sofa.com

• Year founded: 2006
• Offline store locations: Chelsea, Islington, Glasgow, Bankside, Guilford, Bath, Edinburgh, Harrogate, Amsterdam
• Number of employees: 95
• Founder(s): Pat Reeves and Rohan Blacker
• Revenue: £27.4million (2017)

From clicks to bricks:

Sofa.com offers a huge choice of sofas, sofa beds, beds, footstools, dining tables and home accessories. Their online store was the first of it’s kind to offer bespoke furniture for homes in the UK. To win over online shoppers, a showroom was first opened in London where customers could come and physically sit on the sofas.

made.com

• Year founded: 2010
• Offline store locations: Soho, London, West Yorkshire, Birmingham, Italy, France, The Netherlands
• Number of employees: 389
• Founder(s): Ning Li, Julien Callede, Chloe Macintosh, Brent Hoberman
• Revenue: £127 million

From clicks to bricks: Entrepreneurs Ning Li, Julien Callede, Chloe Macintosh and Brent Hoberman founded Made.com in 2010. Sales for Made.com between 2011-2012 grew by 200%, and by the time it came to its second year, it had opened its first showroom. In its Soho unit in London, the ‘online’ showrooms display a select range of products on showroom floor but manages to show the full Made range by combining these with full scale digital projections and a striking sample wall with 600 product lines. Each product offers a stylish postcard and fabric sample. Customers can use the tablets provided to do their digital shopping.

Missguided

• Year founded: 2009
• Offline store locations: Westfield Stratford, London, Bluewater, Kent
• Number of employees: 500
• Founder(s): Nitin Passi
• Revenue: £205.8 million (2017)

From clicks to bricks: Since its conception in 2009, Missguided has grown 75% year-on-year. This value retailer really resonated with the ‘selfie generation’ who have fueled the Misguided success by providing plenty of user-generated content with their products. Their first move was to open a concession within Selfridges and following that success they opened their first flagship store in 2016 at Westfield, Stratford. providing their audience with Instagram worthy backdrops as well as up to date stock, their popularity shows no sign of slowing. The second store in Bluewater shopping centre, Kent was the next bricks and mortar to appear in 2017. Sole owner, Nitin Passi has also announced a Dubai store opening in 2019.

Sézane.com

• Year founded: 2013
• Offline store locations: Westbourne Grove, London, Paris, France
• Number of employees: 
• Founder(s): Morgane Sezalory
• Revenue: ?

From clicks to bricks:

This French brand began in the bedroom of a young Morgane Selazory. She started by selling vintage clothes on eBay to supplement her day job in Paris. As years passed, this business venture became so popular she began her own website, with help from business partners, Lougnon and Corentin Petit – Sezane was born online. Offering affordable, unique and luxury clothing with a French twist.The store’s popularity grew through word of mouth, with short runs on exclusive collections, Morgane gained a loyal fan base. Her first store, more a hangout space than a formal boutique, opened in Paris in 2016. Then duplicated in London in 2018, the store offers expansive space, filled with gorgeous antique furniture in which the shopper is invited to browse the collections but also feel at home.

Blaiz

• Year founded: 2015
• Offline store locations: Chelsea and Marylebone, London
• Founder(s): Stephanie Margaronis Mordehachvili

From clicks to bricks:
Offering the best in Latin American fashion and showcasing the best designers from the continent on an exclusive basis. Blaiz launched online in 2015, its celebrity fan base has helped it grow in popularity — including model Rocky Barnes and Millie Mackintosh of Made in Chelsea fame. In early 2018 Blaiz opened its flagstone boutique on King’s Road. Having previously operated similarly sized, successful pop-ups in that area, the store resonated with the diverse nationalities that Kings Road attracts. Blaiz also offers their customers their own unique South American inspired-in-store experiences with themed events for sales and releases.

Joe Browns

• Year founded: 1998
• Offline store locations: 1
• Number of employees: 120
• Founder(s): Simon Brown
• Revenue: £19.2

From clicks to bricks: Joe Browns is a Yorkshire based lifestyle fashion brand that started out as a mail-order catalogue. The brand offered bright patterns and colours which were more individual than the other mail-order clothing catalogues in the UK. Simon Brown created the store to cater for those who wanted to feel “confident, liberated, individual, excited, and a little cool”. Their bricks and mortar store, designed by creative agency Dalziel and Pow, opened in 2017 in Sheffield which proved popular with its catalogue customers of 20 years but also gaining new fans with its quirky hand-painted store designs and grand visual designs. Once again proving that customers want to ‘experience’ a brand while shopping in their store.