Inspired by his experience living in a tight-spaced home during his time as a university student, Frederic Aubé launched Cozey, a direct-to-consumer modular furniture brand, in 2020. The concept was so well-received by consumers that within five years, Cozey was generating millions of dollars in annual revenue. Now, with even bigger ambitions to realise, Frederic and his team are expanding into retail. In this exclusive podcast series, The road to retailNext time, we’ll follow the Cozey team as they open their first store in Toronto, Canada.
Why open a retail store?
Most founders of digital-first brands come to this crossroads in their business. For Frederick and his team at Cozey, expanding into retail wasn’t a necessity.
After all, the Canadian furniture-in-a-box company does tens of millions of dollars in annual sales just from online sales. But Cozey doesn’t want to be just another direct-to-consumer brand.
“Our long-term vision is nothing less than to be the leading furniture retailer in the world. We have a lot of room to catch up with IKEA,” Frederick says. “If we want to be a really great company 20, 25, 30 years from now, let’s start learning today.”
Expanding into retail is something the team has wanted to do for a long time, and getting permits approved and building out the space took longer than Cozey expected.
“It’s been a long journey. We’ve been thinking about this and working on the concept and actual construction of the store for over a year and a half now,” said Felix Robitaille, Cozy’s marketing director and one of Frederick’s childhood friends.
Felix and Frederic grew up in Sherbrooke, Quebec, where they played hockey and explored old ruins. Now, things have come full circle. First store It is located in a historic 100-year-old building.
Listen to First full episode To learn more about Cozey’s founding story and how the team prepared for their opening, check out the interviews in this series.
An environment where you can experience the brand
Coey’s store is located in Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood, an area dotted with boutiques, renowned restaurants and craft cafes, making it an ideal place for city residents to enjoy a stroll and shop.
But Causey’s goal isn’t just to increase in-store sales.
“We don’t want to force retail into stores. That’s not the goal,” Felix explains. “We want to be about the experience. If you provide a great experience and a great product, the sales will follow.”
A big part of this is the store design, which focuses on bringing Cozey’s online experience to life, from cloud-like window displays to simulated living rooms.
“Inside the store, there are several rounded rectangular rings that surround all the store setups, and these are meant to simulate what you see in[our]e-commerce photography,” explains creative director Kristin McPhee. “This symbolizes the fact that we’re a product-driven company, but we also tried to create a living room-like environment that was very warm and inviting.”
Cozey’s stores are designed to resemble living rooms, so instead of cashiers, salespeople have iPads and Shopify POSCustomers can chat and shop from the comfort of a separate sofa.
Read on to find out how the Cozey team ran their retail stores’ opening day and delivered the Cozey experience to customers. Episode 2 The road to retail.
Test and learn with Shopify POS
Before opening Cozey’s first brick-and-mortar store, the brand’s team tested retail with pop-ups.
In the summer of 2023, Cozy opened a small showroom in Stacked Market, an industrial park near Toronto’s lakefront that’s lined with businesses and restaurants operating out of repurposed shipping containers.
“It was just an experiential exhibit. We weren’t expecting any sales, but we had one sofa on display, so people could try out Cozey and see for themselves how great it was,” Frederick recalls.
Pop-ups were a marketing opportunity. When the team first launched the pop-ups, they didn’t offer customers a way to purchase products on the spot. But consistent demand led store manager Taurean Scotland to implement Shopify POS.
Cozey was able to use Shopify POS to collect information from customers who stopped by their pop-up store and use that information for ongoing marketing and future sales, because one of the biggest benefits of Shopify POS is the ability to build customer profiles and capture emails.
“It took us less than two days to set up, capture transactions, and make hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on that container,” says Frederick.
Taurean said: “We use this as a source of email collection, so if a customer wants to order a sample, we could use the POS as a means of tracking. From there we can create a customer profile.”
Shopify POS’s streamlined system of centralizing customer profiles, emails, and transaction data (from online to pop-ups to brick-and-mortar stores) enabled simplicity for Cozey’s team.
“It’s simple for our customers and it’s simple for our team,” Frederick says, “and it’s really at the heart of what Cozey is all about.”
As for what Cozey learned from his pop-up and retail experiences: Final Episode This limited series.
Cozey has relied on Shopify to deliver experiences to their customers every step of their retail journey. To learn more about how Shopify’s various tools and services can help you on your retail journey, Check out Shopify POS.
