Brands Briefing: FP Movement’s growth playbook for 2025

FP Movement sells both casual and performance clothing for various activities, including running, yoga and hiking. It launched under Free People in 2012, and for years, it held shop-in-shops at Free People stores. In 2020, though, the brand “really came into its own,” Courtney Weis, managing director of brand marketing at FP Movement, told Modern Retail.

But FP Movement has done more in recent years to build its own brand outside of Free People and the other brands owned by its parent company, Urban Outfitters Inc. FP Movement opened its first standalone store in 2020, and it also received its own marketing budget. Now, it’s trying to grow its following and sales via activations and new locations. FP Movement currently has 66 stores and is on track to open 26 locations by the end of 2025. In turn, on an earnings call in February, Urban Outfitters Inc. CEO Richard Hayne said FP Movement grew 34% in the last quarter.

Activewear is one of the crowded incumbents in the market. FP Movement is tasked with competing with industry leaders like Lululemon; brands owned by other apparel giants, like Gap’s Athleta and Levi’s Beyond Yoga; and other digitally-native up-and-comers like Alo Yoga and Vuori. But its fabrications and attention to detail are FP Movement’s secret sauce, Weis said. “We’ve hired technical designers that are challenging The North Faces and the Patagonias,” she said. “We’re celebrating multiple forms of movement, with a feminine spin.”

The entire Free People division, including FP Movement, reported revenue of approximately $1.5 billion for the 12 months ending in January 2025, up from some $1.3 billion a year before.

FP Movement sells merchandise via its own stores and e-commerce site, as well as wholesale accounts like Nordstrom and Dick’s Sporting Goods. FP Movement is currently holding a pop-up at the Nordstrom flagship in New York City and offering limited-edition merchandise there.

Last week, FP Movement opened stores in Sacramento, California and Novi, Michigan. Its next three stores will open in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (on April 11); Atlanta, Georgia (on April 18) and Detroit, Michigan (on April 25).

In the long-term, though, FP Movement isn’t aiming for a particular number of stores, Weis said. “At this point, we’ve already scaled so much,” she said.

Ultimately, FP Movement’s store opening strategy is like that of any other digitally-native startup. “It’s really about finding the right community, the right location and the right store,” said Weis. Regarding the benefits of a store, she added, “All of our digital marketing is targeted nationally, but [with stores], we’re able to have a local touch point with our customer … based on seasonality and regionality.”

FP Movement targets various settings for its stores — both in malls and on shopping streets — but it always looks for locations where it can hold community events. FP Movement took off in 2020 during the pandemic, and it launched outdoor run clubs and other activities for people to gather together. “Back in 2020, it was like, ‘What can we do to stand out as a somewhat new brand in the space and cultivate community?'” Weis said. “That’s really become our mission.”

In the years since then, FP Movement has kept that up; it now has run clubs in 21 markets, as well as mat-based workout classes. Each month, 1,500 runners participate in the run clubs. FP Movement also holds special events at stores in college towns around the start of the fall and spring semesters.

This year, FP Movement is especially focusing on tennis activations; it has zeroed in on tennis as one of the sports that is becoming “so core” to its customer, Weis said. The brand launched tennis in 2020, and last summer, it piloted a tennis clinic in six markets. FP Movement is now expanding these clinics to 14 markets and will include an option to purchase a tennis outfit as an add-on.

FP Movement is also holding its first-ever tennis clinic at the Charleston Open, which starts March 29. “Charleston is a market where we have a really robust community, … and it’s been a great partnership,” Weis said, regarding the Open. “We’re looking to use this model as a case study and even expand this further.”

The brand is also looking to in-person content to build community. Its pop-up at Nordstrom in New York City — now open through April 27 — includes a weekly speaker series, in addition to exercise classes. This upcoming Thursday, it will host a conversation with Erika Polsinelli, founder of the meditation app Evolve by Erika.

Gabriella Santaniello, founder of the retail consultancy A-Line Partners, told Modern Retail that she thinks FP Movement’s product “is different from anything else that’s out there on the market.” She added, “There’s an edginess to it. … They really have carved out a nice niche from a design aesthetic, and they have a loyal following and a loyal base. I think adding the classes and community events will be critical to the brand, in terms of bringing the customers together.”

