A Canadian online furniture brand with tufted couches and Danish modern-style dressers and shelving units that have become staples of certain Millennial-targeted social media feeds is opening its first physical stores in the United States.
Article is the latest example of a so-called direct-to-consumer furniture brand that’s pursuing an “omnichannel” strategy by opening brick-and-mortar outlets in key urban markets. In Article's case, the stores will display its not-too-expensive, “design-forward” midcentury-modern-meets-Scandinavian pieces in person.
The home goods and furniture chain launched in 2013, and the company said sales exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Only in 2024 did Article open its first brick-and-mortar store in its hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. According to the company, the debut store surpassed expectations, driving 47% revenue growth in the local market.
Now the company is expanding on the strategy by opening outlets in San Francisco’s SoMa District and just outside Seattle. In a press release, Article said it chose the locations for their “historically strong e-commerce performance." The stores will measure between 7,500 and 8,200 square feet.
The San Francisco store at 2299 Alameda St. is in a trendy section of the city’s tech-heavy South of Market Street neighborhood known as the Design District, a former industrial district that has turned into a hub for architects, interior designers and furniture showrooms, as the chain looks to “deepen engagement with trade and design-conscious customers.”
The Article store in Bellevue, Washington, will open at the Bellevue Collection, a high-end shopping center just outside downtown Seattle. Both stores are expected to open before the end of the year.
“We see physical retail as an extension of the business we built online and are approaching expansion with discipline,” said Article Chief Executive Aamir Baig, adding that the West Coast represents roughly a quarter of total purchases. “Expanding our retail footprint to California and Washington is a natural next step," he said.
Weighing risk vs. reward
With the pandemic now in the rearview mirror, digital native retailers such as Southern California-based Povison and Cozey, headquartered in Montreal, have opened outlets in Los Angeles and New York. The moves underscore a broader shift across retail as digitally native brands race to add physical storefronts to deepen customer engagement and drive sales.
The strategy is not without risk. Some online-first brands that struggled to translate their digital success into in-person sales have been forced to close stores. The San Francisco Design District space where Article soon plans to open previously housed EQ3, another Canadian-based seller of modern home furnishings, which in 2024 shuttered its last remaining U.S. stores and exited brick-and-mortar retail in the U.S. to focus instead on its e-commerce, trade and wholesale channels.
Nor are the ups and downs confined to furniture makers. Allbirds, a San Francisco-founded footwear brand whose Merino wool sneakers became an emblem of the Bay Area’s last tech boom, rapidly expanded its store fleet after going public in 2021, only to see sales falter and liquidate its assets earlier this year to a brand management company after struggling to capture a wide customer base. The company announced last month that an unnamed investor had agreed to spend $50 million to finance a shift to artificial intelligence. The former sneaker brand now has a new name: NewBird AI.
Even Amazon has struggled to crack the brick-and-mortar model, shutting down dozens of Amazon Fresh supermarkets and Amazon Go convenience stores after failing to find a sustainable economic formula.