Frank & Oak eyeing U.S. expansion

Canadian based retailer Frank & Oak has their eyes on expanding in the U.S. market. Step one for testing out if they can have any success here: pop-up shops. The company currently has six brick-and-mortar stores across Canada and quite a few shoppers in the U.S. thanks to their e-commerce channel. They recently launched an online campaign running through April 8th called “Collective Impact: Frank & Oak in my City” to see what cities would be most interested in a brick-and-mortar Frank & Oak location.

The goal is to create six long-term pop-up shops, with American consumers helping to whittle it down from 12 potential locations to a well curated six. Currently the 12 options include Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, Austin, and Portland. Consumers can help support a store through the purchase of different levels of gift card interest. The way the gift-cards work is they function as in-store credit for a particular city with the most basic card being 10 dollars.

Frank & Oak looking to open six new U.S. pop-up shops

As the value in gift card goes up so do options for premium add-ons. A 50 dollar gift card includes a tote bag for pick-up at the store, and a 250 dollar gift-card includes a VIP invite to the store opening party. The 3,000 dollar gift card includes all prior level premium add-ons, in addition to dinner with the Frank & Oak co-founder, and a tour of the company headquarters in Montreal. The purchases will be used to gauge what cities have the highest level of interest in seeing a Frank & Oak store open.

If a city is not selected for a store opening then the money spent on the gift cards will be refunded. While Frank & Oak is an apparel brand there are many more facets to the company aside from that. The company also publishes a bi-annual print magazine and online content to coincide with their 12 new collections every month. Cofounder and CEO Ethan Song sees the brand as being all about the experience, which is why is why he wanted to give customers a say on where their U.S. pop-up locations would be. If you want to see a Frank & Oak store coming near you it might be worth it to get your hands on one of those gift-cards.