Dive Brief:
- Ahead of the holidays, Gen Z fast-fashion brand Cider opened its first ever pop-up store last weekend in New York City, per a release sent to Retail Dive.
- The store, which spans over 2,000 square feet, is on Howard Street in SoHo in what was a former Opening Ceremony location. The pop-up will remain open through January.
- With a community of over 7 million built through its “social-first approach to fashion,” the Los Angeles-based Cider has grown its brand online since its founding in 2020. The company plans to open permanent brick-and-mortar stores should the New York pop-up prove a success, the company told Retail Dive.
Dive Insight:
Cider earlier this year tested a styling suite in London and an activation in Seoul, South Korea, where fans of the brand could check out the clothing and accessories, but not make purchases. The New York pop-up, Cider’s first attempt at brick-and-mortar retail, was designed in partnership with Ringo Studio, which has worked with such brands as Glossier, Our Place and Bala.
“As this is Cider's first store in New York, it's essential that the brand's identity takes center stage,” Fenco Lin, co-founder and chief fashion officer at Cider, said in a statement. “The prominent color for the project is red, aligning with Cider's branding and catching the eye of the New York audience. The pop-up design integrates key brand elements, such as Cider's logo, slogan, and ‘Pick a Mood’ collections, to ensure that the space feels uniquely us.”
The SoHo store features such mood collections as “Feeling Cute,” “Feeling Romantic,” and “Feeling Elegant.” There is also a New York City capsule collection exclusive to the pop-up shop. And similar to Cider online, the brand offers a broad size range in the store, from XXS to 4XL.
Cider was launched from Los Angeles in 2020 during the pandemic by Lin, CEO Michael Wang and Chief Marketing Officer Yu Oppel. The brand has grown following a number of investments — A16z has been an investor since seed stage and DST Global participated in a Series B round. As described on the A16z website, the digitally native company follows a somewhat similar consumer script as Shein, Zara and Forever 21, but differentiates itself by being “a marketplace of global factories that makes it possible for users to have more selection than Zara, at the price point of Forever 21, on-demand, and with minimal waste.”
Oppel said this pop-up is “just the beginning for the brand.”
“It’s a starting off point for us in terms of expansion and where we want to show up in order to resonate with our community,” Oppel said in a statement. “Based on its success, we are aiming for future expansion into brick-and-mortar locations and pop-ups around the world, specifically in global cities like New York, London, Seoul, and Paris.”
