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In September, during Amer Sports’s first Investors’ Day since going private in 2024, CEO Jie Zheng expressed high hopes for one of its subsidiaries, the outdoor brand Arc’teryx.
Arc’teryx alone makes up $2 billion of Amer Sports’s total $5 billion in annual revenue, as of the end of 2024. The group expects the brand can reach $5 billion in the next few years, according to Zheng, citing its strength in the luxury and premium outerwear markets and its growing popularity in China.
Katie Becker, Arc’teryx’s chief creative officer since 2020, has been a major force behind the surge in Arc’teryx’s fortunes and in making its gear beloved by athletes and outdoors enthusiasts around the globe. Her designs and guiding philosophy for the rest of the design team prioritize performance and quality. They have helped make Arc’teryx the No. 1 outdoor brand in China, based on sales. She had been with Arc’teryx since 2007.
“We have several design filters when we’re designing products,” Becker said. “Everything is simple. That’s our first filter. Is it functional? That’s our second. What features are we building into it? And then, lastly: Is it beautiful? Sustainability is a buzzword, but we do really try to make things that have longevity — that you can still wear a decade from now.”
One of Becker’s proudest achievements over the last year was significantly expanding Arc’teryx’s women’s business. Women’s products drove double-digit growth for Arc’teryx in the last financial quarter, with leadership calling it one of the most significant growth drivers in the brand’s arsenal.
“Our women’s business is up 40% year-over-year,” Becker said. “That’s really amazing in the outdoor segment.”
Becker said the goal was to make the women’s products equivalent in quality to the brand’s men’s products, while also focusing on needs specific to the women athletes Arc’teryx consults with, particularly around fit and heat regulation.
Arc’teryx, like its sister brand Salomon, is one of many performance-focused sports brands that have attracted a significant fashion customer base who wear their jackets around the city rather than in the mountains. Even so, Becker said the team’s focus remains on performance and quality.
“We’re obviously aware of the style market,” Becker said. “We know about gorpcore, we know about the fashion customer. But our Alpha Jacket is built for ice climbing. It’s great if people want to wear our gear casually, on a rainy day in the city, but it won’t lead us to pivot our insights. We’re doubling down on being a mountain brand.”
Becker said her goals for the next year are to keep growing the women’s business and to champion women in outdoor sports. Arc’teryx Academy, a mountaineering education program the brand runs in places like Mammoth, California and the mountains of Austria, recently reached 50-50 gender parity, which Becker cited as another point of pride. And, this year, Arc’teryx announced several new women ambassadors, including the rock climbers Matilda Söderlund, Maya Madere and Lara Neumeier.
“Really, it’s about staying the course,” she said. “We’re fixating on climb, snow and trail products, and we’re always trying to innovate or surprise and come up with ideas the consumer may not even know they want.”
