Todd Snyder is ramping up his retail rollout.
The designer recently brought his updated American classic menswear to New York’s Upper East Side as well as Northern California and has plans to open another five stores by the first half of next year.
The next round of stores will be located in California, Nashville and Chestnut Hill, Mass., as well as two other sites not yet finalized. That will bring the total number of Todd Snyder stores around the U.S. to 23 by mid-2025.
“Retail is not dead,” the designer said. “It’s a key component to customer connection. People want surprise, delight and discovery — they like to feel that they’ve discovered something.”
Although Snyder started out selling his line through a traditional wholesale model, he pulled the collection from stores several years ago to focus on direct-to-consumer selling. He expects to revisit wholesaling again some time in the future, but for now it’s on the back burner. “You need a whole strategy and infrastructure,” he said, which his business doesn’t currently have. “Someday we’re going to do it, but I don’t have a timetable.”
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Instead, he’s focused on ensuring that every store he opens speaks to the community in which it’s located. “I don’t want cookie-cutter stores,” he said.
“We look at our customer data and know where our customers live,” Snyder said. “New York City is our biggest market and we had nothing on the Upper East Side.” Snyder’s other stores in the city are located on 26th Street in NoMad, TriBeCa, Rockefeller Center and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. “We were looking for a long time. We wanted something intimate and special, similar to the Liquor Store, with a smaller footprint.”
The Liquor Store is located on West Broadway in TriBeCa and was the site of the former J. Crew men’s store that Snyder famously helped develop as a true men’s emporium when he headed the category there.
“The Upper East Side store is probably my favorite store I’ve opened in the last two to three years,” he said. “It’s like a pied-à-terre — it feels like a flat in Paris. When you walk in, you feel like you’re in a living room, there’s a fireplace and a mural we commissioned from artist Dean Barger.”
The store is located at 1165 Madison Ave. at 85th Street and spans 2,700 square feet. It had a soft opening on Aug. 2 and sits nearby James Perse, Nili Lotan, Brooks Brothers, Vuori, Faherty and Alex Mill. “It’s doing really well,” Snyder said, “above our assumptions. It’s great to be in a neighborhood and we’re getting a 50-50 mix of new and existing customers.”
For the design, Snyder and Erik Berndt, head of store design, took inspiration from their favorite hotels, bars and lounges in Paris. The custom marble fireplace was created by Jamp in London and is complemented by Roman and Williams Guild globe lighting that serves to highlight custom handcrafted cases and cabinetry from London.
The store features 19th and 20th century antiques from Europe and New York, including a Utrecht sofa from Gerrit Thomas Rietveld and a Louis XV-style burl elm and fruitwood farm table. The space also showcases abstract graphite drawings by Nigel O’Neill as well as Barger’s 20-foot mural of the Parisian countryside, which is located near a bar at the back of the store.
The store is focused on tailoring, has a made-to-measure department with a tailor on site and an expanded assortment of premium items.
Another newcomer to the Todd Snyder fold is the 2,228-square-foot store at the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur, Calif. That store opened at the end of June and was designed as a “cool California store, which is unique for us,” Snyder said. He said the development with its open air, modern village design and collection of organic eateries, fitness and wellness offerings, independent boutiques and locally sourced eateries is “quaint, elegant and chic — a really special place. We’re really lucky to have gotten in.” Other retailers in the center include James Perse, Jenni Kayne, Outerknown and Goop.
Snyder said 40 percent of the assortment is unique to that location and “we sell more Birkenstocks there than anywhere else. They complete the look.”
Next up is San Jose, a 2,298-square-foot store slated to open on Sept. 27. “We like to think of each market as an ecosystem,” Snyder said. “This store is more like Hayes Valley [in San Francisco] and has more of a tailored slant.”
When it opens, it will be the fifth store for Snyder in California. “Our number-one market is New York, followed by L.A., San Francisco and Chicago,” Snyder said. So while no other deals have been signed for that state, it won’t be surprising if the company’s retail rollout includes additional units there.
What has been signed are units in Nashville and Boston’s Chestnut Hill. The Tennessee store will be 2,365 square feet and will be located in the 12 South neighborhood. It’s expected to open on March 14, 2025.
“Nashville had always been a good market for us when we sold wholesale,” he said. “The Nordstrom there was one of our top doors so we know we have a big customer base. 12 South is a new development and we got a beautiful corner space. We’ll have tailoring and footwear — the assortment will be like Williamsburg which has been a huge success for us.”
Finally, the Chestnut Hill store will measure 2,750 square feet and will be on Boylston Street. It is slated to open April 11, 2025. Like the Boston Seaport where he also has a store, the new unit will have a vibe like Rockefeller Center, he said. “It’s near Boston College and there will be tailored, but it will have more of a casual sensibility.”
With all of these stores, Snyder said he has the backing of his parent company, American Eagle Outfitters. “I lean into their real estate and legal teams which gives me the tools to pick the right places,” he said. “We’re being very methodical in where we open. It’s a slow rollout but 23 stores is a big number. I can’t say how many more we’ll add, but I would love to be in Austin and Europe, but that’s further down the road. We still see huge opportunity in the States.”
