation and bespoke activations that resonate locally. Campaigns like "Stepping Into Light" in Stockholm brought the brand to life with the local community. For all of our store openings, we create integrated marketing campaigns with pre-opening and opening community activations, opening parties, media walkthroughs, and interviews. In our last opening in Manchester that I also attended, we organized a climbing gym party for over 650 participants, also invited our ambassadors and athletes.
That was the biggest climbing gym party we ever organized, and for the climbing gym partner, the biggest crowd we ever had in this gym. These initiatives are also driving real tangible results. When we look at our brand stores, our sales per square foot are $1,100/sq ft. Our store unit revenue is $4 million-5 million, and we have a very solid EBITDA with 30% already.
So really very strong retail KPIs. But great stores are nothing without great products, our next growth driver. Our brand foundation is rooted in a strong outerwear core. Arc'teryx hard shells and insulation are known for their top quality, performance, and design. Building on that foundation, we are increasing our investments in the following growth drivers: women and footwear. Women is our fastest growing category in EMEA. We design with a unique women's DNA in mind and create a complete system of dress for the mountain and beyond.
We are also engaging directly with her through female-focused marketing campaigns, adding new athletes and ambassadors, and community initiatives, reaching around 50% female participation in academies. Our commitment, we will continue investing to reach 40% women's share in Europe, anchored in technical product excellence and authentic community building, capturing the overproportionate growing numbers of women participating in outdoor in Europe.
The next growth driver is footwear, committed growth driver with traction. We have scaled performance across all our three channels. In wholesale, we doubled our footwear share this year and are now penetrated in 200 doors. As we look in the future, we aim to reach 10% footwear share in Europe. We will achieve this through franchise expansion with athlete validation, discipline distribution with elevated retail experiences, and embedding our credibility through our wholesale partners. In addition, we will amplify our dedicated brand campaigns and category campaigns along with intentional community building.
What defines Arc'teryx in Europe is our ability to grow while strengthening and staying true to our DNA, authentic to the mountain athlete and connected to our communities. Through awareness, affinity, authenticity, and community, in terms of affinity, we have achieved the highest results in Europe with a 50% affinity score, which is an outstanding result in showing the high loyalty and engagement of our guests. At the same time, as Karl mentioned, awareness is still developing, but this gives us significant headroom to grow visibility and capture new audiences.
Authenticity is at the core of everything we do, and the best example is our Alpine Academy, where we welcome 15,000 guests and 1,000 participants, making this the largest global educational event in the industry. To give you a bit more context, we had 140 mountain guides and 50 athletes that hosted our clinics, welcoming over 1,000 participants from 35 countries with a mix of 30, 30, 30 beginners, intermediate, and advanced participants. Our women's guests had a special focus in terms of participation and communication plan.
We had specific women clinics, more than 20 female athletes hosting these clinics, and we had an over-indexed communication plan. The result: we had a 48% women's share in our clinic participation, which was a 9% increase versus the year before. That leads me to our community work in epicenters and in mountain towns. In European cities, we bring the outdoor to urban communities.
The Paris Climbing Gym Residency welcomed alone 200,000 people, creating an exclusive space for athletes, enthusiasts, and beginners. Alongside this, our field tour and cultural activations bring inclusion and diversity to our community planning. We activate our marketing plans in eight alpine towns, with Chamonix being our highlight. We have our Arc'teryx Academy there and just opened our own brand store here.
By balancing authenticity with growing visibility and creating community in alpine towns and also in epicenters, we are scaling the brand Arc'teryx in a way that is both authentic and sustainable. In the last 3 years, Europe has seen a strong double-digit growth with a 28% CAGR across all channels. Today, direct-to-consumer already represents 62% of our business and a share increase of 20% in the last 3 years. Looking ahead to 2030, we target a high teens CAGR with a D2C increasing to 70%, a continuous evolution.
How are we going to do this? In retail, we are expanding to approximately 40 stores by 2030 and driving double-digit comp growth through experience, service, and community. In digital, we are expanding into eight key countries, accelerating our new guest acquisition and personalized journeys. In wholesale, we will continue growing with premium partners and fueling footwear with discipline distribution.
This is not a pivot. It's scaling what works: more high-performing doors, stronger digital, deeper service, and community while preserving premium wholesale. The result is higher brand control, healthier economics, and stronger guest loyalty. Europe is where outdoor culture and urban communities intersect, and this is exactly where Arc'teryx thrives. We build credibility in outerwear. We are expanding in women and in footwear, and we are deepening our community in mountain towns and epicenters.
At the center, we remain true to our purpose: building products for the mountain athlete, scaling responsibly, and leaving it better, and with every new store, every new guest, and every new community, we are not just growing reach and awareness. We are growing connection. Europe is becoming a growth engine for Arc'teryx, and our journey here is only just beginning. Thank you.
Okay, thanks, everybody. We're running a little bit behind. It may have been the brand guy that went long. I'm not sure. But we're still going to come back at 3:45 P.M., give you a 10-minute break. We'll be back at 3:45 P.M. out of respect for the people on the webcast as well. So see you back here in 10 minutes, and then we're going to finish strong with financials and Q&A.
Good afternoon. Ooh, big mic here. My name is Chris Tham. I'm the CFO for Arc'teryx. Great to be here today. I joined Arc'teryx in early 2022, so I've been here now for just over three and a half years, and it's been an amazing journey. Super grateful for the opportunity to be part of the journey and part of the amazing growth that the company has delivered and enjoyed. I spent a considerable portion of my career in the consumer retail space, and great to see some familiar faces that I may have spoken to in my past as well.
As you've heard today across the various strategies that have been discussed and also the regional expansion plans, really, really great story and compelling strategies. In my section today, I'll share how that comes together in our financial outlook and also the plans going forward, so just a quick summary and highlight of the transformation we've been on, and you've heard this theme throughout the story, throughout the course of the day today, and it's been really exceptional in terms of the growth that Arc'teryx has delivered. I kind of highlight and characterize four key areas. First, our product.
The key theme being the continued obsession and focus in designing the best products in the world for the mountain athlete has really allowed us to stay core, authentic, and it's allowed us to connect really strongly with our customers and our guests. That really leads to our second point: our increased connection to our guests through our direct channels, both through our store expansion, digital experiences, and as Karl talked about earlier today, the activations we've done in the community across all areas of the world has really created strong engagement and connection with the brand, and then thirdly, the transformed retail operating model.
