Canadian Retailer Oak + Fort Is Expanding In The U.S. With 9-Plus New Stores

Oak + Fort is that other fashion brand from the North that you never heard of until recently. But like its compatriot, Aritzia, which burst onto the U.S. retail scene opening stores when other brands were lying low during the pandemic and beyond, Oak + Fort a female-led modern contemporary lifestyle brand, headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, is on an expansion tear.

Despite the effects of the economic downturn, brands such as Oak + Fort continue to thrive by using a varied approach to reach their consumers around the world. Since launching the brand in 2010 as an online-only label, Oak + Fort has been working behind the scenes to expand its retail presence across the U.S.

Later this year, the brand will expand its footprint across the East Coast with planned store openings at Boston’s Prudential Center and super-regional mall Tysons Corner Center, which serves the Baltimore-Washington area. With over 30 stores across North America, Oak + Fort joins the ranks of Canadian-based brands that have broken into the U.S. market. Besides Aritzia, that includes Lululemon, Joe Fresh and Mejuri, among others.

Oak + Fort recently opened its first flagship in its hometown of Vancouver, Canada. The retailer also plans to apply better sustainable practices across the board. Recently, Oak + Fort joined the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), the global, non-profit alliance for the fashion industry, to meet and exceed the environmental and social transparency consumers are demanding.

And this month, Oak + Fort launched an all-new 360-degree resale platform, Oak Renew, enabled by thredUP’s Resale-as-a-Service^Ⓡ (RaaS^Ⓡ), and joining its peers as the industry advances in the circular fashion world.

“We’ve been expanding year-over-year,” said Melorin Pouladian, vice president of operations, Oak + Fort. “The Canadian market does really well for us. We have a lot of brand recognition, so we really go and find the best locations and the best size for us that is able to represent a lot of our different lines.

“Recently we’ve really been expanding further into the U.S.,” Pouladian added. “We’re just scratching the surface of what our expansion might look like. In the past few months, we have expanded significantly in the California market as well as going into Massachusetts with a store in Boston. Even within the Covid year, we were able to build and extend our footprint into 9-plus new stores.”

Oak + Fort, which operates at 32 stores globally, is expecting to open around 9-plus stores, and “obviously, that’s just a bit higher,” Pouladian said. “I like to say that since every store we open is a success, we’re estimating right now 9-plus and we’re now primarily focusing year-over-year on the U.S. expansion.

By the end of the year, the brand will operate 13 stores in the U.S. “Globally, where we ship to, our product assortment is really landed in so many ways,” Pouladian said. “The modern lifestyle that’s easy and the aesthetic is what really lands and takes you through season after season. We don’t necessarily just design for ‘in the moment,’ in the hopes of you carrying through some of our assortment year-over-year as you grow.”

Oak + Fort’s new store in downtown Vancouver at the Gastown center is a redo of its initial store there. “The first store we went into Gastown in Vancouver, we closed to open a much bigger location of 5,000 square feet, which is our flagship store,” Pouladian said.

She noted that Vancouver’s greenery is exceptional, and the brand has maximized the scene in the Gastown flagship by bringing the outside inside with a view of the mountains. “It’s beautiful,” Pouladian said. “Obviously, it rains a lot but you’ll see at our Gastown location overlooking at the far end, the mountains on the North side as well,” Pouladian said.

“This store is made to be so different from any other store we’ve had,” Pouladian added. “We’re carrying all of our collections, which is women’s wear, men’s wear, accessories and home wear. The beautiful part of this location is that we’ve created and allotted square footage to encompass a shop-in-shop base that we’re partnering with other brands, enabling them to grow and experience what’s in that store. It started with Modu Atelier, which is a high-end jewelry line. Odyssey is very fashionable, but the quality is great. That will actually be part of our opening. It will do very well, and it’s obviously drawing another customer.”

Also high on Pouladian’s list is sustainability.“It’s so necessary for the fashion world and we want to reduce our carbon footprint, so we’ve actually launched our very own Oak Refined, our environmentally-conscious line,” Pouladian said.

“That’s another way we promote sustainability, and that really goes back to the ThredUP relationship we’re just embarking on,” she added. “It’s very new for us. We’re just talking about a few weeks and we’re really going to analyze what this partnership and initiative will do for our brand, and whether in the future we bring it in-house and have an opportunity within our stores to provide this trade where we are reselling some of our good quality products.”