The Canada Goose logo has become a symbol of luxury and functionality.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Canada Goose
Canada Goose has gone from a utilitarian white label business to a luxury brand.
Famous for its parks, the company is a celebrity favorite.
Now, he wants to grow by diversifying and selling directly to buyers.
Look closely, and you’ll see Canada Goose’s iconic logo — a red, blue and white map of the North Pole — in seemingly incongruous places. While movie stars sport the brand in New York City, hotel valets opt for heavyweight jackets to brave Boston’s chilly winters.
This mixture A-list appeal And practicality has helped Canada Goose grow sales and achieve what is especially challenging in the retail industry: becoming a luxury brand.
The company, which began as a private label manufacturer in Canada, has become synonymous with luxury outerwear, making functional fleeces and snowmobile clothing. His parkas sell for over $1,500 at places like Saks Fifth Avenue and Harrods. The family-run company is worth about $1 billion; In the year For the 2024 fiscal year, which ended in March, revenue reached $930 million.
Now between the general Reduction of luxury accountsThe company is facing a new challenge. The stock has fallen by double digits in the past year and analysts have criticized the company for lacking “brand warmth” and being overly dependent on China.
Focusing on direct-to-consumer channels and product expansion; Canada Goose It’s looking to grow — both in revenue and scale — while maintaining the glory of glory. It remains to be seen if he can stay warm in this cold.
Like many luxury products – Hermes And BurberryFor example — Canada Goose didn’t start out as a luxury. It was all about action. In the year Founded in 1957 as Metro Sportswear, it was a private label manufacturer selling cold weather gear as their own for other labels such as LL Bean and Eddie Bauer.
That began to change in the 1970s, when the father-in-law of the company’s founder and current CEO, Danny Rees, invented the manufacturer’s jackets with ease (also known as the goose). Feathers, hence the name).
“He was very good at finding a functional need and filling it with a functional product,” Danny Rees told Business Insider. “We became humiliated professionals.”
An old Snow Goose jacket before the label changed to Canada Goose.Alexander Kalbi, Paige Clarke, Sarah Elkasabi/Business Insider
The feather-powered company outfitted the first Canadian to scale Mount Everest and was the field’s outerwear of choice for scientists. Antarctica. His own label – called “Snow Goose” at the time – was still far from an international household name.
When Danny Rees, who has spent his entire life in the company, became CEO in 2001, he set out to change this. He dubbed it “Canada Goose” and did everything he could to promote that brand.
The company has given jackets to hockey players, hotel valets, and nightclub bouncers. The parks soon made their way to Hollywood, first with film crews and then with cast members on screen in such early films as “The Day After Tomorrow” and “National Treasure.” Not long ago, famous people were wearing it at their own discretion.
The brand became popular in the 2010s.Bobby Bank/GC Images; Bobby Banks/WireImage; Rich Fury/Getty Images
Think of it as pre-social-media influencer marketing. It worked in tandem with price hikes that cemented the brand as luxury. When Dani Reis officially joined the company in 1997, annual revenue was about $2.2 million. In the year In 2008, it reached 16.4 million dollars.
The Cut They declared 2015 the “Canada Goose Winter” and Vogue featured A-lister after A-lister wearing their signature jackets. The company had fashion trends at the time.
“First of all, you have to legitimize yourself by proving that you can work effectively and get good results,” says Emanuela Prandelli, professor of fashion and luxury management at Bocconi University. “Then you can cross it with the luxury element of fashion.”
The company It went public in 2017, and the stock rose exponentially for the next few years. But that progress has slowed. Over the past 12 months, Canada Goose shares are down about 11%. They have decreased by 70% in the last five years.
Analysts have blamed several factors. By 2024, the luxury sector has collapsed as a whole, according to industry bellwethers LVMH And Kering is also struggling. In October, Wells Fargo downgraded Canada Goose stock to “underweight,” citing poor performance on social media and China – where there are many retail stores and which generate a lot of income – which has experienced economic instability.
In the year The goal is to reach $2.1 billion in revenue by 2028.
“We’ve been a wholesale brand for a long time and we decided to have a direct relationship with our consumers. We want to sell online, we want to have stores,” Reiss told B.
Canada Goose is expanding its direct-to-consumer channels, including opening more retail stores.Rob Kim/Getty Images
DTC can be a powerful tool to manage a brand’s image and value and attract customers to other products. A department store canada goose outlet canada can only carry the most popular parkas. A canada goose store or website may have a full line. Additionally, it allows the brand to better understand its customers, gather information and improve customer relationships, Prandelli said.
The move didn’t work at all. While DTC’s revenue increased for fiscal year 2024, it decreased year-over-year in the previous quarter.
The brand has tried to multiply its following. Winter Park – Or pushing customers to buy a lot of parks that most people don’t want – When he introduced the first spring collection from 2015. When asked about the stock’s performance, the respondent noted that the company has expanded into other categories, notably eyewear recently (they did not comment on the stock price).
“Certain iconic images never go out of fashion and should be part of every collection,” Prandelli said, Canada Goose Jackets. “But you have to have some series of new items injected.”
“It’s much cheaper to make money from existing customers than to attract new customers,” she added.
The company’s diversification efforts have been mixed. Sales of the non-weight-loss segment — apparel, wind wear and footwear — rose 20 percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2025 and reached 46 percent of sales in fiscal 2024. (Getting out is also a victory for PETA, which has protested The use of Canadian goose down and down. The company (He stopped using hair in 2022.)
That said, Canada Goose still leans heavily on its signature item; For fiscal year 2024, nearly 80% of annualized EBITDA is earned in the third quarter, which ends in December, when customers break out thick winter jackets.
For other luxury outerwear brands like Moncler, collaborations were one way to attract repeat customers. Canada Goose is trying something similar by appointing Haider Ackerman, the French fashion designer who heads the design at Tom Ford, as creative director.
Its first collection, released in November, was “a record sales success and the new capsule collection, Snow Goose by Canada Goose, has been well received by consumers,” a Canada Goose spokeswoman said, although she did not provide sales figures. .
Having luxury is one thing. Sustaining growth in the sector, however, can be a wild goose chase.
