DTC Briefing: Boll & Branch is plotting a ‘massive year’ for its stores after retail sales grew 72%

Since opening its first brick-and-mortar store in Short Hills, New Jersey in 2018, Boll & Branch has started to see more growth in its retail business. Unlu said that retail sales grew roughly 72% year over year by the end of 2024, aided by strong December sales. New store openings contributed to that — Boll & Branch opened two new locations in 2024, one in Atlanta and one in the Oakbrook Center just outside of Chicago — but Unlu said that the company has also seen a halo effect from increasing its wholesale presence and being strategic about how it can build brand awareness in the markets where it opens new stores. 

Unlu said that there was a crop of DTC brands that, “post-Covid, were kind of moving to quickly open up retail doors.” Boll & Branch opted to be more conservative in its approach. She said that the biggest learning as she’s built out Boll & Branch’s retail operations is that “opening up retail stores is a whole different ball game in terms of the infrastructure that you need in place.” 

Rebekah Kondrat, founder of the consultancy Rekon Retail, said that immediately following the pandemic, many brands experimented with pop-ups, as more landlords were amenable to shorter leases. By 2023, however, “landlords were no longer open to these creative deals” and were once again expecting brands to sign longer leases — at least five to seven years.

As a result, Kondrat said she’s seeing more brands open what they think of flagships. That is, if they are going to five- to seven-year leases, they want to make sure it’s in the most desirable locations in their preferred cities. 

Boll & Branch launched in 2014 and is known for its luxury bedding. In-store design consultations drive roughly a quarter of its retail sales. What’s worked for Boll & Branch, according to Unlu, has been waiting to open new stores until the perfect location opens up. “Sometimes we found the perfect street or center we want to be on, but there hasn’t been a great co-tenancy,” she said. 

Unlu said the brand also tries to be strategic about growing its retail presence, ensuring it has multiple locations where it can reach customers in a particular area, often through a combination of wholesale and owned locations. By the end of 2024, Boll & Branch was available in 23 Bloomingdale’s locations, compared to seven at the beginning of the year; the brand has also grown its presence from 18 to 72 locations within Nordstrom. 

“Florida has always been really big for us. We already have a store in Florida with Boca [Raton], and so adding that and the Bloomingdale’s Palm Beach garden location has also been like a home run,” she said. 

As another example, Boll & Branch opened its store in Atlanta last September. That allowed Boll & Branch to build relationships with local influencers and businesses ahead of the opening of the Marietta location, which is one of Atlanta’s largest suburbs. That, in turn, helped build a lot of buzz, and Unlu said Boll & Branch had a line out the door on the opening day of the Marietta location.

Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, Unlu said Boll & Branch plans to concentrate its store openings within the East Coast, the South and the Midwest. 

“We’re staying really, really focused on how quickly and where we expand geographically,” Unlu said. “There’s just some things that are, you know, quite frankly, easier if you’re thinking about clustering your retail strategy, rather than just like kind of [opening] them all over the country.” 

Tariff talk 

Tariffs were the only thing that most e-commerce executives could think about all weekend after President Donald Trump hastily signed a slew of executive orders. The orders issued a 25% additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico (excluding Canadian fuel imports, which were slapped with a 10% tariff) and an added 10% tariff on imports from China. Brands then scrambled to figure out how long these tariffs might be in place and if they should make any immediate changes to their supply chains in response.

Before Tuesday rolled around, however, those plans had been called off. By mid-day Monday, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said she had reached a deal to halt the implementation of the tariffs on Mexico for one month. By late afternoon that same day, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had reached a similar deal.

The uncertainty has highlighted how fraught the global supply trade will be in the coming months. Countries threatening to issue last-minute tariffs could become the new norm, which is bad news for U.S. brands that banked on expansion in Canada to grow their 2025 sales or vice versa. 

For Canadian entrepreneur Karen Danudjaja, the threat of tariffs comes at a particularly inopportune time. Her company, Blume, which sells latte mixes and other beverage products, is launching in 400 U.S. Whole Foods doors this week, her biggest wholesale launch to date. 

Blume represents a good example of how closely the U.S. and Canadian markets are intertwined: Blume manufactures its products in Canada, but sources some of its ingredients from the U.S. Eighty percent of Blume’s sales come from Canada, but increased brand awareness in the U.S. was a big part of its growth strategy this year. 

Here’s what the 48-hour ordeal was like for Danudjaja:

“I think it’s scary for a lot of emerging brands. There’s been in CPG — specifically for food and beverage — a real dry up of capital in the last few years. Brands were really, you know, in survival mode for the last 24 months.

“It felt like Blume had really turned a corner — and we managed to grow 100% last year and secure some really exciting distribution in the U.S…. My initial fear is sort of — where does this 25% come from? Ultimately, consumers aren’t going to want to pay it. Retailers aren’t going to absorb it. Distributors who get paid along the way aren’t going to work with us… I don’t know any CPG brand that has that kind of margin to capture it all.

“Basically, every brand that I know, including ours, is running models on how much they can absorb, how much can get passed along, how much is within our control — how can we basically rejig our entire supply chain to get any points back we can on gross margin?… [On Sunday] I was kind of in the space of a little existential dread… I put up a post on LinkedIn, and now we have almost 1,000 SMBs coming to a chat to talk about the impact to founders.”

Job openings to watch

Ruggable seems to be trying to build out its marketplace presence. The company currently has a job opening for an e-commerce manager for its Amazon business, as well as a manager of marketplaces. Ruggable is currently active on Amazon, as well as on Target’s third-party marketplace. According to the job openings, Ruggable has “highly ambitious plans” to grow the marketplace business this year and is looking for people who can “support buildout of our Marketplace strategy and plan across marketing & advertising, merchandising and assortment.” 

For its part, a company spokesperson Ruggable said that, “Ruggable is excited to expand its Marketplace team in order to grow its presence in third-party retailers and meet customers where they shop. This team focuses on managing the marketplace accounts, optimizing the experience, and driving growth on these channels.”

What I’m reading

• Jenni Kayne hit $140 million in sales last year and has ambitions to be “the Californian Ralph Lauren,” as Business of Fashion puts it. 
• Hexclad is making its Super Bowl debut this year with an ad featuring Gordon Ramsay and Pete Davidson. 
• Shein is ramping up its publicity initiatives ahead of a potential London IPO, putting out press releases about everything that it does to make sure all of the products on its marketplace are safe and touting some of its sustainability initiatives. 

What we’ve covered 

• President Donald Trump is vowing to bring more manufacturing back to the U.S. after issuing new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. But brands that already manufacture here say the U.S. isn’t yet set up to deal with an influx of domestic manufacturing. 
• Condiment brand Haven’s Kitchen ceased operations on Friday, the latest CPG startup to shut down amid a tough funding environment. 
• Food and beverage investors sound off on the wellness trends they think will dominate in 2025.

This story has been updated to include comment from Ruggable.