EXCLUSIVE: Axel Arigato’s First US Store in NYC Marks New Chapter For 10-Year-Old Footwear Label

After months of anticipation, Axel Arigato has officially landed stateside with its first-ever store in the U.S.

Located at 273 Lafayette Street in the SoHo neighborhood of NYC, the new 1,130 sq.-ft. space will showcase the 10-year-old Swedish footwear brand’s best-selling sneakers including the Dice, Area and Clean 90 models, as well as select ready-to-wear pieces.

The new Manhattan store will also stock a limited capsule collection designed exclusively for its New York visitors including black T-shirts, caps, grinders and rolling trays emblazoned in collegiate “Arigato NYC” fonts. Ten exclusive gift boxes of these items will be available to the first 10 customers on opening day, with individual items then available for purchase in-store only.

As far as the store’s design, it was created in partnership with Halleroed, an architectural design studio that has long been responsible for defining Axel Arigato’s stores across Europe. With a mix of natural materials and metals, the SoHo flagship features a mix of bespoke, European travertine monolithic podiums. These podiums serve as bases on which to display its product, each flooded by natural light from floor to ceiling windows.

Additional hardware details come from a gridded spotlight system inbuilt into the ceiling, a continuation of lighting ambitions that emulate the luminescence of art galleries. There’s also a unique speaker system built into the wall, which nods to the brand’s roots in music and in-store live events.

With this new store, Albin Johansson, chief executive officer and cofounder of Axel Arigato, told FN ahead of this week’s opening, that he is dedicated to building the brand’s presence in New York.

“We have a vision of being truly established in the U.S., but we are laser-focused on New York right now,” Johansson told FN in an interview. “We are not interested in opening this store and moving on right away to a new city to open another store. We are taking our time to build our roots in the community with a steady series of events this month and throughout the rest of the year. We want to be a brand here that people are speaking about, and speaking about it on an emotional level, but also, of course, on a commercial level. And even though we think that the location of this store may be the best corner we can have in the whole city, we don’t see that as the end of our work here.”

The CEO added that the NYC store is designed to be a go-to cultural hub, bringing together communities with one-of-a-kind events and activations across music, art, design and more. As Johansson mentioned, the company will be celebrating the opening with a series of events throughout the rest of 2024 across music, art and a selection of workshops including a special collaboration debut in October.

And this opening is just the start of what’s to come for Axel Arigato’s business in America. “We want to continue our retail expansion in the U.S., and this also includes building our relationships with our partners. We love the wholesale partners we have already, but we think that there is a lot more to that can do to further build the brand here in the U.S. So, this new store is just the very beginning of hopefully something much bigger in the years to come,” Johansson said.

Today’s opening comes amid a very busy tenth year of business for the Swedish brand. In July, Axel Arigato opened its second store in London. Located at 21-23 Earlham Street in the city’s Covent Garden neighborhood, the new store marked a special moment for the brand as London is the place where Axel Arigato opened its very first store back in 2016.

This year also saw a marked change in the brand’s executive team. In June, Axel Arigato named Jens Werner its new creative director. Werner, who joined the company in 2021 as head of ready-to-wear, succeeded Max Svärdh, who cofounded the label alongside Albin Johansson in 2014. Svärdh remains a board member and co-owner of the label.