We've made significant changes over the last several years that have really taken shape across all markets in our retail business, both in terms of strengthening our teams, creating really highly engaged and knowledgeable store staff that are driven and motivated to provide the best customer experience. That, combined with our elevated product flow and overall just retail operational excellence, has increased our store productivity significantly over the last several years.
And that, again, enabled by our team, our infrastructure, the investments we've made to fuel this rapid growth that you've seen kind of on the right-hand side of the chart here, which has resulted in almost a 5X of our revenue growth since 2019 from $0.5 billion to $2.5 billion this year. A significant increase in our DTC mix.
Back in 2019, it was about a 30% mix from a DTC perspective, and that has more than doubled in 2025. We expect that to be about three-quarters of the business today. While doing that, we've delivered meaningful gross margin and operating margin expansion over the last several years. Just moving on to the next slide, which is a quick snapshot of where the business is today and just some of the dimensions across the different channels and geographies. By 2025, at the end of the year, we'll finish with just over $2.5 billion in sales. Again, that's been tremendous growth year-over-year.
That encompasses about 200 store locations across the globe and within that, about 168 global brand stores. And again, within those operating regions, as you can see within the chart on the right-hand side, we operate ourselves across four markets: North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and China. Each market very profitable and with really strong, compelling unit economics and a pipeline for growth that really enables us for the future. From a store productivity perspective, as I mentioned, again, the transition we've made on our retail operating model, the improvements we've made have delivered exceptional results in our store productivity.
Almost triple the productivity since 2019, and this year, across our global brand store portfolio, we expect to deliver over $1,800 per sq ft. And then just looking at our channel mix as well. So this year, our DTC mix is about 75%. And then when you look at this DTC portion of the business, it's about 70% retail and 30% digital. And then within the digital component, it's weighted a little bit more towards the North America and Europe businesses where there's a higher propensity for online shopping and conversion.
And then lastly, just looking at our wholesale business, which has evolved significantly over the last several years, we're now at a place where we have really strong, high-quality accounts that allow us to step into that for the future. And then lastly, just looking at the product side of things, Matt, as you've heard, kind of highlighted really, really strong core products built on our iconic products that have really kind of fueled the growth of the business overall.
And I guess I would just end by saying the high-performing pinnacle products, the connection with the consumer, the connection with our athletes elevates our brand positioning and allows us to be able to drive the future growth of the business. Moving on to our five-year targets, as shared earlier today also in our press release. As we look at our five-year goals, we have set a revenue target of mid-teens CAGR on an annual basis, and we'll dive into some of the dimensions of that growth shortly. And then from an operating margin perspective, we expect annual operating margin expansion of between 20 to 60 basis points per year.
That allows us to deliver both profitable, manage the business in a really disciplined manner, allowing for additional profit flow through, but also ensuring we make balanced investments across the business to enable the future as well. So next slide, we'll dive a little deeper into the revenue composition and some of the key drivers here. So just starting on our channels, we expect to open about 24 stores per year globally.
That's about the new store opening pace that we expect to deliver. When you look at that in combination with our annual plan to renovate and relocate our stores and increase the average size of our portfolio, that equates to about square footage growth in the low- to mid-teens. That in combination, when you look at our overall store productivity, we expect our omnichannel comps to be in the low double digits.
Again, that's driven by continued productivity expectation within our stores, again, driven by brand awareness, driven by our product strategies, and the overall maturation of our store base. And then in addition to that, the work that we're doing digitally to drive customers both online and offline, we'll continue to see meaningful growth in our digital business as well. From a wholesale standpoint, we expect wholesale to grow about 10% per year.
We're at a point now in our business where the quality of our accounts is very strong. We expect to grow that at a very consistent level, as you've seen in some of the discussions earlier today. And we're also in a position now where we can leverage our wholesale business to support our new high-growth categories such as Veilance and footwear as well.
Moving on to our product categories, just extending from the themes heard earlier today, across the key priorities that we've talked about, footwear, Veilance, and women's will all grow at a faster rate than the company overall, led by footwear, followed by Veilance, and then also women's. So those three categories will continue to grow at a rate faster than the average of the business.
Our men's business, which is the highest share of the company, that will continue to grow in a very modest manner, very consistent. We expect that in the low double-digit range as well. So when you look at the overall category mix expectations in the next 5 years, we then therefore see women's will be about 30% of the total business. And if you look at women's between just the men's and the women's category specifically, it's about a 40%-60% mix between just the women's and the men's side by 2030.
And then long-term beyond that, as you may have heard, we expect the men's and women's business to be really balanced between the two. Looking at some of the other categories, just to highlight and summarize what you would have heard previously, footwear we expect to grow from 8%-13%.
We expect Veilance to grow from 5%-7% mix by 2030 overall. Then lastly, just across the regions, I think you've heard some of those themes just now recently, but summarizing kind of where we are setting our regional expansion plans, we have a very balanced growth story across each of the markets. We expect North America, Europe, and APAC to grow at a very comparable rate in the high teens.
We expect China to modestly grow, coming off obviously a high base and the significant growth that they've delivered in the last several years to be in the low double digits. When you put that all together, that basically has North America and China very comparable size by 2030. Just moving over just to talk about some of the drivers of our operating margin expansion.
As I mentioned, our expectation, our plan calls for about 20-60 basis points of operating margin expansion per year. I would say it's going to be probably more so on the lower end in the initial years of the plan as we make key investments to drive and deliver the growth for the future with gradual margin expansion in the back part of the plan. Looking just specifically at gross margin, we expect gross margin to be slightly up to modest over the course of the five-year plan, and that balances a couple of different components.
Certainly, the regional and channel mix movements that we expect to see, the category mix shifts as we grow the different categories in alignment with our overall plans. And then lastly, as the business continues to grow and scale, we do expect there to be opportunities both from a cost efficiency and supply chain efficiency perspective to drive margin improvement. On the SG&A side, we expect modest SG&A leverage over the five-year plan, leveraging our fixed cost structure, rent and occupancy, but also balancing that with key investments that we need to make to support our overall infrastructure and growth.
