New York City-based retailer Aéropostale is making its return to the Canadian market in time for Black Friday with its first collection of products appearing in 75 Bluenotes stores across the country.
The “shop in shop” stores are part of an overall plan Aéropostale has to add 20 to 30 freestanding new concept stores in Canada from coast to coast in 2020. It’s part of a partnership with YM Inc. — Oberfeld Snowcap is handling leasing for the standalone Aéropostale locations under the direction of Andrew Laudenbach.
“This new partnership is a perfect fit for our customers as our jeans are the heart of both of the Bluenotes and Aéropostale brands. This collaboration has been in the works for some time now and thanks to the hard work of everyone on the Bluenotes and Aéropostale teams, it’s an exciting timing to be able to reveal this in time for Black Friday,” said Michael Roden, CEO of Bluenotes and Aéropostale Canada.
Aéropostale was in Canada a few years ago but left the market in the spring of 2016 after the bankruptcy of its US division. The company had 41 stores in Canada at the time.
“It’s a good partnership. It’s definitely along the grounds of our same clientele – our customer base. Jeans are the hero of both businesses so we kind of felt it was a good fit for us.”
On November 28, 75 of the 100 Bluenotes stores will create a shop within those locations for an Aéropostale collection. The first collection will include the Aéropostale lineup of Girls and Guys jeans plus branded graphics, hoodies, and joggers. These are classic Aero staples and a perfect pairing for the Bluenotes collection.
Also this week Aéropostale online is launching in Canada.
“We have developed a new concept and in 2020 we will be starting to build freestanding stores under the Aéropostale banner in shopping centres across the country,” said Roden. “We’re going into construction in the early part of January and February with five locations.
“Bluenotes has been around for many years. Some of us remember it as Thrifty’s and Bluenotes was always the brand name for the jeans. So we felt that when the partnership was presented to us early last year, beginning of this year, that it would be a good complement to the Bluenotes brand and for us to be able to continue to grow not only the Bluenotes brand but also bring back a brand that was very much wanted in the Canadian market.
“Our marketing campaign for it we’re calling ‘better together’. It also allows Aéropostale to be able to grow again in Canada. It was just a good match for our customers.”
Roden said the Aéropostale main age demographic can be as young as 15 years old up to the early 20s – high school to early college and university.
“We’re very excited. We’ve been working on this for quite some time. We’ve been working with the merchandising group and we’ve been going back and forth to New York learning about the brand, learning what works,” he said.
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“I think the Bluenotes team here we’re all very pumped and we’ve already done the first stage of making big announcements about Aéropostale. We got quite a lot of positive feedback and it will be in the store very shortly.”
Bluenotes has been a Canadian company since 1942 with the original store called Thrifty’s at the corner of Queen Street and Church Street in Toronto. Bluenotes is known as one of the top denim retailers in Canada.
Bluenotes is the exclusive licence partner of Aéropostale in Canada. The merchandise is designed in Canada in partnership of Aéropostale USA making it an exclusive collection to the Canadian stores.
Will be interesting to see if this is successful. No doubt they are trying to capitalize on landlords desperate to fill vacancy and will surely be offering the 8% of sales in liu of real net rents.