The CEO of PE Nation on the brand’s recreation

PE Nation seamlessly executed what many of its industry counterparts couldn’t, a rebrand.

The brand’s origin story harks back to 2016 when its co-founders Pip Edwards and Claire Greaves disrupted the activewear space dominated by legacy brands with monotone colour palettes.

After riding the sales highs that the pandemic delivered to many athleisure-centred brands, P.E Nation has reimagined its value proposition and design point of view for the current times.

“We paid a lot of attention to the market and to be honest it’s taken us a while to really unearth behaviours and dressing needs in a post-pandemic world,” Hamish Stuart, CEO of P.E Nation, told Inside Retail.

P.E Nation’s new era is defined by what Pip Edwards, now the sole director after Greaves stepped down in March, has referred to in the press as a “quiet confidence”. Think muted colours, sheer silhouettes, subtle hardware and layering pieces.

“At the crux of our strategy, we realised our customer wants to feel comfortable, be able to move, but not compromise on style,” explained Stuart.

“That’s where we continue to straddle categories with the collection as a whole, and give them the choice.”

A fashion comeback 

In the lead-up to the relaunch PE Nation wiped its Instagram feed removing any trace of the bold logos, ’80s-inspired designs and palette of primary colours that the brand had become synonymous with.

The realisation that the brand’s new look “couldn’t sit alongside the P.E Nation everyone knew” is what prompted the social media cleanse, according to Stuart.

“We needed to re-set audiences’ expectations of the brand and take them on the new journey, not feel attached to the former,” he said.

While the rest of the fashion industry is busy going back and forth on the purpose of Australian Fashion Week, PE Nation took to the runway to showcase its ‘Recreation’ collection.

“The industry has a lot to say about AFW, however, no one can deny it has a captive audience of fashion enthusiasts Australia-wide, and our coverage reinforced that it was the right decision to make a brand statement there and introduce what the new era of PE Nation was going to look like,” shared Stuart.

Stuart told Inside Retail that the rumours that PE Nation was supposed to unveil its new creative direction at the Melbourne Fashion Festival earlier this year had no merit – the samples were ready for the runway in May and played well into the brand’s critical path to launch in July.

The tone of the brand’s ‘Recreation’ collection, which firmly reintroduced PE Nation as a fashion brand, was a much-discussed and dissected topic post-runway show.

“We know we can’t be all things to everyone, so we had to hone in on the research we had – market, customer, data – that gave us a pretty accurate steer on where we should head to re-energise and engage with our existing customer, while acquiring the new,” stated Stuart.

“We took a few risks, we made a few contingency plans, and we felt prepared for a variety of outcomes.”

The next evolution 

PE Nation has hit a new stride in 2024, with its grand solo showcase at Melbourne Fashion Festival, achieving B Corp certification and launching its new brand identity at Australian Fashion Week.

“I think a lesson in this has been you always need to be moving forward otherwise you’ll have to play catch up later,” explained Stuart.

“I’m hopeful now we can focus on being consistent yet continue evolving organically in a way that keeps our customers ingrained in our community, season after season,” he added.

Differing from its prior collections, PE Nation’s approach to its rebrand and evolution has been a holistic one, according to Stuart.

“The rebrand strategy was very much with both the Australian and international markets in mind. We have made changes to both the frontend and backend of the business, impacting not only product and brand, but also price and production, all of which are better serving a new customer,” he elaborated.

While PE Nation’s new aesthetic has dominated the majority of the headlines, the brand’s transformation has really been from the inside out.

“​​It’s as much about the new price proposition and operational lead times, as it is about the product and brand aesthetic,” stated Stuart.

“Plus, we’ve never had such strategic strength and cross-departmental collaboration from the team, so I know our go-to-market has been drawn from a variety of expertise.”

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