And then the next slide here, I'll just double-click a little bit further in terms of where those key investments are. So I characterize our investments in three key areas. First, let's talk about technology. From a technology perspective, I'd say we're still really in the early stages of building an enterprise tech stack. We've hired not too long ago Gabriel Morgan, who leads our technology team, and he's been making significant improvements in driving the overall technology strategy.
Specific to that, I call out a couple of key areas in terms of just the omnichannel experience, the in-store systems and how they connect with our digital experience and how that connects with our overall customer profile. Those are investments that are underway and that will continue to be a key focal point for us as we continue to invest in those areas, both in terms of unifying our customer experience, making sure that the store experience is very comparable to our online. Those are really critical kind of parts for us. We'll continue to make investments in our guest data management, our CRM platform.
You've heard a couple of themes today, both from Kyle and Karl, around our membership program, our loyalty, and those will be digitally enabled as well. We expect to make important investments in those areas and leveraging all the brand content, the storytelling, and the overall product to really deliver a best-in-class experience. Secondly, within our supply chain, there are key investments to continue in that area as well, with also a technology component.
Within our supply chain, there are significant investments still to be made to modernize our overall tools and planning tools that will really help us to plan, buy, assort, and deliver our stores and deliver product to our stores. And that's a key investment in the next several years. And again, all really with the purpose to ensure that we deliver the right product at the right place at the right time.
Beyond that, within our supply chain, continue to make investments to ensure that our capacity and also our DC network continues to support the growth of the business. Then lastly, on the last point I'd make is just the strategic priorities that you heard, both in footwear, women's, Veilance. Those are areas that will receive a higher index of investment.
We will continue and expect to invest in those areas to drive both brand awareness and ensuring we have the teams and capabilities to support that growth. Lastly, just in closing, a couple of points. I'd say we've delivered, as you've seen, tremendous growth over the last 5 years, and we're still in the early innings. We've been able to deliver our last strategic plan ahead of schedule.
As we look forward, we're very confident in the plans that we have ahead of us, both in terms of we believe they're very achievable, they're based on a robust market expansion plan enabled by the product strategies that we have in place. We look forward to be able to share our progress in upcoming updates as we step into this work.
Thank you. Now I will turn it over to Andrew Page, our Group CFO, to share how this fits into the overall group outlook and the overall plans for the company.
All right. This is a different audience, so I'm going to go quick because I'm the person that stands between you guys and Q&A. So a couple of things. I'm excited to get up here and talk about the results and give an update on our long-term growth algo. But I do want to start off by, number one, saying thank you to the Arc'teryx team. Outstanding job bringing this to life.
Thank you to the executive committee for being here. So we definitely are really excited about where we stand. And I guess the one thing I'll jump into is that I know Katie was up here earlier today and noted that she has the best job in the world. I would challenge that. Being the CFO of Amer is great. I have a really, really, really strong team under me, and then I have a really, really strong total platform that is able to deliver solid results like this. And you're going to see the same kind of solid results across every brand and the platform. So with that, let me jump right into what you guys really want to focus on.
Yeah, before I get into the financial statements, which will include an update to our third quarter as well as our long-term algo, I want to take a minute. I think it's really important to really take a step back and just remind you what got us here and why we have so much confidence in our future, why we have so much confidence and so much success in the things that we've done so far. It's really all about doing what we said we were going to do. And so I'll go back to James' points this morning that he alluded to in the beginning of the day. Our shift to our brand direct model, which triggered the transformation of our company and really unlocked the growth of our brands.
For many decades prior to 2019 leveraged buyout, this company, Amer Sports, was a fairly steady company. It was a sports goods company. It was a slow-growing company, mostly through acquisition, but it had never been fully unlocked for its full potential. But the company always designed and created great product. And as everyone talked about today, that ethos of creating great product, that was never lost. That was something that was consistent through the transition.
Everything else has changed. When we got after the LBO, there were probably three or four really key things that happened. New ownership, new management of great people, and most importantly, we shifted away from an overly centralized operating structure to this decentralized brand direct model, whereby the autonomy and the responsibility for strategy, execution, financial performance, it all sits with the brands and not at the group level.
And that really just unlocked the growth of these great products to get into the hands of consumers and be able to delight them all over the world. So a couple of key factors that I'll remind you of. I talked about this at our analyst day literally two years ago, and I would just remind you. So we assembled a strong, talented, and experienced leadership team, both at the brand level and at the group level. We transformed our go-to-market strategy for the brands, especially increasing our D2C penetration.
We leveraged our operating platform and the advantages that we benefit from our outstanding team in Greater China, which accelerated our growth in that large and profitable area. And then last, we divested non-core brands and reinvested our resources into our growth drivers. When you think about that, these changes led to a very meaningful financial unlock.
Within two years of the LBO, this once sleepy portfolio of centralized technical brands really came alive, and we experienced a sizable growth that I'm going to talk about right now. So you look at this, you see this chart right here. Our group revenues, which for decades were stalled at right around $3 billion, are now expected to eclipse $6 billion in 2025. You just let that sink in for a second.
That equates to a nearly 20% CAGR over this period, which we believe is one of the best growth trajectories in the sector. And we still have a large growth runway in front of us. So it's not just the sales that inflect it. Profitability also meaningfully inflected. Our operating profit dollars have nearly tripled from $271 million in 2021 to approximately $750 million at the midpoint of our 2025 range.
Our adjusted operating margin has quickly gone from single digits to low double digits on a meaningfully growing revenue top line. In our view, this is the natural result you have when you put together great assets that have been undermonetized, and then you put together the right organization, structure, and design with great teams who are well incentivized to really grow the business and return value. Again, set aside the P&L, this also resulted in a tremendous inflection in our EPS and cash flows.
Only a few years ago in 2022, we were generating negative operating cash and negative adjusted EPS. We expect to generate hundreds of millions of dollars of operating cash in 2025. And you couple that with $0.77-0.82 of EPS based upon our most recent guidance. It's a phenomenal change in about three and a half years.
So importantly, it's not just the P&L that inflected. If you look back to our balance sheet, our balance sheet is now fortified meaningfully better than it was a few years ago. Our net debt pre-IPO was $5.8 billion, a leverage that was well over five. Paying down debt with proceeds from the IPO and the follow-on offering that we did in late 2024, and also using our cash flows from our business, at the end of 2025, we'll have about $650 million of net debt, which will be about a half a turn compared to five times at the time of the IPO.
