In September 2024, a new Roots store opened on Robson Street in downtown Vancouver, immediately adjacent to the former Victoria’s Secret space.
The iconic Canadian apparel and clothing retailer’s new small store occupied a 1,500 sq ft space at 929 Robson Street, previously used as a Tesla showroom.
But as it turns out, this new store is just the first of two phases to create a brand new relocated Roots flagship store in downtown Vancouver.
In an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized on Friday, Meghan Roach, the president and CEO of Roots, shared that Roots will be taking over the adjacent former Peloton showroom space at 919 Robson Street, which is a very prominent commercial retail unit at the northwest corner of the intersection of Hornby and Robson streets — immediately west of Robson Square.
On Thursday, Daily Hive Urbanized reported Peloton had suddenly permanently closed its Robson Street showroom this week after four years of business.
Painting a picture of Roots’ highly strategic commercial real estate play, Roach says the decision to open the small new store at 929 Robson Street was based on their expectation that Peloton — which has been financially struggling, ever since pandemic-time health safety restrictions have been lifted — could quite possibly shutter the prominent large Vancouver location.
Earlier in 2024, Peloton announced a major cost-cutting strategy, including the measure of shuttering a great number of its brick-and-mortar retail locations worldwide.
“We knew that Peloton was eventually going to abdicate a lot of its spaces, and so when we decided to move to the location… we did that with the expectation that we could take on a bigger store,” Roach told Daily Hive Urbanized.
The former Peloton store at 919 Robson Street (right) will become the new permanent downtown Vancouver Roots flagship store. In September 2024, Roots opened a small temporary store at 929 Robson Street (left). (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
The September 2024-opened temporary Roots store at 929 Robson Street. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
After completing construction, the former Peloton space will open as the new Roots flagship store by the middle of 2025, at which point the smaller adjacent store in the former Tesla space will close.
Roots’ existing iconic flagship at 1001 Robson Street — located at the northwest corner of the intersection of Burrard and Robson streets — will remain open through the Christmas 2024 season, but permanently close shortly after in early 2025.
The existing flagship store at Burrard-Robson first opened in the 1990s, during a period of significant global expansion for Roots. This coincided with the brand’s rise to prominence as the official outfitter of Canada’s Olympians.
The new Roots flagship store within the former Peloton space will span 4,000 sq ft of floor area, which is comparable in size to the existing Burrard/Robson flagship store.
“In the interim period, we decided to open the smaller store sooner because we knew we could do that, and we’ll have the smaller store open until we open the broader, bigger store,” she said.
The existing Roots flagship store at 1001 Robson Street, Vancouver. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
The existing Roots flagship store at 1001 Robson Street, Vancouver. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
Roach described a highly eye-catching design concept for the storefront of the new permanent flagship store, with forest and other nature-inspired motifs and digital screens, and two main entrances — one on Robson Street and one on Hornby Street — to optimize the potential flow of customer foot traffic from the area’s busy sidewalks.
As for the store’s interior design, it will incorporate lighter wood materials and take on a more contemporary feeling compared to the company’s previous store design concepts.
The new downtown Vancouver flagship store aligns with Roots’ broader strategy of refreshing its brick-and-mortar store concepts, which also includes the renovation of the prominent CF Toronto Eaton Centre location last year. She says a number of other stores are also slated for a renovation to align with the retailer’s new look and feel starting in early 2025.
“For us, we believe we have a strong existing footprint. We have a couple of places where we might move locations to kind of take advantage of the different retail traffic and nodes in different places,” Roach told Daily Hive Urbanized.
“But more broadly, we feel really good about our overall footprint, and we feel a lot of it is about right-sizing stores and that could be increasing the size of the stores.”
The September 2024-opened temporary Roots store at 929 Robson Street. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)
The refreshing of the stores is integral to Roots’ efforts to modernize its overall brand, she added.
With the opening of the new permanent downtown Vancouver flagship store, Roots will retain its existing kids store at 1153 Robson Street and the 2017-opened location inside CF Pacific Centre mall.
Another prominent new retailer within the immediate vicinity will be Adidas new 35,000 sq ft flagship store at 969 Robson Street (750 Burrard Street), replacing the former Victoria’s Secret flagship store. Upon opening over the coming weeks, just in time for the Christmas 2024 season, the Adidas Vancouver flagship store will be the retailer’s first “Home of Sport” brick-and-mortar concept in Canada and the United States.