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Though Alo Yoga is most typically associated with leggings and sports bras, the 16-year-old brand has been making its viral sherpa coats and jackets since 2014. On its website, it promotes a dedicated “Sherpa Shop” where 33 products can be found in the fabric, which is a faux sherpa. The entry into the category is the brand’s $88 micro sherpa off-duty cap, and the most expensive item is the $298 oversized sherpa trench.
This year, the brand is making a deeper investment into the category. In October, it opened a temporary dedicated “Coat Shop” adjacent to its Beverly Hills Flagship. Even the walls are covered in the brand’s faux sherpa. To celebrate the opening, it hosted two events: one for influencers and a second for its most loyal shoppers.
Of the growth of the category, Summer Nacewicz, Alo’s evp of marketing and creative, said, “We first made a name for ourselves [in the sherpa category] with the Foxy Sherpa,” which is a $298 bomber style. “We quickly learned that our customer could not get enough of sherpa, and [then] we started breaking into other silhouettes.” The Foxy and the trench are the consistent bestsellers. From 2021 to 2022, the sherpa franchise sales grew 55%.
Over the years, the trench has received significant press coverage. For example a September 2021 InStyle headline read, “Celebrities and Twitter lost It over this teddy coat last year — and it’s finally back.” In October 2021, Seventeen wrote, “Kendall Jenner’s teddy jacket is perfect for fall — and you can buy it now.”
Alo has always aimed to provide its customer with options from “studio to street,” Nacewicz said. And she owed the success of the brand’s sherpa, as well as its larger outerwear category, to the fact that it allows customers to identify with the brand at multiple junctures of their lives. It’s also why the brand has been able to successfully launch its Alo Atelier luxury collection in October. In spite of some sticker-shocked customers on TikTok, the collection’ is’s pieces are almost entirely labeled “Almost Gone” on the brand’s e-commerce site.
“Whatever category we go into, we’ve been successful,” Nacewicz said. “People want [to wear] Alo, whether they’re going out at night, or going from work to a yoga class, or just lounging in their living room in sweats. It’s comfort; there’s just something assuring in that Alo is always trend-forward. So whatever product category we go into, it is going to be on-trend and in line with what our customers are looking for.” Danny Harris, Alo’s founder and CEO, told The Wall Street Journal that the brand had surpassed $1 billion dollars in revenue in 2022. The brand declined to comment on 2023 figures.
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To that end, part of Alo’s success lies in the fact that, by wearing the brand, someone can signify that they live a life aligned with the values Alo communicates, Nacewicz said. “Alo is this wellness lifestyle. And people resonate with that and relate to that,” she said.
And some customers want to be able to telegraph that message with every inch of their outfit. “We’ve gained such a foothold in New York, where you need outerwear that takes you from studio to street. [Ours] outerwear matches a lifestyle and ethos, versus just being an outdoorsy brand or a luxury brand.”
It helped that, in 2021, Kendall Jenner was the face of the brand and was photographed in the sherpas. In some of images, she’s wearing nothing underneath while on a beach in Malibu. “[It was] very dreamy, very Alo. It symbolized air, land and ocean. Also, Kendall herself is known for having a deep practice of wellness, so [the marketing] connected [with shoppers],” Nacewicz said.
According to Creator IQ, which measures a brand’s earned media value, from January 2023 to October 2023, Alo Yoga netted $266.2 million in EMV. Mentions of sherpa made for a relatively small portion of that, at just over $210,000. Alo Yoga has 3.3 million followers on Instagram. “While conversation around the sherpa line has driven a relatively small portion of Alo Yoga’s year-to-date EMV total, mentions of ‘sherpa’ have been on the rise in recent months, indicating increased momentum for the collection,” said Alexander Rawitz, Creator IQ’s director of research and insights.
Opening Alo’s Beverly Hills sherpa store wasn’t a huge investment for the brand, as it already owned the space it is in. It was a “serendipitous” situation, Nacewicz said. The brand has also opened sherpa shop-in-shops at some of its other locations including New York City’s Rockefeller Center.
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