And lastly, we're super proud of the work that we've done on our effective tax rate. If you recall, our effective tax rate just a few years ago approached 50%. Right now, we're projecting it to be in the 28%-30% range. All right. Now turning to Q3. I shared an update. We shared an update this morning in the press release. And so since we've not finalized Q3, we're still going through our normal close process. And so we're not updating full year. I am going to give you an update of Q3, not calling it full year yet.
I believe our earnings date is November 19th or somewhere right in that range. We'll update full year and our regular Q3 earnings date, November 18th. As you saw in our press release, we had very strong third quarter. We now expect reported revenue growth in the high 20s% versus our previous guidance of approximately 20%. We also now expect our adjusted operating margin to be at or above the high end of our range of 12%-13%.
The upside has been driven by continued very strong growth from Outdoor Performance and an acceleration of our Technical Apparel led by Arc'teryx, and again, solid growth from Ball & Racquet, so across the board, all segments. Now moving to our long-term financial algorithm, which you also saw in our press release. We're very happy to present the updated long-term algo, which looks at 5 years plus into the future. Keep in mind that the midpoint of our full year 2020-25 guidance represents the base year from which this algo is coming from.
You juxtapose that against the base year, and the last time I provided this was for 2023. Amer Sports expects to deliver annual CAGR in low double digits to mid-teens growth. We expect the growth to be broad-based across all brands, regions, and channels.
This represents the same algo that we presented at the time of the IPO, despite the fact that our company is almost 50% larger, having added almost $2 billion since then. As you consider the cadence of growth on the five-year horizon, we expect growth to be at or above the high end of the CAGR in the earlier years, and during the planning horizon, we expect it towards the low or middle part of the range and at the end of the horizon.
Switching to profitability, at the group level, we expect annual adjusted operating margin expansion to be 30-70 basis points or more. Margin expansion will be driven primarily by margin expansion within the segments, positive mix shift between the segments, and leveraging corporate expenses, which will grow slower than group sales.
Keep in mind that the margin expansion will be driven more by gross margin in the first half of the planning horizon and more by SG&A leverage in the back half of the planning horizon. Although we will always choose to make the necessary investments to maximize long-term value creation, we will also balance this against the importance of exercising organizational expense optimization and discipline during the journey. Now moving to the segments. T echnical Apparel segment, Chris just went through, so I don't have much more to add to that.
Again, we expect margin to grow 20 to 60 basis points during the planning horizon. If you turn to Outdoor Performance, as you know, Salomon Footwear and Apparel have driven revenue and profitability acceleration in this segment. We have elevated our long-term expectations accordingly. We now expect annual CAGR of low double digits to mid-teens.
We expect that growth to be broad-based across regions and channels, and similar to the group, we think that if you think about the cadence of that growth over the five-year horizon, we expect growth to be towards at or above the high end of the range of the CAGR in the beginning and towards the low end or the middle of the range in the later years. We expect sales to be driven by Salomon Soft Goods, especially in footwear, both sports style and performance franchises.
Salomon growth is expected to be strong across regions and channels. We expect Outdoor Performance segment to expand this adjusted operating margin 40-80 basis points annually. Margin expansion will be driven predominantly by mix shift towards soft goods, which carries a higher gross margin and operating margin than winter sports equipment, which will shrink as a percentage of the total.
And similar to the group, we expect Outdoor Performance operating margin expansion to be driven more by gross margin in the first half of the planning horizon and more by SG&A leverage in the back half. For Ball & Racquet, we expect mid-single digits CAGR over the next five plus years. Growth will be driven by mix shift towards Wilson Tennis 360. Soft goods now represents 15% of the segment sales, and it's growing at a very strong double-digit rate currently and into the future.
We expect the hard goods equipment business to continue to grow at low single digits, led by tennis and racket sports. And lastly, we expect annual adjusted operating margin to expand 40-80 basis points per year. As you know, Ball & Racquet margins have been constrained in the past few years by the investment in Tennis 360 concept.
Margin expansion will be predominantly scaling the soft goods investment globally, especially as we build out our retail expansion in D2C in China and Europe and North America wholesale. Lastly, a few other financial considerations as you build your models. We expect our effective tax rate to approach 25% over the planning horizon.
We expect CapEx to be around $400 million, which is slightly higher than our previous CapEx level, given the many high-return investment opportunities, especially as we build out D2C footprint and make necessary IT and other infrastructure investments to support our big three opportunities of Arc'teryx, Salomon Soft Goods, and Tennis 360. We expect CapEx to be approximately $400 million in the next couple of years before leveling off to $300-$350 million later in the planning horizon. Now moving to inventory.
As we said in our last call, inventory will remain a bit elevated through the rest of the year as Arc'teryx brings in more inventory earlier in the season. It increases its use of ocean freight versus air freight. And we're very comfortable with our inventory as a very high percentage of it is in current season. Longer term, we will continue to target inventory growth at or below revenue growth.
This will continue to be a key KPI for us. And lastly, although timing is uncertain, we expect to retire the tax-inefficient $800 million senior secured notes at some point over the five-year planning horizon. If you take all this into consideration, long-term growth rates, annual margin expansion, and expectations, we expect EPS of $2.50 plus by 2030. All right. And on that note, let me turn it over. We'll invite the leadership team up here. We'll invite some of the management of Arc'teryx up, and we'll take questions and go through the Q&A process. Thanks.
Okay. Can you just give us a minute to organize? No need to get out of your seats. We'll be stepping right into Q&A so we're going to start the Q&A session. We have four of the leaders right here: Chris, Andrew, James, and Stuart. We also have the rest of the Arc'teryx team nearby, especially if category and region-specific questions. On the flanks, we have Laurent from my team and Sara from my team.
We're going to pass out the microphones. Why don't we start by raising your hand? I'm just going to call on people one by one. Why don't we start right here with Laurent up front? Laurent or Sara, would you give them the mic, please? Please announce your name and firm too so the people on the webcast. Thanks.
Sure. Laurent Vasilescu from BNP Paribas. Thank you very much for such a detailed presentation. Stuart, I'd love to ask about store productivity. You have a lot of experience in that. It was interesting to see the difference between the store productivity in Asia and China relative to North America and Europe. As awareness rose from 7% to 8% beyond, where do you think store productivity can go for the Western markets? And then, Andrew, I'd love to ask. I think you mentioned for Outdoor Performance, stronger growth in the first part of those 5 year plan plus. Should we think about that for the same thing for Arc'teryx as well as we think about the algo? Thank you very much.
