Canadian Tire Corporation has launched its first-ever active activewear brand Forward With Design, which has been designed, developed and incubated in-house for active, on-the-go Canadians.
“Knowing the lines between work and play are often blurred, Canadian Tire Corporation brought together its top talent to develop an activewear brand rooted in versatility,” said Anthony Wolf, Vice President, Product Development at CTC. “Forward With Design not only highlights our in-house brand-building capabilities, it delivers a customer-centric collection that combines style with functionality, mindfully designed to transition with Canadians throughout their daily activities.
“I think that was an important part of the brand that blend of style and performance and the name itself captured that Forward With Design. This is a brand designed to move you forward in your day no matter where your day takes you and design and style and looking good and feeling good are part of that. That’s really the purpose of what we set out to do.”
Forward With Design’s full assortment for women, men and kids is now available at over 200 Sport Chek and Sports Experts locations across Canada and online.
Canadian Tire said Forward With Design apparel was built from the ground up in just over 900 days from concept ideation to full brand launch.
“On the heels of CTC’s Better Connected strategy, the goals were to design and deliver world-class products that reinforce emotional connections with customers, and to create a brand that transitions seamlessly wherever life takes Canadians,” said the company.
“Sport Chek, part of the Canadian Tire Group of Companies, is the exclusive home of Forward With Design’s three capsule collections – Push, Friday and Free. Each functional, yet interchangeable capsule incorporates sustainable fabrics and responsible production methods combined with style, comfort, and convenience.”
Wolf said Canadian Tire’s purpose is to make life in Canada better. He said he’s very fortunate to run a team that is focused on designing and engineering products that serve a number of the company’s brands.
“We’re always looking for opportunities, always looking for new customers to target, new opportunities in the market . . . The interesting thing with Forward With Design is that is exactly what its impetus was. We had a recognition that there’s a new customer, someone we later named the active nomad, who is somebody that transitions through different parts of the day,” he said.
“They’re constantly moving between work, working out and going out. And they bounce back and forth between those and they were sort of underserved because they were always on the go, always on the move, carrying various bags and equipment, and trying to seamlessly transition through different parts of the day. There was nothing really meeting the needs of this customer.
“So we started with this very strong sort of customer insight around the active nomad and sought to build a range of solutions, active lifestyle essentials as we call them, with a range of products to help them in this quest to pack everything into their day, fit everything in and transition seamlessly.”
Wolf said the focus was not to think of it as an athletic or athleisure brand but think of it as a solution for a specific pain point for people. It has grown to include athleisure wear, a range of apparel, hydration, self-care and a range of products.
The retailer described the three collections this way:
- The Push collection focuses on elevated activewear built for the active generalist with high-intensity in mind;
- The Free collection focuses on relaxed loungewear for the in-between moments in life, with a focus on sustainable fabrics, trend-driven silhouettes, and fashion-forward colours; and
- Fusing clean, minimal design with activewear technologies, the Friday collection is transitional work-leisure designed for life on the move.
“We’re continuously striving to bring our customers the highest quality products to support their healthy, active lives, and couldn’t wait to bring Forward With Design into our assortment,” said Dale Skulsky, Vice President Purchasing, Sport Chek. “Forward With Design not only complements the Sport Chek brand promise, but brings a complete product offering to our customers that’s rooted in active-style, quality and mindfulness.”
Wolf said the customer for this new brand is a mix of male and female with it skewed slightly more female. The assortments cater to men, women and children.
“Customers who place a high value on wellness, fitness, physical wellness and mental wellness, as part of their life and are busy and active. They’re constantly moving from one place to another,” he said.
Wolf said the brand has focused on sustainability and inclusive sizing.
“Good for our customer and good for the planet,” he said. “We’re on a journey on this like most companies but we’ve used Forward With Design as an opportunity for us to really push the bounds of material choice, choice of some manufacturing processes, or low impact dyeing, in terms of including that into our assortment. That’s a really important pillar of the brand – it’s sustainability focus.
“As well as inclusive sizing. We’ve got sizing that is much broader than might typically be expected and the goal here was to make sure that this met the needs of all Canadians. We really wanted to include everybody in their pursuit of wellness. We wanted everybody to have an opportunity to enjoy these products.
“It’s a blend of style and technical performance. All products, no matter which part of the assortment, whether it’s our core assortments or our capsules, we have three capsules . . . they all have a slightly different flavour to which part of the day you’re sort of leaning into. But all of them use sustainable materials where we can. They also use technical fabric. So the products have a huge style focus, making sure that they look great, that they’re on trend in terms of colour . . . but in addition they’re using technical fabric. They all have anti-odour, four-way stretch, a lot of technical features built into the right products to make sure they are comfortable to wear, that they move with your body, they fit great whether you’re sitting on a Zoom call or whether you’re doing squats as part of your workout.”
Good idea, except that the clothes don’t look any different than what other retailers carry. Terrible name. Also not available in Quebec, so another good reason to not buy their products.
Rats! Last Christmas I told the guys at the liquor store that the free socks I got with my rum would complement my wardrobe from Canadian Tire. So there goes my jokes…or maybe not….
I suspect this CT house brand leisure wear will get lost and forgotten before it gains any traction in an already extremely crowded segment of the market. The established brands are recognized at a glimpse of their logos and have very loyal established customers. No doubt CT will dictate the up front exposure and shelf space in Sport Chek stores. However even with that and investing buckets of advertising dollars in the program I suspect in 2 to 3 years the inventory will end up on the marked down 75% rack. I’d be very interested in hearing what the Sport Chek buyers really think of this downloaded program.