Dive Brief:
- Apparel brand Buck Mason opened its third Chicago-area retail store just one month after opening the doors to its second brick-and-mortar location in the region, according to details emailed to Retail Dive.
- Located at the Oakbrook Center, the 1,030-square-foot “shop within a shop” concept features a design patterned after Jean Prouve's 1939 military shelter.
- With the new location, Buck Mason now operates 33 retail stores across the U.S. Plans call for several more stores this year in established markets, including an expansion in Nashville and a new shop in Miami, per a company spokesperson.
Dive Insight:
Founded in 2013 by Sasha Koehn and Erik Allen Ford, the Los Angeles-based Buck Mason has steadily been expanding its brick-and-mortar footprint as it seeks out customers where they shop.
The brand opened a Chicago-area store in Lakeview in May after opening its first Chicagoland store in March 2023 in the city’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. At the time, its co-founders explained that Chicago was one of its most important markets.
“We’re going to keep expanding where it makes sense — making our mark even bigger in places we’ve already established, and branching out to new markets that feel like a perfect fit, both in the numbers and the local vibe. The most important thing for us is giving our guests the full experience wherever they are,” Koehn said in an email.
The shop-within-a-shop concept at Oakbrook is a partitioned space in the center of the store made from reclaimed oakwood and Chicago glass blocks that recall a military shelter.
Chicago has been a vibrant market for a number of DTC brands to open brick-and-mortar stores. Beyond Yoga opened its first store outside of California in Chicago’s Fulton Market District in November of last year. Around the same time, iconic century-old Radio Flyer, headquartered in the area, opened its very first store, a 15,000-square-foot flagship location at the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois.
Wilson Sporting Goods opened two new Chicago stores in January of 2023, one in suburban Oak Brook and the other in the city’s Gold Coast neighborhood.
