EXCLUSIVE: Ami Paris Wants Its New Paris Flagship to Be a Neighborhood Store
PARIS – While others might use a flagship to put their stamp on an area, Ami Paris’ latest address is about fitting into the landscape.
“I liked the idea of being a neighborhood store, something that is rooted in the history of the area,” creative director and founder Alexandre Mattiussi told WWD ahead of the opening. “It’s close to a café, next to a restaurant, in a real neighborhood with schools and pharmacies and bakeries.”
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The way the designer sees it, the store will be less a destination than a stop during a stroll in the Marais. “I love the idea that on Saturdays, people might grab a quick coffee at Le Progrès then check out Ami,” he said. “All of a sudden, we’re part of the real everyday life of someone who is strolling in the neighborhood.”
Still, the 6,500-square-foot unit located at 96 Rue de Turenne can’t be missed, taking pride of place in a corner building at the intersection of several busy shopping streets.
Located only a five-minute walk away from the first Ami shop on Boulevard Beaumarchais that opened in 2012, the brand’s largest store to date is as much about telegraphing the growth of the 13-year-old label as it is a reminder that it’s all about selling smart but unfussy clothing for real customers.
“I always had this desire to do retail, this idea of being at once a designer and a retailer — for me, it’s one and the same as I sell,” Mattiussi said.
For what he dubbed “Ami 2.0,” he enlisted Paris-based architectural practice Studio KO, which had worked on the first Ami Paris retail projects, in addition to Ami’s six-strong team of in-house architects.
On the ground floor, large bay windows let natural light stream in on both sides. Warm tones were emphasized, with sandy stone floors beneath with wood and leather seating.
Playing into the brand’s idea of picking across gendered divides, men’s and women’s pieces are mixed, with accessories on shelves across the spaces.
A monumental mirrored staircase, nodding to the one in the Rue d’Alger store, leads up to the first floor where larger-sized fitting rooms can be privatized.
Dotted throughout are works of art and important design pieces, ranging from a Charlotte Perriand bench from the 1960s and a 1950s Jean Prouvé daybed to works by American photographer Michael Bailey Gates.
New categories will come in, such as interior objects — no perfume on the horizon yet, Mattiussi said after an off-the-cuff remark in a recent documentary sparked speculation about an imminent launch — as well as new services, such as a concierge-style service for its “Ami For Ever” secondhand program.
Don’t expect a café, though. Mattiussi said this didn’t feel a fit here, despite the popularity of Ami cafés in China and Japan, where there’s a two- to four-hour wait at a four-month pop-up location in Tokyo’s Omotesando area.
Instead, he envisions the store as “a giant dressing room in which you pick your ideal wardrobe, with good music, a delicious scent, great staff and a great energy” that will also offer artistic events, book readings and other cultural events.
Not that it came easy.
Already earmarked as the French company’s largest retail investment to date, the two-year overhaul included merging three independent units on different levels and ended up costing “markedly more,” according to chief executive officer Nicolas Santi-Weil.
While he declined to name figures, he said the overspend was “by a reasonable measure” given the initial budget, stemming from skyrocketing materials costs and a few structural issues that turned up during early demolition phases.
For the CEO, the flagship embodies the potential of the brand at home and abroad. Ami’s third freestanding location in its home town is one of 76 stores worldwide, with another 700 points of sale in over 100 countries.
Although the company did not yet have the final figures for 2024, with its fiscal year ending Feb. 28, Santi-Weil said Ami was on track to do as well in 2023, when it passed the 300 million euro mark.
That’s despite having cut over 100 wholesale accounts, equivalent to some 25 million euros in sales, and dividing the number of pure players it works with by four, he added. As a result, wholesale shrank to a 35 percent share, while retail now sits around 45 percent and e-commerce, brought in-house last spring, leaped to 20 percent.
“We’re not stopping wholesale, but we are strongly developing our own retail to be in control of our own story,” said the CEO. In the pipeline are retail openings in Italy, Belgium, Thailand, Indonesia, Canada, and the U.S. but also in China, where Ami “will continue to open stores where it makes sense.”
While 2025 will be a year of consolidation, Santi-Weil viewed the prospect with serenity. Not only has a recently opened store in Miami exceeded its goal in the space of a month, but digital sales in the U.S. and Japan are seeing “very, very good growth.”
Womenswear has increased to a 15 percent share of the business, although Santi-Weil noted that some female customers shopped in the men’s section and would therefore make that continue to grow as well.
Accessories, which accounted for less than 5 percent two years ago, are at 10 percent and represent an “enormous” potential for growth, with double- and sometimes triple-digit increases in some territories.
And there’s another asset in Ami’s deck. Recently skyrocketing luxury prices have few direct competitors in the brand’s price range, which goes from 130 euros for caps up to 2,500 euros for outerwear. For Santi-Weil, that’s “a pharaonic vacuum that we need to be smart about and handle well.”
But for all that, he’s keen to highlight that Ami’s growth isn’t just measured in financial terms. The brand recently signed on as a sponsor of the ANDAM Prize and is gearing up for the fourth edition of the Ami x IFM Entrepreneurship Prize. Meanwhile, Mattiussi is on the fashion jury of the 2025 edition of the International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories — Hyères.
“The goal of this store is having a project that matches the ambitions we have for the brand,” the CEO said. “But there’s also a message to the world that Paris is where it happens.”
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