NEW YORK — Two-thirds of American women dedicate at least half of their closets to activewear.
According to a July survey conducted by Kelton Research and commissioned by Portland, Ore.-based lifestyle apparel company Lucy, women aren’t saving workout clothes for the gym. They are trading traditional sportswear for activewear as their casual apparel of choice.
Mike Edwards, president and chief executive officer of Lucy, said the responses from more than 600 women, ages 18 to 50, matched his intuition.
“We have always known that half the customers who buy our products never crack a sweat,” Edwards said. “The activewear category is far bigger than sports performance. Active clothing is really an offset of the casual clothing trend at large.”
The survey found that half of women dress in activewear regularly, even when they have no intention of working out, and a third of women choose activewear to run weekend errands because the fitness apparel is more comfortable and easier to care for than other clothing options.
Knowing how women wear the company’s products will affect how Lucy makes its lifestyle apparel. “Going forward, we will be putting much more emphasis on having a fashion point of view,” Edwards said. “We are not walking away from performance, but we aren’t shouting it either. This is a very radical shift from how the industry has focused on performance.”
Women’s preferences vary regionally. For example, 75 percent of Northeasterners give more than half their closets over to workout clothes, compared with 64 percent of women who live in the West. Women who live in warm-weather climates, like the South, wear activewear year-round as a cool and comfortable option, Edwards said.
Equipped with the survey results, Lucy plans to expand its presence in the Northeast and South. The company currently has 33 stores, primarily in California. It plans to build nine more this year, in Chicago, Dallas, Washington, D.C. and its core West Coast markets. For the next few years, Edwards hopes to build 25 to 30 stores per year, first in the Northeast and then in the South and beyond.
Lucy began online in late 1999 as lucy.com. The company shifted its focus to brick-and-mortar stores in 2001. Now it has stores in Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington D.C., Illinois, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington, and is still online at lucy.com.
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Edwards projects the company will increase 50 to 75 percent annually over the next few years.
“There is enormous growth potential for our concept,” he said. “This ongoing shift to activewear is not a fad. The psychography of the country is changing.”