Dive Brief:
- DTC apparel brand Madhappy on Friday opened its first brick-and-mortar location, a 2,800-square-foot store in West Hollywood, California, per a news release sent to Retail Dive.
- The space marries art, fashion and food, and was designed with Los Angeles-based creative studio PlayLab, Inc. The brand said the “flagship is more than a place of transaction, but a space where customers can spend a few hours, rather than browse a few seconds.”
- The West Hollywood location also features Pantry by Madhappy, a cafe concept serving coffee, tea, pastries and ready-made goods in partnership with coffee brand Hotel Drugs, Courage Bagels, Gjusta, Jon & Vinny's, Beverly Hills Juice and Awan.
Dive Insight:
Madhappy was created in 2017 as a clothing brand designed for optimists. The company in 2019 received $1.8 million in funding from LVMH.
After opening over 20 seasonal pop-up stores — including in Miami, Aspen, Colorado, and East Hampton, New York — the company has officially opened its first permanent brick-and-mortar location.
For the new store, Madhappy is featuring exclusive special capsules and accessories. Some of those include custom bags from Pacific Tote Company, an incense pack and burner created with Kuumba International featuring a bespoke Madhappy scent and Madhappy for Los Angeles Dodgers ’47 Clean Up featured across four colorways.
“From the beginning, physical retail has been essential to Madhappy and its success,” Madhappy co-founder Peiman Raf said in a statement. “We’ve always viewed our shops as spaces that go beyond something purely transactional — we want them to allow our community to engage with Madhappy beyond what’s possible digitally.”
The store also features a conversation pit, along with a large open-air courtyard. The store includes a multimedia room, which features work from a rotation of collaborators who will design audiovisual experiences. The space will debut with work from Edmonton-based electronic artist, Khotin.
“It’s been amazing to take our time with this, our first flagship, to really obsess over every detail in collaboration with PlayLab,” co-founder Mason Spector said in a statement. “We’ve made a huge effort to think through every inch of the space.”