Yeah, for sure. I think you hit on the key factor in terms of the regional performance differences. Brand awareness is really the unlock, both in the U.S. and in Europe. That said, in 2020, the productivity in North America was just over $1 million per store, and we'll be around $5 million at the end of this year, so we're not going to apologize for moving store productivity from $1-$5 million.
And we see the opportunity into the future to approach what we're seeing in Asia, so there's nothing structural that will prevent us from getting to the same numbers that you're seeing in China and in other parts of Asia. The brand momentum in China and APAC is incredible, and as we address the brand awareness challenges in North America and Europe, we expect to see similar trends.
And then just on the other question, I think your question was just around the cadence of the growth, mid-teens CAGR that we outlined for Arc'teryx. And I guess similar to the other brands as well, we expect in the near term and the initial years of the plan to be above the mid-teens growth rate. And that would normalize as we progress through the plan to get to that 15 CAGR over the five-year period. Theo?
Great. Thanks for the presentation. Really insightful. I guess just on the Arc'teryx brand's potential, you talked about at some point going beyond $5 billion in revenue for Arc'teryx. I mean, what's the long-term potential beyond the $5 billion, sorry? And how do you get there without crossing this line where the performance element is compromised? It would seem like some other brands in the past tend to become more lifestyle-driven.
And then on the gross margin outlook for Arc'teryx, could you talk a little bit more about the mix shift considerations? Because I would think with China growing slower in future years, that might be a negative for the gross margin.
Yeah. The first part of your question, we haven't quantified the upside for Arc'teryx beyond the $5 billion target that we have offered. I would say $5 billion is within our reach. I'll just put it that way. What I would suggest is appropriate to consider is the three segments that I described in which we compete and win share. So we dominate the outdoor segment as the pinnacle brand within that segment of the industry. We win share through a disruptive strategy in premium and luxury outerwear. And we are a small but growing competitor in the broad athletic footwear and apparel. That last category is very large.
And the runway we have there in particular is exciting. And our footwear strategy is aimed squarely at that. And so the potential for the brand is amplified as a result of that, the diversity of markets and segments in which we're winning market share. So I hesitate to sort of put a number out there beyond $5 billion. We're very confident in that. And there's growth beyond. Your second question on gross margin is a good one. And we're in that part of the year where we're setting five-year targets. And we're building models. And we're looking at how each region is going to perform. And that's a question that James actually asked me through the process.
So we've very carefully calibrated the growth rates in a manner where we're gaining leverage in those other markets as they grow and are able to leverage their cost structure. We've tuned that in a manner that ensures we're able to continue to expand our operating profit. And so the plans that we have, we believe, are very achievable, both top-line gross margin and bottom line. Brooke Roach from Goldman Sachs. And then Alex Stratton after that.
Hi. Thank you so much for the presentation, Brooke Roach at Goldman Sachs. Stuart, I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on new customer acquisition versus expanding closet share of your current customers, particularly in the geographies where you have the lowest brand awareness, such as North America and EMEA. Where are you getting that incremental customer from? Is it a specific demographic? What gives you confidence in that incremental customer? And how should we be thinking about that over the five-year planning horizon? Yeah.
In those markets, like the U.S. and Europe, where our brand awareness is lowest, it is a sort of a wide-open field. There's a football analogy. There's a lot of green space in front of us where we're attracting customers both from those hardcore mountain athletes who are discovering us, and the mountain town strategy that we have sort of stokes that idea. Park City, for example, we're opening later this year. We'll be able to capture those mountain athletes.
But also, as people are traveling from New York and Los Angeles and other cities and vacationing in Aspen, where we're opening as well this year, Banff, Park City, Whistler, they're introduced to the brand in a very authentic way. And so we're able to access those affluent customers who participate in those sports by exposing them to the brand, not only in their hometown in New York and LA, but also they see it at a place of practice, which is important, and how these strategies complement each other.
And then, obviously, in the major epicenters, which has been a cornerstone of our expansion strategy around the world, we focus on New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago. We've poured our community efforts, our marketing dollars into those markets, and we see strong returns. So that gives us confidence that we have a good algorithm to raise brand awareness, acquire new guests. There's so much upside in these markets.
And as we're capturing guests across the broad economic sort of spectrum of customer segments, we're in a really strong position to just continue to grow share across all of the segments that you heard Karl describe. And we also get a question related to that around the product assortment and our icons that you heard Matt describe. There's 20% of their assortment is driving 70% of the revenue. That's where we're winning as we're introducing new guests to the brand and to the products that we sell.
As we look at other markets, China in particular, where we're farther along on the journey, that's where the assortment evolution becomes more important, where we're more known in China. So there's more of a demand on the existing icons and a demand for newness. And so the innovation and the evolution of the assortment becomes more important in those types of markets. But a lot of runway, a lot of green space in front of us in the US in particular. Alex?
Thanks so much, Alex Stratton at Morgan Stanley. Maybe for Andrew or James, just on the Outdoor Performance segment, it feels like that's where you've raised targets the most from a growth and profitability perspective across the business and where perhaps the stories change the most since the IPO. So can you just talk a little bit about what's changed at that segment now versus when we met with you back then? And also just to mention how you achieve those growth rates.
Yeah. So Alex, I would say that the story has definitely evolved. It's not as much change. We always anticipated that Salomon would inflect. I think that there are a couple of things that you can look to. The European home market, we really reset our sales team there, our go-to-market there. We cut off the long tail of some undifferentiated wholesale partners. We really doubled down on our key strategic partners. We've amplified our new franchises. So it's always been a market that understood the hiking DNA of the brand.
But as we've amplified sports style as well in that market, and as we've amplified the other performance products, so our running platform and our gravel platform, that has also helped. And it benefits that the consumer in that market knows us and that we've gotten stronger relationships with our key strategic partners, some of the big boxes like Foot Locker and JD. We've reset our go-to-market team, our sales team, and really got a sharp point there.
Additionally, as you think back to the IPO, we were in the early stages of really amplifying, especially our sports style offering in Asia, the XT-6, led by the XT-6 franchise. That franchise resonates extremely well with that community. It resonates with the younger community. It resonates with the female community there. So we've unlocked a newer franchise that was really primed for growth in Asia, that franchise.
