Ryderwear fitness brand launches flagship gym and retail outlet in Adelaide

Adelaide-founded active wear and fitness clothing brand Ryderwear will open its first bricks-and-mortar store, along with a gym, in in its hometown next month.

With the internationally popular brand’s products having previously been sold through distributors and online, the store has been described by Ryderwear Chief Marketing Officer Mal Chia as being “like an Apple Store … the physical embodiment of what the brand is all about, having an elite training space, with a retail store attached to it.”

With Ryderwear products having previously been sold through distributors and online, the gym and retail outlet will open on Grange Road in Adelaide’s Flinders Park on 6th February - while the Ryderwear headquarters and warehouse will remain in nearby Beverley.

Chia said the new studio, which has been a year in the works, was a natural progression for the business that had gained a cult following for its fitness clothing, particularly in the United States, advising “we believe in living your best life through fitness, obviously the apparel being about what you wear and also the app as well. Now it’s about having a place where you train.”

Ryderwear was founded in Adelaide in 2009 by bodybuilder David Lukic and his now wife Natalie Lukic after the pair noticed a gap in the fitness clothing market. In the past decade, the company has grown from two employees to 60.

The brand began by developing a range of apparel designed to mould to athletes’ bodies rather than hanging loose, which was the style of the time. It soon gained a cult following among weightlifters and bodybuilders in the United States after the launch of its signature D-Mak lifting shoe.

Ryderwear has since partnered with more than 500 influencers across social media platforms, including Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok and last year it launched its first workout app, PUSHH.

With the gym and store are set to be open 24/7, Chia said casual passes, as well as flexible annual and weekly memberships would be available with people able to sign up through the Ryderwear website, noting “we will primarily be a strength-focused gym and will have a huge open-plan, purpose-built gym spanning 775 metre², with a diverse layout of the best Life Fitness and Hammer Strength gear on the market.

“There will also be a fully-equipped outdoor gym with squat racks, sled track, boxing bags and functional equipment.”

Mindful of Coronavirus restrictions, the facility will maintain a density of one-person-per-two-square-metres while also operating a contact tracing system.

Chia added “in South Australia, while there has been the odd scare here and there, we’ve been very fortunate. So that gave us the confidence that we’d be able to cope

“We’re also putting the proper precautions in place to make sure we’re able to deal with anything like that.

“Looking at the market as well, the appetite for fitness has never been higher. That’s only going to continue to grow.”

With Ryderwear’s PUSHH app, launched just before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, tailored towards elite gym-goers, Chia said the response from users showed a need for at-home workouts, rather than purely gym-based exercises.

He said the PUSHH app had subsequently been redeveloped to target a broader female market and had been relaunched last week for iPhones, with an Android app set to go live next week.

Chia concluded “we created an app that was very much about the gym experience. Shortly after, with COVID and the gyms closing, we very quickly pivoted the app and changed it to being about home workouts.

“The underlying engine of it is still the same but with a clearer focus about who it’s for.

“(It’s) very much tailored towards women who are looking to get into resistance training.”

Image: Ryderwear launches its PUSHH app. Credit: Supplied.