Urban Outfitters plans to hire 1,000 at Navy Yard and new Bucks County facility
The company is opening new distribution center for its Nuuly clothing rental service, and continues to add to its footprint at the Navy Yard.
Urban Outfitters Inc., the Philly-founded fashion company, is adding employees and business facilities in the region as it continues to grow.
The parent company of Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Free People, and Nuuly plans to hire more than 1,000 employees in the Philadelphia region over the next seven years. Company cofounder Dick Hayne and Gov. Josh Shapiro gathered at the company’s Navy Yard headquarters Monday to announce the plans.
At least 450 new positions will be at the Navy Yard headquarters. And at least 600 hires are planned at a new distribution site in Bucks County for clothing rental brand Nuuly, over the five years after that building is completed in 2028.
“Urban Outfitters was built from the ground up in Philadelphia more than five decades ago — and we are proud that this company is continuing to grow and create jobs all across our Commonwealth,” said Shapiro in a statement on Monday.
The positions include creative and operational roles across the brands and the parent company, according to Meaghan Condon, Urban’s director of communications and impact.
The company has just over 2,500 employees based out of the Navy Yard headquarters. That number has grown significantly from 500 in 2004, when Urban announced it was moving its offices there from Center City. The company employs 6,300 across Pennsylvania, including those at its stores and its distribution sites.
At the time of the move, Urban had five buildings there. Today it has 15.
The most recent addition is a 117,000-square-foot site at the Navy Yard that houses the photo studios. Redeveloping the space, which Urban started using in the last couple of months, cost about $40 million. Previously, the company’s photos were taken at various headquarters buildings in the Navy Yard or off-site at rented studios in New York.
On Monday, Shapiro and Hayne spoke in the outdoor portion of the new building, which has been partially converted into pickleball courts, to announce the company’s continued growth. An American flag hung above them swaying in the breeze, and airplanes flew overhead periodically to and from the Philadelphia International Airport.
“When we started, we had a tiny, tiny store,” said Hayne on Monday, recalling the company’s first location near the University of Pennsylvania. “Today, we have over 800 stores across the world, including many in Europe, and our sales have grown extremely rapidly.”
Hayne said he attributes that growth in part to “the relationship that we’ve had with our governmental agencies, the City of Philadelphia, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and even a little bit with the federal government.”
Hayne said Urban has invested millions in the state, calling Pennsylvania the company’s home and adding, “we intend to stay here. We have no thought of leaving.”
The announcement on Monday echoed a similar moment in 2011 when then Mayor Michael A. Nutter, alongside Hayne, announced that Urban would be adding 1,000 jobs at the Navy Yard over the course of three years, and moving into two additional buildings there. The company employed some 1,500 people at the time.
The new Bucks County facility, which is expected to be completed by early 2028, is for the company’s growing clothing rental subscription business, Nuuly. Launched in 2019, Nuuly had over 450,000 active subscribers as of this spring — over double the amount the brand had in 2023.
Nuuly has a distribution center in Levittown which opened in 2019, and another in Missouri which opened in 2024.
