From Digital to Physical: A Guide to Opening Your First Retail Store

What does it actually take for a digitally native brand to open its first retail store? And is it worth it?

The short answer: yes. But not for the reasons most brands expect. Three female founders who made the leap shared exactly what they learned at a panel hosted by Endear co-founder Leigh Sevin. Their insights, from lease negotiation to clienteling, still hold up for any DTC brand considering a physical presence today.

Here's what opening your first retail store actually involves, from the decision to the day-to-day.

1. Get clear on why you're opening a store

Before signing a lease, know what you're optimizing for. Is it brand storytelling? Customer acquisition? Data collection? Profitability?

For Denise Lee of luxury fitness brand Alala, the motivation was brand ownership: "As we really thought about where we wanted to take Alala, having an avenue to tell your own story directly to your customer was really important to us."

For Christina Bryant of St. Frank, an artisanal home decor brand, the goal was customer feedback and lifetime value, not immediate revenue. That bet paid off: "Within one year, our customers who were shopping from us both in store and online were worth about three times the customer just shopping online."

Knowing your "why" shapes every decision that follows: location, format, staffing, and how you measure success.

2. Choose the right format and location

You don't need to commit to a full flagship on day one. Pop-ups, shop-in-shops, and short-term leases are all viable entry points — and the current retail landscape actually favors smaller, nimble brands.

"I think the retail apocalypse is real," said Max Bonbrest of AYR. "Unfortunately for big mall brands and large retailers who are too big to pivot. But it's also opened up a lot of opportunity for small, more nimble brands to experiment with retail."

That means more bargaining power for you. Lee negotiated a percentage-of-sales arrangement for Alala's Atlanta pop-up: "We were able to negotiate a percentage of sales, so we didn't pay any rent at the store at all. There is so much empty space out there that you are able to get creative with the terms that you negotiate with your landlords."

Explore your options before committing to a long-term lease. Modern store formats vary significantly in cost and commitment — understanding each one upfront saves you from overextending early. If you're still testing the waters, a well-executed pop-up is often the smartest first move.

3. Design the store as a marketing channel

Your physical store is not just a sales floor — it's your most powerful brand touchpoint. For AYR, this meant controlling everything from scent to sound: "Everything from the smell, to the playlist, to the fixtures, the way that the store looks, and how the product is merchandised when you walk in," said Bonbrest. AYR even commissioned a custom fragrance for their locations.

For St. Frank, the priority was shareability. "We thought about how to create visually Instagrammable vignettes within the store," Bryant said. "It was a huge tool for word of mouth and organic press." At the time, 70% of their sales still came through ecommerce — but the store drove those online customers.

Think about your store the way you think about your website: every detail communicates something about your brand.

4. Hire for clienteling, not just sales

The biggest lever on your in-store experience isn't the fixtures — it's your staff. For AYR, personal clienteling has been their top sales driver across every channel: "Our sales associates are our best brand ambassadors, so hiring has been the most important piece of our puzzle," Bonbrest noted.

Lee echoed this: "Having a really great sales staff who is able to clientele and tell the story, even to somebody who has never been in the store before, is one of the things we are really focused on."

Store associates also become your best source of qualitative feedback — surfacing what customers love, what's confusing, and what's missing. That's a feedback loop your ecommerce channel simply can't replicate. The personal shopping experience is increasingly a differentiator for brands that invest in it.

5. Integrate your tech stack from day one

The omnichannel question comes up fast: how do you unify customer data across your online and offline channels? How do you measure what the store is actually doing for your brand?

"We are really lucky that we live in a time where there are so many plug-and-play solutions from a technology perspective," Bryant noted — but choosing the right ones matters. At minimum, you need your POS synced with your ecommerce platform and a way to capture and action customer data in-store.

That's where a clienteling tool like Endear makes a difference. It gives store associates a full view of each customer's history — online purchases, preferences, past interactions — so they can have genuinely personalized conversations rather than starting from scratch every visit. It also makes it easy to track both quantitative figures and qualitative notes, arming your team with the information they need to build the kind of relationships that drive long-term value.

6. Think long-term

Physical retail isn't a quick payoff. The brands that succeed treat their first store as a long-term investment in customer relationships and brand equity — not a short-term revenue play.

Retail is not dead. It has taken on new forms and functions in the path to purchase. In a world where consumers want increasingly personalized, high-touch, and experiential interactions, your physical store can be the most powerful storytelling channel you have.

The brands winning in brick-and-mortar today are the ones that know why they're there, invest in the right people and tools, and measure success beyond the day's sales total. For a deeper look at what modern retail actually looks like, this guide to the retail customer experience is a good next read.