ADVISORS
From first sketch to opening day — without losing the brand.
Concept-to-completion retail expansion for e-commerce and DTC brands opening their first one to twenty-five stores.
Concept-to-completion retail expansion for e-commerce and DTC brands opening their first one to twenty-five stores.
Our mission: give e-commerce brands the leadership to expand into physical retail with the same precision, authenticity, and brand integrity they’ve built online — without the cost or delay of building that function in-house.
The trusted concept-to-completion partner for the next generation of digitally native brands — the firm that gets a brand from its first store to its twenty-fifth without the design intent ever getting lost along the way.
Liveliness. Energy. The quality of a space that feels alive — and the thing most often lost in a retail build-out, diluted by value engineering, contractor drift, and too many parties with no single owner.
The store your customers walk into is the one you approved. One senior owner is accountable for creative integrity through construction, and we tell you before the lease is signed if a site can’t deliver it.
A team that has spent years optimizing conversion funnels rarely has in-house muscle for real estate strategy, design, or construction. The gap shows up in five predictable, expensive ways — and what gets lost isn’t only budget and schedule. It’s the engagement the store was built to create.
Sites get picked store-by-store on whatever is available — not on customer data, mobility patterns, and competitive positioning.
Materials go unavailable, fixtures miss the timeline, and value engineering quietly erodes the brand between rendering and ribbon-cutting.
A flagship that can’t be replicated at store #2, #5, or #20 without rework — because it was never built as a system.
Architects, GCs, landlords, and brand teams each own a piece. No one owns the whole thread, so accountability falls through the cracks.
Leases are signed and capital committed before anyone with construction expertise asks whether the space can deliver on budget.
For a venture-backed brand, a blown store opening isn’t a line item — it’s a board-level miss.
Venture- or growth-backed DTC brands, typically Series B+ or $15M–$150M revenue, planning flagship #1 and needing a roadmap, a design system, and someone accountable for delivery.
Brands with 2–10 stores that are hitting the repeatability gap — every new site takes rework because the first one was never built as a system.
PE-owned, founder-owned, or legacy wholesale brands relaunching a DTC-first retail concept with discipline on capital and timeline.
Who we typically work with: the CEO, COO, or a brand’s first Head of Retail / Real Estate — the person who knows the brand needs this expertise but isn’t ready to build a department around it.
Vivacity treats strategy, concept, design, construction, and opening as one continuous thread — not a relay race between five vendors — with a single senior owner accountable for creative integrity and delivery at every phase.
One senior leader answers for budget, schedule, and brand integrity — to you and your board.
Every decision at store #1 is documented so stores #2 through #25 repeat it faster and cheaper.
We pressure-test sites, budgets, and materials before the lease is signed and the rendering is approved.
Vivacity is a new firm; its founder is not new to this work. Every number below comes from programs he led in-house across Bose, Saatva, Sonos, and Vornado.
countries where he has delivered flagships, ground-up builds, and shop-in-shops
global real estate portfolio managed (Bose)
capital construction delivered across retail, workplace, and mixed-use
global cost reduction through design and budget standards (Bose)
industry and commercial awards, including Shop! Awards for store design
of commercial and mixed-use development delivered (Vornado)
Selected projects: Saatva (25 flagships) · Sonos NYC flagship, London & Berlin concept stores · West Elm shop-in-shop · Dreamscape Immersive LA · Dashlane NYC & Paris HQ · Roots Canada · Bose global HQ portfolio · Downtown Crossing Boston & Bryant Back Bay (Vornado)
As VP of Real Estate & Store Development, the founder took Saatva’s retail concept from design standard to a national flagship network — concurrently, with zero major cost overruns.
flagship stores opened in 40 months, in parallel, across simultaneous markets
in new revenue attributable to the retail program
capital construction delivered with zero major cost overruns
revenue growth tied to the build-out program
lift in local brand awareness in markets with a store
average four-wall payback period per store
Sonos NYC flagship, SoHoGlobal concept store
Sonos NYC listening roomImmersive demo suite
Sonos NYC, two-story podsCustom-fabricated fixture system
Sonos London, Seven DialsFirst European concept store
Sonos London interiorMusic house system adapted to a new market
Sonos BerlinSame platform, third market
Saatva flagshipOne of 25 delivered in 40 months
Roots Canada, BostonExperiential pop-up
Nearly 30 years delivering projects that live up to the rendering. Trained as an architect, seasoned as an operator, he owns the whole thread from concept to ribbon-cutting.
The upside is real. Warby Parker, Allbirds, Figs, On, and Saatva all made the leap, and capital markets now expect an omnichannel plan. So is the downside. A 4–9 month build compresses fast when design, permitting, or GC coordination slips.
A data-driven roadmap — customer, mobility, and competitive data — that targets the right markets, right-sizes the real estate, and sets a 3-year return on capital.
Your brand translated into a scalable standard: layout, materials, lighting, fixtures — documented so it works across store sizes and site conditions.
Embedded senior design-and-construction leadership for your first stores, without the cost, search time, or risk of a full-time executive hire.
Hands-on management of GCs, architects, and consultants through permitting, CDs, construction, FF&E, and punch list — across parallel openings.
Pressure-test a site before the lease is signed: what it will really cost to build, what will surprise the GC, and what to renegotiate first.
A Strategy engagement or a single Site Review is a fast, low-risk way to experience Vivacity’s judgment before committing to a retainer or a multi-store program.
Fast, low-friction, fixed scope. You get a roadmap or a go/no-go on a specific site — and a clear read on how we work.
As you commit to your first stores, we embed as your senior design-and-construction leader, owning vendors, budget, schedule, and board reporting.
When openings run in parallel across markets, we manage the whole program — the same discipline that delivered 25 stores in 40 months.
The same arc the founder has run in-house for Sonos, Saatva, and Bose — now available to brands one stage earlier, without the full-time hire.
| Vivacity | Retail-as-a-Service | Design / architecture firms | Lease-tech software | Full-time hire | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owns concept → opening | Yes | Partial | No | No | Yes, but slow |
| Single-owner accountability | Yes | Shared | No | No | Yes |
| Design system built to scale | Yes | Limited | Sometimes | No | Depends |
| You keep lease control | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Flexible engagement | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Speed to engage | Weeks | Weeks | Weeks | Immediate | Months |
RaaS platforms ask you to give up lease control. Design firms hand off before construction. Lease-tech never touches design or build. A full-time executive is a six-figure bet before you know you need the role permanently.
Twelve questions, three minutes. Get a provisional grade across six categories — brand translation, market strategy, real estate readiness, repeatability, accountability, and engagement — then let us add our read of your website and vision for the full report.
Disclaimer. The Retail Experience Report Card is an educational self-assessment based on your answers and publicly available information about your brand. Grades are indicative only, do not constitute professional, financial, legal, or real estate advice, and should not be relied on for leasing, capital, or construction decisions without a formal engagement. Vivacity Advisors makes no warranty as to accuracy or completeness and accepts no liability for decisions made on the basis of the report. Information you submit is used only to prepare your report and to contact you about it; it is not sold or shared.
Vivacity brings the leadership, the system, and the single point of accountability to take your brand from first sketch to opening day — and from your first store to your twenty-fifth — without losing what made it worth building. Let’s talk about where your brand belongs next.