The year was 2015 — Gary Lenett was 56 years old and had already built a successful career as one of the largest denim manufacturers in North America. Not only did he produce jeans for everyone from Levi’s and Wrangler to Calvin Klein, he had also created four denim brands of his own, including International Denim and Dish Jeans.

In pursuit of a healthier life, the Vancouver native traded in his car for a bike and it was then that he realized how restrictive jeans were for a long bicycle commute. It sparked an idea: performance denim, and after finding funding on Kickstarter, Duer was born.

Duer’s claim to fame is that its jeans have five times more stretch and are 30 percent lighter than traditional denim. In the past decade, the company has expanded into other styles of pants as well as shorts, joggers, sweats, shirts and womenswear. It has nearly 1,000 wholesale accounts globally and operates eight of its own stores in North America.

“I probably would have gotten out of the business if I hadn’t started this,” Lenett said. “It completely energized me. It was a very different paradigm, trying to solve people’s problems with technical features and fabrics rather than being trend-driven.”

Between now and September, Duer will add three stores: a 2,500-square-foot unit in downtown Victoria, British Columbia, followed by a 1,000-square-foot store on Hayes Street in San Francisco and then one in Portland, Ore., in a yet-to-be-determined site in the Northwest 23rd area.

Although many retailers have closed their stores in Portland and San Francisco in the post-pandemic period, Lenett believes that presents an opportunity for Duer. “We’re not reckless. I wouldn’t go onto just any street or any store, but the prime locations on those streets don’t come up very often.”

In addition, because Duer has such well-established wholesale and e-commerce operations at this point, Lenett knows that the company already has a built-in customer base in these cities. “So I don’t see a lot of risk,” he said.  

Overall, Lenett hopes to have 30 to 40 stores open in North America within the next few years.

With all the uncertainty about the economy and tariffs and other macro-economic issues, he believes it’s the right time for him to expand.

“We feel that everybody else is holding up and I like to go against the crowd,” Lenett said. “I think this is the time for a brand like ours to be quite aggressive. We have our own factory and make 80 percent of our own goods, so we’re insulated by that. We’ve held our prices and we feel we can get market share now that other people are being a little bit more timid.”

But it’s not just North America that he’s targeting for expansion: He’s also set his sights on Europe as the next frontier. Lenett has partnered with Hectic Europe, a U.K.-based distributor with operations in 12 European and Nordic countries.

Lenett said although Duer has been selling in the European market since before the pandemic, he believes it’s the right time to have a partner to grow the business. Together, they have e-commerce sites in place in the U.K. and Germany and plan to expand to other countries.

Right now, there are no plans to open stores in Europe, Lenett said, adding that e-commerce and wholesale are the priorities.

“Our modus operandi is to go in and develop the e-commerce business and get brand awareness through marketing and wholesale customers,” he said. “For us, the wholesale business creates a lot of brand awareness, [like with] Nordstrom or REI in North America. So we want to build it out the same way in Europe. Over the next couple of years, as we start to figure out where our customers currently are, we’ll calibrate which cities [to open stores in].”

Lenett said within three years, he hopes Europe will account for around 15 percent of Duer’s business. “Still relatively small, but I think the market fit is really strong. It’s just a matter of building the foundational piece.” And ultimately, he believes, it could represent half of Duer’s sales.

Beyond Europe, Lenett also said Asia could be another region where the company can thrive. But like with Hectic, he said he would enter the region with a partner that had knowledge of the local market.

“At this stage of my career, I’m not in a rush to build a multibillion-dollar business,” he said. “I want to just put great product out and let it grow organically.”