Road to Retail: Failures and the Moments that Define Us

0:01I'm seeing this mattress in a box wave, but nobody is doing furniture. It just made sense to be here. This neighborhood is bumping, it's thriving. Our long-term vision is nothing less than to become the world's leading furniture retailer.

0:36So there's been some good delays to our opening there but we're finally opening tomorrow and we're ready for it and looking forward to hear the comments of people who know us and that wanted the store so bad. It's Wednesday afternoon in Toronto, Canada, less than a day before the grand opening of a new brick-and-mortar furniture store.

1:03Felix Robitaille meticulously walks through the open-concept showroom. Pastel-colored couches, lightly stained tables, and accent chairs are arranged intentionally in this brightly lit building on Queen Street. This has been in the works for a while now, and the doors open tomorrow. Feels really great. It's been a long journey. I mean, the store has been construction for like, I mean, we've been thinking about it and working on the store concept and actual construction for over like a year and a half now. Felix is the director of marketing at Cozy. It's a modular furniture company that launched less than five years ago on Shopify.

1:45Up until now, it's been online only, and for the most part, so has his job. No store, just a website, the archetype of a post-pandemic business. That worked for the first few years. The company grew to some 100-plus employees, tens of millions in sales. So why? Why open a retail store? That's a great question, and a lot of people ask, why expand into retail? You really don't have to, and to be honest, we don't really have to.

2:19Welcome to Road to Retail, a Shopify miniseries. I'm your host, Benjamin Gottlieb. Each Thursday of this month, I'm going to take you on a journey. You'll hear the stories of the folks behind the brand Cozy and their experience moving from an online-only store to opening their first physical location. On today's episode, failures and the moments that define us. My name is Frédéric Aubé from Sherbrooke, Quebec, and I am the founder and CEO of Cozy. There are still lots of Canadians. Actually, the majority of Canadians and people around the world still want to try furniture before purchasing it.

3:00I think COVID helped a lot of people to get comfortable with large purchases online. But still, the majority of people want to test and feel furniture before buying it. And the first reaction is, well, it's got to be only older people. Even my girlfriend, she wanted a sofa for her apartment and she wanted to sit on it. That's Felix again. I'm like, hey, trust me, I'm the director of marketing at Cozy. I know the product. It's really good. We sell a lot. It's like, no, I want to sit on it. So, I mean, if I can't convince my own girlfriend, I mean, there's a lot of people I think we can convince by opening these retail space.

3:41Cozy hosts its website on Shopify and is using Shopify POS to run its retail store. That's point of sale. But Fred is not satisfied with just one store. For us, our long-term vision is nothing less than to become the world's leading furniture retailer. I think it's going to take us, you know, 25 years, 30 years to get there. We have lots of room to catch Ikea. Okay, I know what you're thinking. The guy wants to challenge Ikea, come on. But spend some time with Fred and believe it or not, it all somehow starts to make sense. Seem plausible even. Fred is in his 20s. He's charismatic. He's driven.

4:23And a lot of that drive comes from his childhood.

4:31So I was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, about an hour and a half outside Montreal. Very French, quiet, good people kind of city. How did your parents end up there? It's been generations, generations. My grandparents, my great grandparents are from that town. And back in the day in Quebec, it was very large families. So my grandpa, I think, had 16 brothers and sisters on both sides. It was huge families. And even on my mom's side, she's got six, there's six in the family. So I've got lots of cousins. And that was just the way Quebec was back in the day. Huge families, huge parties. And that's what I grew up with.

5:14Fred also grew up, like many young Canadians, obsessed with hockey. I think I was five years old when I started playing hockey. I took some ice skating lessons, probably when I was three years old. but after that I mean I played every day probably for the next 15 years my father grew up playing hockey so he taught me hockey at a very young age and when I grew up our family was very focused on hockey and following me around around Quebec so watch my games my parents would take me to practices early in the morning late at night my dad would would shovel the snow and make an actual rink on the frozen lake and that was that was great and you're having fun with your friends but that's that's how I grew up.

5:59Fred played hockey non-stop as a kid making his way through Canada's competitive youth hockey gauntlet. I was pretty good at hockey but I was never the best but I worked really hard that's also true for for business now but there was a point in time where I thought I had a real shot at becoming a professional hockey player. What was that like for you when you realized that's not going to happen? I realized I was not going to be a hockey player when I was 19 years old. I had been invited to the Vancouver Canucks training camp, and I worked really hard to get there. I worked really hard before I got there.

6:42And then after, when I didn't get the following invite, I was like, okay, I'm done. It took Fred a while, he says, to get past his disappointments. After all, he dedicated his childhood to hockey. But he would soon find that the lessons he learned from his pursuit of professional sports would set him up for success in business.