We've reset our go-to-market strategy and teams in Europe. We've brought the XT-6 franchise, I'm sorry, that sports style franchise into Europe, and it's been received well. And we've also introduced and expanded our performance line with our running and gravel platform. So when you add those things up, we always had great product. And you add all of those other assets around that great product. And we saw it coming. I mean, we always talked about Amer having a three-legged stool.
And at the time of the IPO, Arc'teryx was much more mature. And we were heavily reliant upon that stool, which we still are. We thought Salomon was coming. And we anticipate that Tennis 360 with Wilson will be another third leg of this stool that will inflect as we really optimize and perfect that go-to-market strategy around the globe. Yeah. I still want to enhance one critical point for Salomon Footwear specifically. So the new franchise we created in the markets, we called them modern outdoor sneakers. We are still only player in the segments, which really gives us the opportunity to serve kind of a new group of consumers, which is younger female consumers.
The sports style, I mean, we call it a sports style dedicated shop that we open. You really look at the consumer profiles. Our women consumers really represent 50%-55% of the total business, which is completely different from, I will say, normal outdoor brands. Okay. So this is the kind of a wide space we really created and gave us the opportunity to catch the sneaker market share from a different group of the consumers. I just add one more thing.
Paul.
Hey. Thanks. Paul Lejuez, Citi. Stuart, for you, and then maybe James. Stuart, when you think about the path to $5 billion in sales, how do you think about the pricing architecture to get there? What has to happen? Do you take prices up? And that's part of what helps you get to the higher numbers. What happens specifically in that 20% of the product that's making up 70% of the sales? Do prices hold? Do they go up?
Do they need to come down to attract more consumers to the brand on the road to getting that big? So I'm just curious how you think about pricing on the path to that $5 billion. And then, James, I asked this of a different CEO this week. When you look at all these numbers that are presented here, when we're sitting here 5 years from now, which numbers are you going to look at and be pretty disappointed if you don't exceed pretty handily?
Yeah. I'll go first. So the short answer, Paul, is we don't need to change anything in our pricing architecture to hit those numbers. We will continue to refine the price architecture. It's probably the best way to describe it. There's no movement or intentional element of the strategy to move the pricing up or down. I think there's tactical moves that we'll make across different parts of the assortment to expand certain elements of the price architecture where we see opportunities. We're always attuned to what's happening with the consumer, and we're always adjusting prices based on a range of factors.
But we're reluctant to change price, particularly for our icons, as we have. That's an important part of the understanding, the identity of the product in the market. We think of our Alpha. We think of our Atom jackets. Those prices are pretty set. We made some changes a few years ago where we felt like the market had actually caught up in certain cases, lesser brands of lesser quality were, in certain cases, higher than us, and so we reset prices there.
We continue to monitor and ensure that the value equation for the quality, the durability, the performance, we feel is appropriately positioned versus the competition and versus where the guest is on that journey. But short answer, nothing needs to change. But we're always watching and adjusting the price architecture where appropriate.
Paul, I'll say before James answers this question, we believe that the algo is prudent. And so we feel good about the algo across the brands and during the planning horizon.
Yeah. And you guys sitting here and listening to all the presentation from the team at Arc'teryx. So I think $5 billion by 2030 for Arc'teryx brand, definitely. I mean, from the management team, we have a very high level of confidence to achieve that. So I think, I mean, this is obviously for the Salomon. I still would also call out. I mean, we don't disclose too much on these brands. But we also got a very high level of confidence to achieve our long-term strategic goals for Salomon brands.
Michael Binetti in the back. And then John Kernan.
Thanks. Michael Binetti with Evercore. Thanks for all the detail and such a nice presentation today. Two questions. Maybe I'll start with the US to kind of continue with what Paul was getting at. You think about your answer about where store-level economics can go in the US and the Western markets relative to China. Have you tested your pricing architecture in some of the tier-two cities in the US?
Is that a big part of the growth component as you think about where North America will be when it's the size of China in 2030? What do you know about how some of the secondary markets in the US will absorb your pricing? Because you're at the pinnacle of the category, right?
We are at the pinnacle of the category. We're in markets today like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. We're in Washington, D.C., Boston. I mean, these are still strong markets. What I would say is our pricing architecture has a wide range. You think about our Covert, our two top items that are what I would describe as the entry point for most customers into our business, the Atom Hoody and the Covert Cardigan. And those range between really about $150-300. So the entry point is not typically a $900 hard shell.
So there's, I think, a broad enough range of products with a pricing architecture that is broad enough for us to win share successfully across the U.S. so that our pricing architecture doesn't present an obstacle for us. Certainly, as we introduce folks to the brand and the quality, they'll see the value equation for those higher-priced items. And that's been the pattern that we've seen around the world. So I think more important to our success in the U.S. across every market is not our price architecture. It's brand awareness. When people understand the brand and see the value that we bring to the table, they're willing to pay.
If I could follow up with one on China then. I think at the IPO, you spoke to unit economics in 2013 with average stores at about $6 million with EBITDA overall margins in the high 50s%. Today, you showed us $10 million. Rolled it forward a couple of years to $10 million with EBITDA margins closer to 50%. Can you just help us bridge that? Or you're adding much bigger revenue stores. Is there a higher cost structure? And then I'm more interested in, I guess, the incremental China unit from here. Are there more $8 million, $10 million, $12 million locations? Or how do we think about the locations as you keep rolling out the stores? Thank you.
Yeah. The numbers that we shared at the time of the IPO for China, the unit economics were $6.5-$7 million top line. And what we said at that time was greater than 40% for four-wall profit, for four-wall EBITDA. What we showed you today is the strong performance, the improved profitability that has occurred since the IPO, where our four-wall profit is now approximating 50%.
So that story holds. The stores, as we evolve the strategy in China, the stores are larger, which is part of the higher top line number. But they're also more productive. And there's greater flow through on the cost structure as a result of that top line number. We don't expect to see those unit economics diminish as we continue to grow and add stores in China. So as we talk about that 200-store mark, brand store mark as a potential for China, that is at or above those same unit economics.
