Retail fashion brand, Urban Jungle, launched its flagship store in Nigeria at the Ikeja City Mall in Lagos on Sunday.
Following the launch of the first Nike store in August, Urban Jungle came next as part of the trend to grow the lifestyle and sports engagement of youths in Nigeria.
Urban Jungle Brand Director Gianluca Salute spoke about the store and their plans for Lagos and Nigeria. The retail brand started international development of stores in 2006.
“Our goal is to connect the consumer with the value of sports to Nike and to all the other brands partnered with the store, like Converse, Vans, Champion, North Face, etc. We want to serve the consumers the latest and greatest products that these brands offer in the lifestyle business,” Salute told The PUNCH.
“With Urban Jungle’s roots in arts, music, fashion and sports, we will try to engage the community in teamwork, to work together, and have common goals, so we are launching our store in Lagos now as our 22nd store in Europe and Africa. When we launched the Nike store, then Urban Jungle is a consequence of that strategy because it is the lifestyle side of our business.”
Salute also told The PUNCH of the brand’s plans to give back to the Nigerian community and engage with the youths.
“In Nigeria, we are going to try outside the business side of it to understand how to engage with the young community as we did in other countries, support charities, build parks, to give something to the young community in Lagos and give the youths a safe place to play.
We’ve supported groups to play basketball, we created a new basketball court in Morocco and in Naples, so we want to know what the community wants here and what we can offer, to try and be in the community in the right way.
“We love to be in the community and for the community, seeing a lot of happy faces and people dancing and having fun is what we love to see, I am really happy.”
Looking to the future, Urban Jungle also has plans to expand in the country following the launch in Lagos.
“We have plans to expand in Nigeria, we are sure that from this first store, we can have the second one and maybe even have a third one. Lagos is an amazing city, and the space is amazing. It is our commitment to start this project, we will listen to everyone and understand their needs and engage,” Salute said.
The store offers the latest and greatest products from top sports brands, which include Nike, Converse, Vans, Crocs, Champion, as well as other exclusives relevant to sneaker culture. Asides the products on display, the launch had music, food, drinks and the youths got a taste of the lifestyle that Urban Jungle had to offer including six lucky winners who got gifts from the store.
