DUER, the Vancouver apparel brand behind Performance Jeanswear, DUER has found a way to build an international customer base by staying in Canada.
It will be opening its 12th North American store on the iconic Banff Ave in Banff, Alberta in late June. The thinking behind it traces back to Victoria, a smaller market that is performing on par with Vancouver, its home market, doubling what the brand expected.
A significant share of that store’s customers is arriving on cruise ships, discovering a Canadian brand, and taking it home with them. It’s been a quiet proof of concept for a tourism-driven retail thesis.
Banff is the next move in that same strategy, at a larger scale. Four million visitors a year, a strong international mix, and a customer who is active, outdoors-oriented, and spending. For DUER, it’s a way to earn a global customer before it ever opens an international storefront.
This is part of a deliberate push. DUER opened four stores last year and is on track for six this year, and just wrapped its strongest quarter since pre-COVID with 40% year-over-year growth.
Gary Lenett, company Founder, said the brand is already in 25 countries through wholesale.
“So this isn’t about proving there’s a global customer. We know there is. What Victoria and Banff give us is something harder to manufacture. When someone travels to Canada and walks into a DUER store, the fact that this brand was built here actually means something. That context makes the story land differently than it does sitting on a rack in an overseas account. Tourism hubs like Banff are one of the best places to connect with a global audience while building our home base in parallel,” he said.
“Victoria surprised us, in the best way. Smaller market, reasonable expectations. It’s doubled them. It now rivals our Vancouver store which has had years to build in our home market. A significant share of that customer is arriving on cruise ships from international markets, discovering a Canadian brand for the first time, and the product is converting them. That gave me real conviction that Banff is the next step in a thesis we’ve already proven out.”
When someone experiences DUER somewhere memorable for the first time, that’s a strong foundation to build on, said Lenett.
“And the infrastructure is there to support them (a tourist) when they get home, whether that’s finding us through a wholesale retailer in their market or shopping our UK and EU ecom sites,” he added.
DUER is accelerating store growth while many apparel brands remain cautious about brick-and-mortar retail.
“What a lot of people got wrong is they conflated “bad retail” with “retail is bad.” When someone walks into a DUER store and tries something on, we convert 80% of the time. Nothing online comes close to that. Retail is still one of the best brand-building tools there is,” said Lenett.
With 40% year-over-year growth and six stores planned this year, how does DUER balance rapid expansion with maintaining the authenticity and operational discipline that helped build the brand?
“I’ve lived through what happens when you grow faster than your foundation can hold. I’m not doing that again. We’ve been profitable since year three and it’s probably the most important thing about how we run this business,” he said.
“A big part of that is how we choose where to grow. We don’t go into a market cold and instead look for places where our wholesale and ecom business has already established a customer. That gets us to the flywheel faster meaning all channels working together, each one feeding the others. 40% growth is exciting but it only matters if the brand on the other side of it is still worth something.”
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