Kith Opens 22nd Store in Vancouver, Eyes San Francisco and D.C. for 2027

Kith opened its 22nd store worldwide in Vancouver in late October, roughly two weeks after staging its third Giorgio Armani collaboration show in the Moroccan desert — a pace founder, CEO and creative director Ronnie Fieg says rests on two pillars: a strong point of view and value.

Fieg laid out the expansion roadmap during a fireside chat with Michael Atmore, editor in chief of WWD and chief brand officer of Fairchild Media, at WWD's Apparel and Retail CEO Summit. The Vancouver door is Kith's second in Canada. It measures 7,000 square feet.

The expansion math does not follow web data alone. Fieg confirmed Vancouver e-commerce sales were strong, but he said that signal did not justify the 7,000-square-foot footprint or prepare him for the roughly 3,000 shoppers who arrived on opening day. Both Canadian coasts now carry a Kith presence, a strategic call Fieg made despite the risk.

What comes next for the store network?

Fieg confirmed San Francisco and Washington, D.C., will get stores plus Ronnie's restaurant locations in 2027. The Miami Beach unit, opened in 2016 as Kith's first door outside New York City, will also get a revamp. He framed the physical strategy as destination-building: spaces where consumers spend a full day rather than transact and leave.

"As long as I have the energy that I have, I'm going to continue to push the limits because that's the DNA of what we've done," Fieg said. "We've broken through so many barriers of what people consider to be unexpected from us. The swings are much larger, the investments are much larger."

How big are the bets getting?

The Morocco show, held in mid-October, took two years to produce. Kith also opened Kith Ivy last year, a members-only wellness and padel club in New York's West Village, with partners including Giorgio Armani, Wilson Sporting Goods, Erewhon and Cafe Mogador. Fieg said the concept originated during a winter stay in Miami, his wife's hometown, where he took up padel and studied how players dressed for the sport.

The Kith boss approaches merchandising from a buyer's background. He worked at David Z before founding Kith.

"When you speak about value, it's not only in the product. It's about how [consumers] value your brand within incorporating it into their daily life," Fieg said. "I come from a buying background when I was at David Z, so I'm a merchandiser and a buyer by trade. I still think like the consumer, and that's the most important part of my business."

What is the 'new luxury' strategy?

Fieg argued distribution scarcity defines modern luxury, not price alone. He contrasted his model with brands that saturate points of sale.

"People have reset what they want out of luxury," Fieg said. "If it's already available to me in so many points of distribution, then I feel like I already owned it, had it, wore it and threw it out by then. Luxury brands used to be focused on the scarcity model, where if you go to a shop in the city, it might have been the highlight of your day regardless of if you bought something."

He called that experience what he is "trying to accomplish with what I consider to be the new luxury."

Fieg flagged one structural risk to that model: shrinking attention spans. He said 10-second clips erode genuine curiosity, and he worries customers will struggle to distinguish good product from great product.

"My kids now are getting so much information thrown at them," Fieg said. "I'm worried that people won't be able to get as passionate as they've been in the past about something that they love. I don't even know if they could start loving it in the first place."

The comments followed Kith's 15th-anniversary retrospective in September. With San Francisco, Washington and the Miami revamp queued for 2027, Fieg has signaled the pace will not slow.