Why Boll & Branch’s Scott Tannen obsesses over Zillow to choose store locations

“I spend a lot of time on Zillow,” Scott Tannen, the CEO and co-founder, with his wife, Missy, of the luxury bedding and home brand Boll & Branch, told Retail Brew in a recent interview. “Zillow is my favorite sport, actually.”

Tannen is not in the market for a new home. He was telling us about how Boll & Branch, which launched in 2014 as a DTC brand highlighting fair-trade practices and organic cotton, is turbo-charging its brick-and-mortar strategy, nearly doubling its footprint, from eight to 15 stores, over the last year.

“You’re looking at average household income, you might as well also be looking at number of bedrooms,” Tannen said of his Zillow proclivity. “It’s not a surprise that Dallas”—where a location opened in 2023—“is our top store.” Homes in that area have “some of the largest square footage relative to the lot sizes in the country.”

“If you look across our store mix, you’re going to start seeing a trend…We are in Birmingham, [Alabama]—very large houses relative to their market size. We’re not in downtown Chicago; we’re out in the western suburbs.”

In Bethesda, Maryland, where the company opened its latest store in October, Zillow estimates the current average home value at $1,107,992, up from $843,132 in 2017.

There isn’t unanimity when it comes to other DTC bedding brands’ approach to stores:

• Brooklinen also is bullish on brick and mortar, growing from just two stores in 2022 to eight today.
• But Parachute is scaling back, revealing in June that it would close most of its 26 stores, and today lists just six locations on its website.

New York state of, nevermind: While opening flagship stores in New York City is an aspiration for some retail brands, Boll & Branch has thus far eschewed the city, favoring instead locations in affluent markets (with no shortage of McMansions with many beds to outfit), including Boca Raton, Florida, and Greenwich, Connecticut.

“Even if they have more money in New York, they’ve got more bedrooms in areas that have homes,” Tannen said. “So when we get to a slightly more suburban area, the customer that becomes a believer—their potential lifetime value increases exponentially.”=

Some argue that because of the visibility, the value of the marketing and cachet of flagship stores in high-rent cities like New York, a store needn’t be profitable.

Tannen evoked the thought process of a retailer who might say, “‘My rent’s $2 million a year in [the Manhattan neighborhood of] Flatiron, and I’m doing a million and a half in sales out of the store’” but justifying it by the exposure of “‘how many people are walking by the door.’”

But he cautioned against such thinking.

“It’s sort of an immature way to ultimately look at the business,” Tannen said. “You’re trying to build a business case to defend your decision, rather than making your decision based on a business case.”

Hooked on a feeling: Four years after it launched as a DTC brand, Boll & Branch opened its first permanent store in 2018 at The Mall at Short Hills, which describes itself as “New Jersey’s premier luxury destination,” after having success with a pop-up store in the same location.

“When we first started the business, I don’t think we ever envisioned having any physical [stores] whatsoever,” Tannen said.

But he soon saw the value of potential customers being able to touch the sheets, which with prices that today start at $279 for a queen set may cause sticker shock in those who’ve been purchasing their percales at big box and discount stores.

“We saw this massive performance change in the business, because customers could touch and feel the products,” Tannen said. “And they’re like, ‘Wow.’”

Today the stores feature what the brand internally calls “feel walls,” where its sheets in various fabrics that have been laundered 20 times hang for customers to see and, yes, feel how they hold up.

“That feel wall experience immediately demystifies the entire purchase in the category for someone and takes them from…I’m fine with my cheap Bed Bath & Beyond or whatever” sheets, he said. “And then they feel it, and they’re like, ‘OK, I get it. Now I get how nice this is.’”