Nestled in New York City’s Soho neighborhood, next door to its spiritual cousin Faherty and two blocks from the hip Fanelli Cafe, you’ll find Outerknown’s first East Coast brick and mortar outpost. The shop feels distinctly Outerknown from the start, with one of its mantras, “Good Planets Are Hard To Find,” adorning the front windows. When you walk in you’ll find bright wood shelves adorned with tons of denim and at least a dozen colors of the brand’s stellar Blanket Shirt.
Plants, books and surf photography line the walls with a pleasant nook in the back dedicated to trying on clothes and sharing moments with your fellow shoppers. Just spend a few moments in the store and you’re immediately struck with how seriously Outerknown takes sustainability and community. And they’re attempting to forge a new one, here, in NYC, a few thousand miles from where they started: Manhattan Beach, California, the go-to spot of professional surfer Kelly Slater.
But Slater isn’t the only high-profile brand owner going bicoastal. Todd Snyder, the long-time NYC designer with stints at Ralph Lauren, J.Crew and now quite the tenure running his own eponymous brand, opened an L.A. shop — his first outside the NYC area. That being said, the store, located in L.A.’s premier outdoor shopping complex, The Grove, still bears the “Todd Snyder New York” name.
“Opening a space in Los Angeles was a dream of mine when I founded the brand in 2011, but I wanted to make sure we did it right,” Snyder says. We’ve spent a lot of time growing Los Angeles metro to be our second largest e-commerce market, so when it was time to map out our expansion, this was the most important market to begin planting physical roots in.”
But it was the pandemic that accelerated his cross-country adventure, even though it shuttered other businesses.
“When the pandemic hit in 2020, we were fortunate enough to see our DTC business really takeoff with existing and new-to-brand customers, especially in Los Angeles,” he explains. “This milestone moment for us was years in the making and it was incredible to see the overwhelming excitement and brand loyalty from our customers. This space allows for a deeper relationship with existing and new customers and, like in NYC, this store acts as a catalyst to tell our brand identity from the product, to the interior design, marketing and service offerings.”
