When Joe Kudla talks about Vuori's customers, the loyal and passionate consumers of the company he founded 10 years ago, Jimmy Spencer is exactly the kind of person he has in mind.
“Oh, I'm Mr. Vuori,” said Mr. Spencer, 41, a Californian who works in sports media. He bought his first Vuori T-shirt about six or seven years ago. His closet currently has 45 layers of fleeces, jackets, shorts, T-shirts in different colors, and Vuori's Meta Pant (a five-pocket tapered pant made from polyester fabric typically used in performance apparel). We estimate that there are point items.
“I work in L.A., and after the pandemic, no one is wearing suits,” Spencer said. “What Vuori has done for me is create a style that's very casual but nice and high quality that I can wear every day.”
If you look around you, you might notice that high-tech pants are everywhere. Technology in this case refers not to technology, but to “technical” textiles such as nylon and polyester that give the pants stretch, breathability, and moisture-wicking properties. They replaced suit pants, khakis, and even jeans as the preferred style for many men, and Vuori built dozens of stores from Atlanta to Austin, Philadelphia to Palo Alto to cater to them. These pants are being worn by young professionals in offices, where dress codes have been significantly relaxed since COVID-19, and by wealthy tech executives who prefer athleisure and Apple Watches to power suits and Rolexes. , has become the new male prototype costume.
To put numbers on how popular this style is, look no further than November, when Vuori closed an $825 million investment round, valuing the company at $5.5 billion.
“It's still early days for Vuori,” Kudla, 46, said in a video call from Carlsbad, Calif., just north of the company's home base of San Diego. He is a striking figure, wearing a high-collared jacket from a brand that has recently entered the outerwear field, and has the weathered yet invincible beauty of a former model.
“We have just over 80 stores in the U.S. and five worldwide, but we have the opportunity to build hundreds of stores,” he added. “We feel like we are just getting started, and now that we have new partners on board, I think the future is really bright.”
Stripes partner Chris Carey, who led the recent funding round with General Atlantic, has been eyeing Vuori since 2017, when the company had annual sales of about $7 million. The proprietary Stripes tool, which uses a variety of data points to predict a brand's potential success, alerted the brand.
“Vuori's product strength has been validated through consumer research,” Carey wrote in an email. “Vuori has the highest Net Promoter Score among its athleisure peers and is rated highest for fit, performance and comfort.”
At a time when luxury brands seem to be hitting a wall with consumers, Vuori is operating in a market poised for growth.
“Vuori operates in the $95 billion activewear space,” said Carey, who said he was a customer himself. “And we expect the market to continue to grow rapidly as consumers seek healthy, active lifestyles and embrace the casualization and comfort that athleisure offers.”
“Whether you call it a commuter pant or a travel pant, the fact is that an inactive category is being designed as an active pant,” says Cirkana (formerly NPD Group). said Kristen Crassi-Zumo, an apparel industry advisor. properties. ”
She said the “active casual” apparel category, which includes tech pants, has recently outpaced the pure “active” category, with the former up 15% and the latter 5% over last year.
“The reason this product is a winner is because it's really for our mixed lifestyle,” said Classi-Zummo.
Born and raised in Washington state, Mr. Kudla attended the University of San Diego, drawn to Southern California's laid-back lifestyle and proximity to the beach. His first foray into the fashion industry was when he was scouted as a model while surfing after graduation. After a short professional detour, I was given access to the inner workings of European luxury brands such as Dolce & Gabbana, and I was intrigued. in fashion design.
After her modeling career ended, Ms. Kudla returned to San Diego and worked as a senior auditor at Ernst & Young. His first entrepreneurial endeavor was helping his then-girlfriend with her short-lived contemporary women's clothing line. He then founded Vuori as a graphic T-shirt line named after the Finnish word for mountain. However, the brand failed to capture the attention of retailers and consumers.
A chance encounter with an executive business coach and an intuitive medium changed Kudra's trajectory.
“She told me that the business I was working on would be very successful, but that it wouldn't work in its current form or with its current partners,” he said. “And it was very difficult for me to hear that. She was telling me all these things about my family, and it made me feel light-headed and very emotional.”
The next day, Kudra devoted himself to a yoga and meditation practice, beginning a process he called “self-development and growth as a human being.” The idea for what is now Vuori took shape during this period.
