From Digital Presence to Physical Resonance

LAAB architecture unveiled a retail store of Cozey, 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.

Streetside Window Showcase
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

View of Cyclorama Rings towards Street 1
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

Cyclorama Furniture Ring 2
Photo credit: Riley Snelling

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.

View of Main Space from Design Centre
Photo credit: Riley Snelling

Cyclorama Meets Design Centre
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

Cozey Window Showcase Detail
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

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.

Streetside Window Showcase, towards entrance
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

Streetside Window Showcase, side view
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

Window Showcase towards Store Entrance
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

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.

Store Arrival Launchpad
Photo credit: Riley Snelling

Window Showcase towards Queen's
Photo credit: Riley Snelling

Window Showcase Display Close-up View
Photo credit: Riley Snelling

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.

View of Main Space towards Design Centre
Photo credit: Riley Snelling

Main Store Axis towards Design Centre
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

View of Main Space towards Queen Street
Photo credit: Riley Snelling

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.

View 2 of Cyclorama Rings towards Street
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

Cyclorama Furniture Ring 1
Photo credit: Riley Snelling

Display between Cycloramas
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

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.

Cozey Design Centre
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

Cozey Design Centre Close-up
Photo credit:
Riley Snelling

LAAB architecture

Founded in 2020 by creative leader Michel Lauzon, LAAB is an award-winning architecture firm advocating a rethink of urban and interior architecture services, to deliver original, high-impact real estate solutions. Its innovative STRATEGIC DESIGN toolkit combines strategic consulting, architectural design, and creative thinking, applied to built environments. This unique service offering leverages an agile problem-solving design process, perfected to tame the most wicked real estate challenges and unleash every project’s potential for greatness.