Urban Jungle International, a new company established by a team of experienced managers, is launching an international athletic specialty store concept with a unique identity that is intended to combine “style, voice (music), design and purpose” to capture the mood and spirit of its young customer base, according to a press release issued by the company.
Based in Malta, Urban Jungle already has 40 franchised stores in Malta, Italy and North Africa. The new company is going to open three newly designed Urban Jungle stores in Madrid, Rome and Casablanca in the next few weeks, ahead of a planned international roll out on a corporate and franchise basis. They are largely based on the Urban Jungle format that was launched in Malta in 1993 by Alfie Borg, who is also the exclusive distributor of Nike in Malta and parts of North Africa through other subsidiaries. It has already been successfully rolled out in Italy during the past five years but the concept has been further refined by a London-based agency over the past year to appeal to a more international public.
The new Urban Jungle stores will carry street-fashion sneakers and clothing by major brands such as Nike, Adidas, Converse, Vans, New Era and Puma, including many limited-edition items, along with street-fashion brands such as Stussy, Obey and Ssur. They will also offer some other products that appeal to the Y generation such as Marshall headphones and speakers, Japanese collectable toys and sneaker-culture books.
Besides his Nike business and a few other distributorships, Borg owns a dozen Urban Jungle stores in Malta whose sales have jumped by about 18 percent so far this year on a same-store basis. He also has 22 others in Italy, all franchised to local retailers. Rome, Madrid and Casablanca will be company-owned operations.
Borg's team has been running the Italian project together with a former Nike and Benetton manager, Gianluca Salute, who is at present acting as general manager for this area. For the Urban Jungle International project, Borg has partnered up financially and operationally with Hans van Willige, a former vice president and general manager of Nike and Converse based in the Netherlands, and with a couple retail and brand-building experts, Pablo Rivera and Mark Eve, both coming from the fashion retail world. They have contributed to the strong international retail expansion of Springfield, Women's Secret, New Look and others, covering more than 60 countries. They are also founders of www.grnetwork.net
Like them, Willige, who is acting as chairman of Urban Jungle International, is likely to use some of the experience and credibility that he has gained from Nike and Converse to find capable master franchisees for Urban Jungle around the world.