Kudler says, “Overall, it wasn't positioned as an 'active lifestyle' product. It was a product that was both fashionable and functional. It looked like something you could wear to a yoga class, but it would also be comfortable to wear to dinner.” spoke. That was just the lifestyle I was living. ”
Most sports apparel at the time was designed for specific activities, such as running or basketball, and often featured flashy designs such as racing stripes, logos, and reflective accents, Kudler said. I reminisced. Instead, he wanted to create something that retained the characteristics of activewear, but with a more subtle, everyday aesthetic. The San Diego man knew there was a market for it, as he noticed that instead of wearing athletic shorts to yoga class, he often opted for more modest board shorts.
Kudla raised about $400,000 from friends and family in 2015 to create a versatile style similar to board shorts but with details like an elastic waistband and supportive liner. I restarted Vuori with Kore Short. His idea was to sell it at his thriving boutique fitness studio.
“But people will say, 'I don't understand what you're trying to do,'” he says. “They said, 'These look like swim shorts.' They don't look like athletic shorts.”
As funding began to run out, Kudra decided he needed to pivot, focusing on a direct-to-consumer model and starting marketing on social media. His post spotlighted the words customers used to describe how they incorporated the Kore Short into their everyday wardrobes: “running, training, hiking, traveling, lounging.”
“And it felt like all of a sudden we started connecting,” he said. “People started understanding what we were trying to do. We weren't categorizing the brand; we were saying it was about a versatile, athletic, active lifestyle. I started getting great results, and that was the first time I thought, “Okay, I have an engine.''
Kudra used that engine to quickly build his brand. He said he made his first million within a year and was able to make a profit within two years and start repaying his early investors, a fact that his background as an accountant helped him make. He credits this to the fiscal conservatism instilled in him. He is pleased that he has never failed to attract new customers.
“There was a time when brands believed they could afford to spend twice the selling price on acquisition costs because they would get a lifetime payback,” Kudra said. “It turned out to be a flawed strategy.”
Instead, he stayed true to his vision, and it paid off. “Today, the old-fashioned way of building a business on the fundamentals of making a profit is all the rage again with investors,” he said.
Another driver of growth has been wholesale distribution to retailers such as Nordstrom and REI, which has reinforced Kudler's vision for a brand that can exist alongside both fashion labels and outdoor gear. He then began expanding his collection, introducing womenswear in 2018 (which now accounts for about 50 percent of sales) and introducing Meta pants in late 2019.
He also gained attention from outside parties interested in brands that seemed to resonate with consumers, allowing him to make a profit. Vuori received outside investment twice before the November round. In 2019, Vuori received an undisclosed amount of investment from Norwest Venture Partners, and in 2021, SoftBank invested $400 million, bringing Vuori's valuation to $4 billion. That capital helped the brand expand into new categories, invest in sustainability initiatives and move further into retail.
“Vuori has a huge opportunity to expand its retail presence in new markets,” said Stripes' Carey. The company has a track record of investing in other hot fashion brands such as Kite and Reformation. “And Vuori expects to have more than 100 stores in 2026. Retailers will continue to grow brand awareness while continuing to support their direct-to-consumer business and wholesale partners. Additionally, Vuori is focused on becoming a global brand, with a focus on expansion in key markets in Europe and Asia.”
Vuori ranks alongside brands such as industry giant Lululemon, which was founded in 1998 as a women's yoga line and added menswear in 2014. Lululemon's ABC pants are one of the company's top sellers, said Mairi Campbell, the brand's vice president of global men's merchandising. The product has become a “know-it-all” product and is often a gateway to the brand for men, she wrote in an email. The ABC pant comes in five styles and four fits, and in 2022 Lululemon introduced a version made for golf.
Tech pants have permeated the entire fashion world and can be found in brands specializing in athleisure, sportswear, or just vintage clothing. Everyone from Michael Kors to J.Crew has a version. Perhaps most telling is that Levi's, the San Francisco-based giant synonymous with denim, introduced its own line of high-tech pants last year.
“We're excited to offer consumers more opportunities to wear our bottoms through our diverse portfolio of bottoms,” said Janine Chilton Faust, global vice president of men's design at Levi's. In 2023, Vuori announced a new chief marketing officer who will serve in the same role at Levi's.
Today, Kudla's vision of a casual, athletic lifestyle is carried out at a new 180,000 square foot campus in San Diego with creamy plaster walls and beachy wood accents, just a stone's throw from the ocean. best expressed. It's a far cry from when Kudler ran his company out of a garage with no heat or air conditioning.
And while the scope of his role as founder has evolved dramatically since his early days creating his own social media ads and begging fitness studios to stock his products, there are still key responsibilities for him. There is one.
“I'm still a men's fit model,” Kudra said with a shy smile. “It's a job I can never give up.”