John Kernan up here. And then Jonathan Komp from Baird in the back. Next. John Kernan, TD Cowen. Thanks for an awesome presentation. Looking forward to shopping later. Andrew and Chris, you've been very conservative with your guidance for Technical Apparel since the IPO. You've been reporting upside to it. When you think about the mid-teens top line, the 20-60 basis points of EBIT margin expansion, where do you think you're being most conservative?
You just used the term prudent, and you're saying that you're going to be at or above the high end early on, so it seems like very prudent and somewhat conservative. Just curious the longer-term plan and where you think you're most conservative.
I mean, it was at or above the high end early on and at or below, and at the midpoint or below later on as the business continues to grow. I think when you think about kind of the methodology and the thought process around our guidance, it is important for us to deliver value to our consumers. It's important to us to deliver value and return to our shareholders as evidenced by the bottom line expansion. But it's also important for us to do what we said we were going to do. And so when I combine guidance that reflects us delivering and putting confidence into the market, it reflects us returning value to our shareholders.
And most importantly, it reflects us delivering delightful product and experiences to our consumers. The combination of those three things is what's reflected in our guidance. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you that there's a methodology for we are conservative on top line or we're conservative on the bottom line. It's just we're really trying to delight our consumers, do what we said we were going to do, return value to the shareholders, and be able to do that confidently. And that's what our guidance really reflects.
Thank you. And then follow up for Stuart. Just on footwear, a lot of numbers got thrown out today. Can you remind us where this is going as a % of the mix, how fast the category is going to grow, and what is the differentiating factor of Arc'teryx footwear in what's a pretty competitive landscape?
Yeah. The long-term goal we would have for footwear would be to reach 20% of sales. It's going to take us a while to get there. Likely, in our internal plans, we don't achieve that in the next 5 years. But we see very healthy expansion towards that goal. The differentiating factor is probably a lot of what you heard from Josh and the team earlier today. As a company that is built on performance and quality, the expectations that our customers have in that regard is what we strive to meet in our footwear focused on mountain sports.
And so it's mountain running, as we call it, trail running, climbing, and the footwear that supports those activities specifically with our innovation from a technology standpoint and the highest quality available, highest performance and quality available in the market. That is the essence of our competitive position for footwear.
Jonathan Komp from Baird.
Thank you. Just first, on the short term for Arc'teryx, can you comment more on the re-acceleration you reported? And it seems like there's some good drivers into next year, better inventory availability, getting past some of the outlet consolidation. So just any comment there. And then Stuart, just a broader question getting at the U.S. opportunity. When you look at the dominant share you have in the Canada market, how does that inform you about the ultimate potential in the U.S. if it does?
So yeah, for sure. The re-acceleration, we've seen great trends in our business that fundamentally have continued. Quarter to quarter, we've seen the comp number ebb and flow. The information that you heard in the press release reflects strong performance that we're seeing now sequentially versus the second quarter that we're excited to report fully in November.
Part of that is the inventory position that we enjoy, translate that into strong performance. Importantly, it's the ongoing building blocks we described in the presentation today around how we're building women's, how we're building footwear, how we're building Veilance, and our core performance that Matt talked about as well. All those things fuel a very healthy and exciting trend in our results. We expect that to continue and look forward to sharing more in November. Your second question, remind me, was oh yeah. Yeah.
So Canada, there's a few examples of companies that were born in British Columbia that have expanded into the U.S. And in certain ways, we're following similar patterns where we have dominant awareness and market share in Canada that, following a disciplined expansion plan, we're able to translate that into the U.S. We're seeing similar patterns. Just the scale, obviously, of the U.S. market is very attractive.
And as we continue to drive brand awareness in those key markets that we described earlier, we're confident we're going to see an accelerating brand awareness. I think Karl described how even this year we've seen really strong increases in brand awareness that is translating into success in our numbers and our revenue numbers. So we believe we're in a nice part of the curve as we look forward over the next few years for expanding our business in the U.S. Over here.
Sorry. Okay. Chris Nardone on behalf of Bank of America. Just a couple of questions. Just one more to follow up on China. So how should we think about the step down in China growth, low double digits, especially given the recent trajectory and your comments on holding the store productivity? Is that anything from a competitive landscape you're seeing, or is it more tied to just being aware of macro? And then just one really quick one on Veilance. Just what's in the plan here in terms of potential to open standalone stores? And what's your strategy to increase brand awareness? Because I imagine it's even much lower than Arc'teryx.
Yeah. For China, we're thrilled with the performance of our business in China. It's really exceptional. And the numbers that you saw are, by any perspective, fantastic. And so as that business has grown, just naturally, sort of the law of large numbers, we're going to see our increasing revenue or revenue growth rates are going to moderate. And that's not a negative reflection on the business or the health of it. It's just the business is larger. And as you grow, the absolute growth rate moderates.
And your second question on Veilance, yeah, you're right. In a lot of ways, Veilance is still a secret. And so part of the strategy for Veilance is to drive awareness. We believe it's important that Veilance is closely associated with Arc'teryx. And so the distribution model reflects that today. And you will recall that Marissa described how investments in marketing are an important priority for us. And that's reflecting the new strategy and the new team that Marissa is helping us build.
Veilance has been on the back burner for a number of years. And so we're excited now to actually put together a coherent growth strategy under Marissa's leadership. So that's happening for the first time really ever. And we will absolutely explore standalone store opportunities for Veilance, testing pop-up locations first. We have a couple of versions of a standalone store, one in Beijing, one in Tokyo, that are mixed with some Arc'teryx product as well. But we will definitely test standalone locations Marissa described and excited to see what potential that could ultimately offer.
Irwin over here.
Hi. Thank you very much, team. Erwan Rambourg from HSBC. Maybe just a follow-up for Stuart on brand awareness. You talked about Europe and the US being in the high single digits. Can you remind us where Canada and China are? And then secondly, a question for James.
If you look at the planning horizon, you're moving from being very levered to generating tons of cash. And you have a really good track record at turning around brands. Is there a greater chance that you would be interested to purchase other brands in the future? Or is there a greater chance that you would return cash to shareholders? Thank you.
Yeah. Brand awareness for Arc'teryx in Canada is around 25% versus the numbers that Karl had shared with you earlier. And we see in China a level of brand awareness that's comparable to Canada. So it's really and those numbers that we're quoting are unaided brand awareness. Aided brand awareness would be much higher.
