At Aritzia, Jennifer Wong has seen it all, or practically all.
She started as a seasonal worker in 1987, when there were just three Aritzia stores in Canada, and now she’s chief executive officer overseeing e-commerce, concierge, people and culture, finance, information technology, data and analytics, supply chain, employee experience, diversity equity and inclusion, communications, legal and loss prevention. Earlier, Wong served as president and chief operating officer. She spearheaded the U.S. expansion that began in 2007, the launch of e-commerce in 2012, the IPO to take Aritzia public in 2016, and the relocation of a distribution center for handling greater capacity. She has been behind efforts to “reimagine,” as she says, the shopping experience.
Related Articles
“Retail has changed and evolved quite a bit since 1984 when we were founded. Back then, our stores were 1,500 square feet and very traditional. Aritiza needed evolution, obviously, but we’re always having to reimagine the retail experience, and one of the things we’re very proud of is our retail experience when you walk into our stores. Fast forward to today, we’re building stores to include 30,000 to 40,000 square feet. They’re multilevel flagships and very experiential. We have multiple media screens. Many have cafés and eating areas and there’s great music playing,” Wong said, during her interview with Fairchild Media Group executive managing editor Allison Collins at the Women in Power summit Monday in Brooklyn.
You May Also Like
In Manhattan, where Aritzia has four stores, the SoHo location will relocate into the former Dean & DeLuca location on Broadway, a few blocks away. “The locations we’ve chosen are what we call triple A locations. We will be where the people are,” Wong said.
At a time when many retailers are reporting top-line declines, Aritzia is expecting increases. Aritzia projects 2024 net revenue in the range of 2.52 billion to 2.62 billion Canadian dollars, representing growth of approximately 8 to 12 percent. Wong gives some of that credit the niche that Aritzia occupies.
“We’re uniquely and strategically placed in what we call ‘everyday luxury,’ [focused on] high-quality design and construction at an attainable price point,” Wong said. “We believe there’s no one doing exactly what we’re doing,” Wong said. Aritzia, she added, is able to attract customers who in buoyant economic times trade up to shop Aritzia, and customers in challenging economic times trade down from where they were shopping. Through the years, Wong contended, Aritzia has been successful navigating swings in the economy.
During the pandemic, when the world economy collapsed, “We were one of the few companies that did not furlough or lay off anyone in our company,” Wong said. “We kept everybody completely employed and fully paid throughout the entire time, not knowing what was going to happen in the future.” In return, employees recognized Aritzia’s commitment to its workers, and stayed loyal to the company, Wong said, adding, “It was really important for us to take care of our people as best possible.”
“There are three great things that have kept me here,” said Wong, who has been with the Vancouver, Canada-based Aritzia for nearly four decades and is one of the few females in North America leading a major publicly traded retail operation.
“I love the people that I work with,” she said. “We have such great, smart people who love what they do. They keep the bar high. They make me better. We make each other better.
“The second thing is the opportunity. That’s the beauty of my situation. I haven’t had to go anywhere else as my career aspirations increased because Aritzia has been able to present fantastic opportunities for me and my career.
“The third thing is, I’m really proud to be at Aritzia. It’s really cool to be associated with a very successful brand that’s growing.…People want to do business with you. People want to work with you, or for you. It’s just an amazing feeling to be associated with that.”
When Wong first applied for a job as a style adviser at Aritzia, she was interviewed at an Aritzia store by Brian Hill, who founded the company in 1984. She didn’t get the job. But she didn’t take no for an answer and subsequently reapplied at another Aritzia location where she was hired. Still, she never dreamt she would rise up the ranks to one day become CEO, or even thought of retail as a career.
“I started in store number three back in 1987. I was hired as holiday help. It was just meant to be a part-time job, evenings and weekends, while I was going to university and studying economics,” Wong recalled. “I thought I would graduate and get a grown-up job in finance. But I always did love fashion, and I had passion for clothes.
“It was a cool store back then, as it now, 40 years later.”
