Cozey is a digital native, Montreal-based furniture start-up created in 2020 during the pandemic. In 2023, the disruptive retailer wanted to create their very first physical store and experience centre, one that could faithfully translate their ethos, embody their “unique selling proposal”, be strongly differentiated from legacy competitors, and help customers interact directly with their products. The selected location was a vacant streetside space in Queen West Village, Toronto, Canada.
Brandscaping Cozey
Cozey called upon LAAB architecture to imagine the prototypical flagship, starting with defining the optimal user experience journey and then leveraging the strategic design firm’s singular brandscaping process to refine the store narrative and fix design fundamentals.
No stranger to branded environments, LAAB creative lead Michel Lauzon - who’s body of work includes award-winning designs for leading brands such as Adidas (ref: Enter the Stadium Flagships), Cirque du Soleil and Ubisoft - directed the strategic design flow, integrating concurrent input from ad agency Cossette, who crafted the brand identity and developed the graphic design components for their digital and physical realms.
Beyond the interior architecture, LAAB’s creative team also conceived the space’s integrated furniture, from display platforms to shelving and design centre materials’ cubicles, as well as the visual merchandising strategy for the furniture collections.
Physical retail gets 'Cozey'
The result is a next generation store totally merging the digital and physical channels, featuring no onsite storage, no cash registers, and instore display products acting as physical avatars as the purchasing is exclusively online. The design approach is both UX and product focused, starting with a stunning window showcase, evoking a giant fabric weave to draw pedestrians inside the space.
The elongated retail space then moves patrons towards the design centre situated at the end, funneling them through successive “rings”, inspired by a photographer studio’s cyclorama. Beyond enhancing the featured products in each ring, the curved and edge-light backdrops seamlessly flow from floor to ceiling, creating an immersive shape that subliminally evokes generic house room dimensions and proportions without resorting to artificial set pieces like other leading furniture retailers.
The result is a deceptively simple, yet disruptive retail space that seems to straddle the digital and the physical, one that deftly subverts conventional retail paradigms while ensuring the primacy of product over brand, a core Cozey tenet.
The essence of comfort at home
Building on start-up’s values of innovation and simplicity, LAAB responded to the challenge of “What is Cozy?,” postulated at the onset, by crafting a wholly integrated brand and product physical experience - a cross of streetside store, brand experience space, and design centre - creating both a highly functional and intimate space: one that embodies the feeling of ultimate comfort at home.
Team:
Client: Cozey Inc.
Master Architect/Lead Designer: LAAB architecture inc.
Strategic Design: UX & Experience design (LAAB)
Brandscaping (LAAB)
Local Architect: CHASE architecture inc.
Project Manager: Gino Mauri, LAAB
Lead designer : Michel Lauzon, Creative Director LAAB
Design team :
Gino Mauri, LAAB Project Director
Daphné Beaudry, Senior Technical Designer LAAB
Maeva Lonni, LAAB Design Strategist
Frédéric Gagliolo, Conceptual Designer LAAB
Maxwell Sterry, Conceptual Designer LAAB
Collaborators
Cossette (brand strategy and identity, service design)
Studio Officiel (window showcase industrial design)
Engineers
Strudet inc. (structure)
Hava Engineering Ltd (mechanical/electrical)
ZAAB consulting (Audio-Visual and Automation)
Permitting & Approvals
de Haan Design Company inc.
Main Suppliers
Downs McGovern inc (general contractor)
Lumigroup (lighting)
Lighting Designer: LAAB architecture inc.
Photographer: Riley Snelling
