Dish and Duer has opened its first flagship store in Vancouver, and it features an indoor playground so customers can test out the brand’s stretchy “performance denim.” The new interactive retail space has a gym floor, stationary bikes, monkey bars and a swing set—an idea that came from a pop-up store the brand opened in Vancouver last summer.
“Everybody would come out of the changing room with the jeans on—especially guys—and they’d start doing all these weird gyrations and squats and high kicks,” said Gary Lenett, founder of Dish and Duer. “Guys are not really used to having that much stretch in their pants, unlike women who are more used to that. It just made sense for us to give them a mechanism so they could do that.”
The performance denim uses two proprietary cotton-rich fabrics, L2X and Nature2X, which give the products properties like stretchiness, moisture wicking, antibacterial and temperature regulation. The idea for the product line emerged when Lenett wanted to find a pair of pants he could ride his bike to work in.
“I’m a jean guy, and if I have an important meeting, I still want to ride my bike to work, but there’s nothing for me to wear,” said Lenett, who has more than nearly 30 years in the denim industry, working with the likes of Levi’s, Guess and Ralph Lauren. “I won’t throw a sport jacket over a pair of Lululemon or Nike pants that are nylon or polyester… That’s our differentiator: we do natural, fibre-rich products.”
“A lot of athleisure brands are coming at it from the sports side. We come at it from the fashion side and add technical elements,” he added. “We look like streetwear, but you have the benefit of the technical aspects.”
Lenett founded Dish and Duer in 2014 and spent a year and half developing the product line and brand with his New York-based friend, Abid Hafeez, who specializes in advanced performance fabric technology. The brand started with wholesale and ecommerce before expanding into bricks-and-mortar.
Lenett said he planned to expand retail locations, but is taking it slowly. “We’ll probably do some pop-ups. We’re thinking about Seattle, Portland and San Francisco in 2017 and just test it out and follow the same pattern we did in Vancouver,” he said.
