The British Activewear brand Tala, founded by Influencer Grace Beverley, opened her first inpatient store in the London Carnaby Street on May 24th. This should serve as an expansion of the brand’s online and social media presence.
“This store reflects the brand that we have created to this day, both aesthetically and in a visual environment,” ideally, “Morgan Fowles, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) from Tala, told fashionunited while a preliminary inspection of the store. “This is the strength of a store compared to the online environment. This store reflects us better than our grid or our website.”
The store is located in the Carnaby Street 3-4 and extends over 185 square meters on two floors. It was designed with an upscale boutique feeling and offers exclusive products as well as the entire spectrum of the brand’s active and lifestyle offers.
“Whoever we are online has contributed to who we are in the store, and now the store will influence who we are online again. There are two very different channels, and the way in which it calls: shopping there is different,” says Fowles. “We wanted to make our store an immersive, sensory and human experience. Customers: Inside, the employees will interact with the employees, take it out of the shelves, touch them, touch and try on. Online shopping should still be a pleasant experience, but it is rather transactional, and we want the store to let our customers immerse yourself in the brand.”
Insight into Tala’s first physical retail gate in London
Against this background, the Tala Boutique was divided into collections such as swimwear and resort goods, “so that it can get a feeling for the entire product range”. There is also a legging wall with the viral models Sculpt Seamless and Dayflex as well as the leggings and skinluxe leggings.
The store also offers the new High Summer Active collection of the brand exclusively in the Carnaby Street for a week before the online launch, together with graphic ‘Carnaby’-Hoodies, one of the best-selling styles of the brand that has received an exclusive update and will only be available in the store.
“Our flagship store is more than just a shopping destination. It is a strategic expansion of our brand and a way to get in touch with our community in a more sensible, personal way,” added Fowles. “Consumers’ shopping behavior: Inside, our customers are constantly developing: Inside, it made clear that physical retail is still an important channel for the connection.”
Tala also quickly differentiates itself from the overcrowded Athleisure and Activewear scene by a calm and yet energetic space that uses natural materials such as a wooden parquet floor and marble to emphasize the open, bright, airy and minimalist space, which was deliberately designed in such a way that “their experience in the store feels like a reward,” explains Fowles.
“Ultimately, it is an Activewear brand, and we wanted to integrate all of these elements into the room-so that it feels like an organic, open, airy and quiet environment full of energy,” adds Fowles. “We wanted a room that is big enough to express the brand without being overloaded and fully.
The physical store also offers the brand the opportunity to present its product extensions of recent years, such as the swimwear and resort lines for the summer months, and in autumn/winter the brand will highlight its outerwear.
“Tala started as a pure Activewear brand with only Activewear products and has developed into more lifestyle products,” explains Fowles. “But everything we manufacture is designed in such a way that it can be actively layered via Activewear and can be styled back to Activewear or Post-Activewear lounge. I think if you keep going, you lose the identity of the brand.”
Tala’s growth in wholesale led to the first physical store
The opening is described as an “important milestone” for the digital native, which was founded by Activewear, which was founded in 2019 and at the wholesale start of the Selfridges luxury department store in Great Britain last year as well as the youngest pop-ups in the anthropology of Gallery King’s Road and the start with Ounass in Dubai in April.
Fowles added: “Selfridges was our first trip to physical retail. We learned a little about facilities and wall colors, and it made us want more because it was very successful. This led to a pop-up with anthropology on the King’s Road, which was also successful, and now we have been moving into a permanent space with them, and we will start in a few weeks in your store in the rain store.”
When asked whether another store was being planned, Fowle’s other locations did not rule out and emphasized that one should “never say”. However, she added that it was right to wait and see how the first store arrives.
“Overall, we are well represented in London between physical retail and wholesale. We are on the King’s Road, the Oxford Street and now with our own store in the Carnaby Street, so we have a good cover,” added Fowles. “At this point we have learned so much about how to build and design a store. What we have not really learned yet is how to use the room inside, and therefore it is probably logical to take at least a few weeks to see how trade is going.”
The opening is part of Tala’s ambitious growth strategy, which is supported by the financing round of five million British pounds under the leadership of Pembroke VCT together with Venrex and Active Partners in July 2024. The investment drives the research of retail formats through the brand as well as the setting of further management team members, including the appointment of Darren Read by Rapha as the new Commercial Director in the last month and Jon Wetherall to the new creative director in January.
Fowles adds: “We are a rapidly growing company, we are an ambitious company, and we will continue to grow and clever betting. I don’t think we open a store, learn everything we have learned and stop. I think we have to learn a few things.”
Tala stops expansion in the USA, but is “optimistic” for the future
When it comes to international expansion, the United States is the second largest market for Tala to Great Britain, and the company also achieves good sales in various countries in Europe, including Germany, France and the Nordic countries, as well as in the Middle East, which according to Fowles is a “great market and a great opportunity” for the brand.
“We had organic traffic and customers from the start: inside in the USA. The United States was our next logical market for expansion. There have been some challenges with tariffs lately, but I am optimistic that this will be will be opened again in the coming months,” said the CEO. “We are lucky that it was not forced to take our knees when we had to take more than 70 percent of our products from the US website, although the USA is an important part of our business. The news has changed again last week, so let’s check how we will change it, but it will probably change in the coming months, and we are lucky that we are flexible enough to react again and again. will turn back to the good. “
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