7:06So he starts reading voraciously about business, anything he can get his hands on. It's not a completely foreign concept to him at this point. Fred's father is quite entrepreneurial. In fact, he owned a door import and manufacturing company. and after he sold that business, he got into furniture. Around the same time, Fred enrolls at McGill University in Montreal to study economics and finance, and he begins interning at an investment firm in town. I get in. My first task, I spend six months on this packaging company. So I get to learn everything there is about packaging, about the supply chain, the demand, the pricing, and really understand how you do research on a company deep down.

7:50And then one day, that aha moment. So Phil brings me in the office one day, says, Fred, one company I'd like you to research is Sleep Country. Phil's the investment guy that he's working for. Sleep Country is basically Canada's largest mattress retailer. They had purchased this mattress-in-a-box company, Envy. And I'm seeing this mattress-in-a-box wave, you know, everybody getting on a mattress-in-a-box bandwagon, and the competitors popping from everywhere, but nobody is doing furniture. Basically, everybody's focusing on mattresses, but there's white space everywhere. So I'm seeing this e-commerce furniture taking companies to other levels.

8:35I'm seeing those mattresses in a box. And at the same time, I'm studying at McGill, living in the McGill ghetto, seeing those tight stairways, tight doorways, trying to get furniture around. It's completely impossible. Not many options available. That's the third ring that I'm like, okay, now there is something. There's an opportunity to create something better, simpler, that could have some traction.

9:06Furniture in a box. Furniture that's modular. Furniture that you can assemble, that fits inside of your apartment or your home, and can grow with you. Like many entrepreneurs, Fred's idea came from personal experiences. But taking that next step, turning your idea into a profitable business, that's where hard work comes in and where Shopify can help.

9:30Back at the store, an anxious staff gets ready for tomorrow's big opening, nearly a decade after Fred's aha moment. That includes Cozy's creative director, Christine McPhee. We catch up outside the store during rush hour in Toronto. I'm so excited, Benjamin. Like this has been more than a year in the works. We have been working with a design agency, an architecture firm. Everybody at Cozy has been striving to make this day happen. And it's finally here tomorrow. We're really, really excited for our first flagship store. We're on kind of a busy street. I mean, we're standing here. I'm seeing cars whiz by.

10:05The trolley just came by. How important is, do you think, the location of this store to what you guys are trying to accomplish? I think the location was actually a wonderful decision. Not only is Toronto our biggest market, because, you know, modular furniture extends itself to small living spaces, to people in condos, to people in apartments. Of course, we furnish big homes too, but it's especially practical for people who are living in urban centres like Toronto. So it is our biggest market, so it just made sense to be here. And of course, this neighbourhood is bumping, it's thriving. Tons of DTC retailers, line the streets, up-and-coming brands.

10:46It's a really hip neighborhood, and we're really proud to be here.

10:52Cozy's store is flanked by coffee shops on both sides. There are other retailers, too, even a furniture store just a few doors down. And all the commotion around the Cozy showroom starts to pique the interest of some locals. Yeah, I live just around the corner. I've seen Cozy about to open for at least six months now, I want to say. It's definitely like a trendy neighborhood, so definitely like a lot of cool shops popping up everywhere. I live like Dundas and Osington. I love it. Everything is in walking distance. Everything's at like your fingertips. Yeah, I walk by here every day with a dog.

11:26They chose Queen West. They did. Smart. This is like your artsy, bougie, but also down to earth, but also very welcoming and big community. When you're in there, we love you. So it's a big deal if somebody's trying to open their first store here. the more the merrier, the more we can support. I think they just got to bring out the right people and they'll do well.

11:51As the day winds down, the retail staff puts the final touches on the space. A little sweep here, a little vacuum there, making sure that tablets are charged and ready for customers tomorrow. Cozy's marketing director, Felix Robitaille, who you met earlier, is the last one here. He's been friends with Fred since childhood. and it's sort of surreal, he says, this milestone they're about to hit. From playing baseball and hockey at Fred's house, hunting for salamanders in local watering holes, to opening their first brick and mortar store. What would success look like for you guys in this space? Focusing really on the experience for us is extremely important.

12:29Like we're not gonna force people to buy in store here. Like if you go to other like traditional brick and mortar furniture store, you have people in three-piece suits trying to sell you the biggest warranty and split your payments over 100 years. Like here, we don't want to rush people into buying the furniture. Instead, Felix says the point is for Cozy's retail store to be just one touchpoint in a customer's journey. One he thinks more and more digital-first businesses could start to follow in the coming years. And that journey is about to come to a head for Fred, Felix, and the cozy team when the store finally opens.

13:10Will customers actually come? And has it been worth the nearly two years of heartache and hard work? Stop by next week, same time, same place, for the next episode of Road to Retail, a Shopify miniseries. Road to Retail is produced by Megan Coyle, Gogo Zoger, and Schweng Esther Shan. Mixed and mastered by Matt Schwartz, production assistants from Miku Betlam. If you've enjoyed this episode, please let us know in the comments section wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Benjamin Gottlieb, and this has been Episode 1 of Road to Retail. Until next week, take care.