Surefoot Whistler


Location: Whistler, B.C.
Year: 2017
Status: Complete


The LADG has recently completed a new retail space for ski boot retailer Surefoot in Whistler, British Columbia. The store is the 15th location that LADG has designed for Surefoot in a collaboration dating back to 2005 with the design of the brand’s flagship store in Vail, Colorado.





The interior consists of three large plywood display walls loosely arrayed inside the tenant shell. The plywood assemblies appear to be folded and bent, exposing bright red flashes of the painted surfaces behind. The deliberately imperfect fit between the new insertion and the existing shell is an aesthetic that communicates the accessibility and close customer interaction of the Surefoot brand, but also an organizational device that lets employees move easily between the sales floor and the machine shop without the use of hard interruptions like doors. Surefoot is known for the custom-fitting and modifying ski boots to achieve a perfect fit for each customer, so this fluid movement between front and back of house becomes an important way to communicate the value of the brand in spatial and physical terms.

The looseness of fit is carried forward at the scale of furniture detailing, also custom-designed for the store by LADG. Although each piece of furniture is calibrated to Surefoot’s precise dimensional specifications for boot-fitting, the ad-hoc detailing makes the store easily approachable. There is no wrong way to walk into the store and try on a pair of ski boots.





The custom-milled plywood surfaces are covered in an intricate machined pattern that both provides a flexible way to hang shelves and gives a consistent backdrop for sports and athletic gear with wildly various materials and colors.







Project Lead: Trenman Yau

Project Team: Kenji Hattori-Forth, Hiroshi Holloway, Samantha Radice, Homayoun Zaryouni