In a crowded market, FP Movement sees community and design as its key differentiators. “We really want people to discover the brand through experiential marketing and to bring a friend and not have too much of a barrier to entry to join,” Weis said. –Julia Waldow

3 Questions With: 1-800 Contacts

1-800-Contacts last week got into the glasses game with the launch of The Framery, a DTC prescription glasses and sunglasses brand that will compete with Warby Parker and Zenni, among other brands. It’s advertising free at-home try-ons, and prescription lenses are included in the price. 

Phil Bienert, president and CMO at 1-800-Contacts, spoke with Modern Retail ahead of the launch about how the company used its contacts expertise to stand up a new brand. 

What spurred the conversation to get into online glasses at this time? 
“For a long time, we’d talked about really leaning into glasses and hadn’t. There were enough players out there that were taking a run at trying to do glasses right, meaning: putting the value into what people are buying and not overcharging for designer brand names, and things like that. But as we’ve watched the glasses space over the past couple of years, it seems like there’s still a need for somebody to come in and focus on what we know is most important to customers: not paying for things that don’t matter to them, not paying for some designer name that nobody’s going to see, and not paying for hundreds and hundreds of brick and mortar stores that they’re never going to go to. 

Customers have continued to tell us, ‘I really wish you would sell glasses.’ And we haven’t seen anybody addressing this need in the marketplace the way we know it’s most important.”

What is your rollout strategy for getting existing customers to use The Framery?
“We’re excited to bring this to our existing customers first because they’ve been asking for it. And from day one, we will be able to, and also ready to take care of customers who’ve never done business with us before. But for somebody who has done business with us before, they’ll have the convenience of being able to use the same login credentials and the same payments that we already have [stored] for them. All those preferences, the history of their prescriptions — we’ll have all of that already loaded for them.”

Did you have to expand your operations or invest in new vendors to get The Framery running? 
“We own all this technology. We developed it all ourselves. And that’s the advantage of coming from trying to do all this from 1-800 Contacts. If I was a standalone startup, I just wouldn’t be able to have all this convenience and features, because it’d be cost prohibitive. But because we already have the millions of customers we’re serving in our contacts business, it means we’ve already invested in these innovations.” –Melissa Daniels

Faherty launches a print catalog

While some brands remain laser-focused on digital marketing, Faherty is going more old school.

An American clothing company with a self-described “surf-hippie” aesthetic, Faherty launched a new quarterly catalog called “The Faherty Chronicles” earlier this month. It’s not intended to be a traditional print catalog, but rather to more closely resemble a coffee table book.

The catalog features everything from new products to travel photography. Current articles include an interview with the surfboard designer Paul J. Schmidt, a profile of a female skate collective in California and a behind-the-scenes look at cotton production in Peru.

Customers can pick up the catalog in stores or request it online. Faherty is also sending copies to its top customers and a select number of wholesale partners.

“The Faherty Chronicles” will have “a much smaller distribution than when we were prospecting with a [product] catalog,” said Abby Morgan, the brand’s evp of marketing. It also represents a shift in the brand’s marketing strategy, she explained.

“We’re moving into an ecosystem where we’re building the world of Faherty in a meaningful way, and we’re trying to bring our customers into that lifestyle,” Morgan said. “We’re telling a lot more stories of the people who inspire us, from our community to our customers to our friends.”

So far, the catalog seems to be doing just that. “Anecdotally, we’ve heard incredible feedback from people who came into our stores [after the catalog opened their eyes to] certain aspects of the brand personality,” Morgan said.

To produce the publication, Faherty has an internal editorial team and works with a design team in France. It’s also tapping subjects in its campaigns to write pieces. “In this next book, specifically, you’ll see that a lot of people we shot in videos on our social [channels] … are writing their own stories,” Morgan said. –Julia Waldow

What we’re reading 

• Nike still has a ways to go in its turnaround plan; the company warned that it expects sales to drop a bit deeper than many analysts expected during its fourth fiscal quarter.
• Some consolidation is taking place in the Kardashian brand world; cosmetics giant Coty has sold its minority stake in Kim Kardashina’s SKKN to Skims. 
• Business Insider obtained a pitch deck from Emma Chamberlain’s coffee brand, which shows the company is targeting $33 million in revenue this year after going through some growing pains. 

What we’ve covered 

• How Lululemon is promoting its resale program, with pilates classes and partnerships. 
• Lalo is one of a number of baby brands that recently launched in Target, as the big-box retailer seeks to grow its assortment in the category. A Target svp said that the company is adding 2,000 items to its baby assortment. 
• The meat aisle is getting a makeover.