Canadian fashion brand Garage opened a new store in London this week and two in Manchester last month, part of a deliberate strategy to open 20 profitable stores per year while most apparel retailers are shrinking their footprints, according to Glossy. Since November, the brand has also opened locations in Louisiana and Hawaii.

The company is executing a targeted mall strategy built around Gen Z consumers who, contrary to retail conventional wisdom, are returning to physical shopping. Garage identifies malls where foot traffic data shows Gen Z presence, negotiates favorable lease terms in centers eager for youth-focused tenants, and opens stores designed for social media content creation. The stores feature photo-ready fitting rooms, merchandise displays optimized for TikTok backgrounds, and staff trained to facilitate content shoots. Each location functions as both a sales channel and a customer acquisition platform for the brand's e-commerce operation.

This works because Gen Z shopping behavior splits between discovery and transaction in ways digital-native brands missed. According to Glossy, the demographic uses physical stores for tactile product evaluation and social experience, then converts both in-store and online. Garage's mall locations generate immediate revenue while building local brand awareness that drives sustained digital sales in each geographic market. The brand's profitability per store—rare in current retail—comes from rightsizing inventory to fast-turning core items, keeping lease costs low through mall landlord desperation, and using store staff as content creators and community managers rather than pure sales floor coverage.

The UK expansion follows the same template. Garage entered London and Manchester, cities with established Gen Z mall traffic and social media adoption rates comparable to North American markets. The brand is testing European appetite for its product range and store format before committing to broader Continental expansion.

A small physical product brand can run a modified version of this play without Garage's store count. Identify three to five regional markets where your target customer congregates physically—not malls necessarily, but farmers markets, campus areas, festival circuits, or retail co-ops. Negotiate temporary or pop-up presences in those locations: weekend market stalls cost $75-$300 per event, shared retail space runs $500-$2,000 monthly, university campus activations can be structured as sponsorships for $1,000-$5,000 per semester. Design your physical setup as content infrastructure first, sales second. Use vertical phone-friendly backdrops, proper lighting, and clear sightlines for customers to photograph your product in use. Staff these presences with people who can shoot customer content, collect emails, and explain product benefits—not traditional retail associates. Track conversion by geographic market: monitor web traffic, email signups, and online orders from each city where you activate physically. Double down on markets showing 20%+ lift in digital orders within 30 days of physical presence. Build a rotation calendar that returns you to proven markets quarterly while testing new ones, creating sustained local presence without permanent lease obligations. The profitability comes from treating physical presence as customer acquisition cost—compare your per-event spend to your digital CAC and allocate budget to whichever channel delivers better unit economics in each market.