Okay. First of all, I'd like to repeat my statement in my speech. And so we are the company is still on phase one. We still see tremendous opportunity for all our brands in our portfolio in the companies. They all got tremendous opportunity to grow in the future. So obviously, the team's here. So we will put all the efforts, all the focus to figure out how we unlock the potential and reach the potential for the brands, especially Arc'teryx, Salomon, and Wilson in the future.
So that's number one. Number two, yes. Okay. We are pretty unique in the industry. And we are the company-owned portfolio brands. They all got a distinguished position in the dedicated segments, which already approved in the past 5 years. It's workable. It's given us a very good competitive edge in the markets. So we will not, I mean, stop to looking for the opportunities. Okay. So I think, I mean, but it's not the number one priority for us today.
So I mean, if something happens, I mean, we don't know. Okay. So I mean, we will pay a good level of attention on the market dynamics and see what's the right fit for us. Okay. So in terms of the cash position, I think that we are, as Andrew mentioned, we still got $800 million debt. Okay. And so if we create the positive cash flow for us, it's number one priority how we pay down our debts in the right way. And also, our business is still on a very healthy growth pattern, double-digit growth for the coming 5 years. So we will continue to utilize our cash to support all the brands' development in the company.
Right here up front, Dustin.
Thank you, management. Dustin Wei from Morgan Stanley China Consumer Team. So regarding the pricing differential across the region, I remember China was probably the product in China is probably like 15%-20% higher than other regions. So what's the latest update on that kind of number across the region? And then related to the competition, China is still, I think, the outdoor segment is still growing very nicely amid the current macro environment where solar growth in overall sportswear.
But the competition is also picking up, especially there are increasingly more emerging local brands. So how do we think about longer term that strong pricing in China to maintain that? But in reaction to that, I think, rising competition. Thank you.
Yeah. The price differential between China and the US is just over 20% in total. For our core items, our icons, if you will, it's between 15% and 20%. We see that as appropriate to cover the cross-border cost of operations that we have to operate in China. It's also consistent with industry practice. We don't see that as an obstacle in any way to our competitiveness in C hina
I gave you the response for the second question in terms of a competitive landscape in China. For Arc'teryx, I still already mentioned we are really positioned at pinnacle, high technical, authentic outdoor positioning. That positioning, I think today, we don't have clear competitors in China markets. Okay. So we need to do whatever we think is right for our brands. But on the other side, we also see certain domestic brands like Arc'teryx. They are growing very fast recently.
But for us, it's also, I mean, we need to build up a much stronger competitive edge, especially, I mean, the team also introduced, I mean, no matter the communities, but also the ReBIRD service, how we provide premium, high-quality service to our consumers so that the loyalty can be well secured. So that's kind of besides the high-quality innovative products feed to the market. So I think it's obviously we are the only brands today, cross-border in the world, to grant the level of the service like a ReBIRD service to repair the gears and to give the best service to our customers. So we will continue to invest on that engines to secure the loyalty of our consumers.
Here's CICC team here in front.
Okay. Thanks. This is Dichuan from CICC. I have a question.
In terms of the footwear business, we see Salomon and other competitors are sponsoring lots of sports events like UTMB or something like that. But we don't see many Arc'teryx has such a marketing plan. So can we have more picture about the Arc'teryx footwear's marketing? Thanks.
I just want to make sure we understand the question . Is the question, are we going to do more sports marketing and athlete endorsement for Arc'teryx similar to the way we do with Salomon?
Yeah. Yeah. Our position with athlete endorsements has been aimed at non-podium activities up to this point. Footwear is one category we're exploring what the right position for Arc'teryx should be. We have had a number of our sponsored athletes competing and winning races. And so we expect that will continue. We'll continue to add athletes who are competing in races like the UTMB.
And in footwear, we expect to see more podium-focused athletes than in other sports where we sponsor pro athletes. The degree to that, I think Salomon has a unique focus that Arc'teryx is not looking to mimic. We'll have our own approach to athlete sponsorship. And importantly, the authenticity of performance for our guests, off-podium type activities is more where the identity of Arc'teryx is. But we will participate in footwear and that part of the market where we believe it's appropriate.
We have time for one more question here in the middle.
Hi. This is Kai from Guotai Junan. So just landed in Vancouver from Shanghai this morning. It was a great opportunity to be here. One question for Arc'teryx. So we were reaching around 300 stores by the end of 2030. So if I remember right, we also mentioned that the long-term goal is around 500-600.
So from the perspective of region, will the store extension, the pace will quite similar after the, I mean, 2030. And another question is about the GP margin. So we are also making optimization of the supply chain and also making positive impact on the transition. So for the future, will the GP margin rely more on such as the DTC contribution and also the full-price strategy? Or are we also satisfied with the factory mix right now? Yeah. Thank you.
Yeah. We haven't given details on our growth beyond 2030, but really confident in what we have shared. From a margin standpoint, in many ways, we've got a lot of opportunities that are not yet tapped. So in my prior experience, supply chain opportunities to drive efficiency into our sourcing strategies are still available to us.
And so there's upside from lowering our product costs just through how we partner with our suppliers that we have really not fully begun to explore or capitalize on. So there's the opportunity for us to improve the product costing into the future that is meaningful. And the pricing architecture that we talked about earlier, we're not viewing that as a meaningful part of the gross margin opportunity. We will adjust prices based on market dynamics to ensure our products are priced where they should be versus the competition.
I don't know, Andrew, you want to add anything on that? I think you nailed it with regard to our margin opportunities. We've not given a lot of detailed gross margin expansion. But what I will say is if you think back to the IPO, we talked about gross margin expanding 300 plus basis points. We've done that.
It's going to be driven primarily by the mix shift of Arc'teryx growing faster than the rest of the portfolio and being our highest margin. What you will see going forward is Arc'teryx's gross margin expansion not being as much of a driver of accretion because of the fact that Salomon and Outdoor Performance is growing. And that is a strong trend and a positive trend for the organization, but the margins are lower. And so to the extent that Salomon or Outdoor Performance grows faster than the portfolio, to the extent that it approaches Arc'teryx's growth rate, it will cause a slower growth in the gross margin expansion. But again, we see that as a positive business trend.
Okay. Thank you very much, Arc'teryx and group management team, everyone for joining. I really appreciate your participation. This officially ends the webcast online. Thank you, everyone online, for joining.