All Birds owner Tim Brown opens flagship store in San Francisco

Sunday, 28 May 2017

All Birds founder Tim Brown says opening his first physical store in San Francisco was a gamble, but it's paying off.

Kiwi retail ingenuity is branching into the American market as footwear company All Birds opens its first flagship store in San Francisco.

The man behind the merino-made shoes ex-All Whites skipper Tim Brown said he was cautious about opening because of San Francisco's 'eye wateringly expensive' property market.

'We've very nervously signed a lease on a big building that used to house printing press and Mark Twain used to write for the paper in this beautiful part of San Francisco,' he said.

All Birds launched online in 2016 selling only to the United States and New Zealand market. The wool for the shoes comes from New Zealand, which is sent to Italy to be made into shoe material and then South Korea for manufacturing.

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'A shoe is like an engineering project, it's like building a bridge. You have sizing and fit and many variables of how they're worn and how they move, so it's complicated. It's really, really hard,' Brown said.

The decision to open a physical store after barely more than a year in business was risky but worth the struggle, he said.

'We have the opportunity to learn a lot about our products and our customers and make sure we continuously improve our products.

'I think the idea that retail is dead is wrong, but I think the idea of old school retail being dead is right. We're trying to really rethink how we display products and what the whole experience is like. We're a month or so into it and we're learning but I'm excited by that potential.

'That childhood memory of going to the shoe store to buy your school shoes and there's 30 brands that feels like an antiquated model.'

The US is not short of shoe retailers and opening a store in one of the most competitive retail markets in the world was not an easy decision to make.

But Brown knows customer standards are getting higher and wanted to bring the physical experience back to the shopper and personalise it.

'The level of customer experience, the number of choices, the quality of service, is unbelievable here. Now you're buying something online but maybe you want to go into the store and find out a little bit more about it.

'The future of retail is not whether retail is going to live or die, it's how can you make retail an indispensable part of the shopping experience. We've come full circle and launched our store because we really want to learn that, we want to to offer a point of view and offer a place where people can learn about All Birds.'