Everlane’s transition from online retailer to brick-and-mortar retailer is off to a rocky start.
Everlane’s first store is temporarily closed because its flooring couldn’t handle a New York winter
Physical retail? Perhaps not so easy.
Jason Del Rey has been a business journalist for 15 years and has covered Amazon, Walmart, and the e-commerce industry for the last decade. He was a senior correspondent at Vox.
The popular millennial fashion brand announced to its customers today that it was temporarily closing its first store, located in New York City, only 42 days after it opened.
The No. 1 reason: the store’s white floors were probably a bad call.
“They’re white. It’s winter,” the company said in an Instagram post. “We got three times more foot traffic than expected. It’s a whole thing.”
The company also said it needed to fix cracks and a paint job by the entrance, and add lighting to its dressing rooms. Oh, it’s going to add more selection, too.
But a flooring change seems to be the only one that would necessitate shutting the store down completely. The store will re-open on January 24.
Everlane is just the latest digital-first retailer to eventually turn to permanent physical space to get its product into the hands of potential new customers and build more brand awareness. Retail startups from Warby Parker to Glossier to Bonobos started by selling their products exclusively online before setting up brick-and-mortar locations.
The San Francisco-based company launched in 2011 and is known for its minimalist, contemporary aesthetic popular with the millennial generation, as well as transparency around pricing and the warehouses where its clothing is made.
Recode previously reported that the company was projecting annual sales of about $100 million back in 2016.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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