Authentically Danish: Tekla Opens Flagship in Copenhagen
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LONDON — From digital to real life.
Danish textile brand Tekla is heading into the physical world with the opening of its first retail store on Vognmagergade, a street close to Rosenborg Castle Gardens in Copenhagen, on Saturday.
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The building was constructed by Danish publisher and modernist Egmont Petersen in the 1930s, but Tekla enlisted the help of Johannes Svartholm with their own internal team to come up with something modern yet classical.
The walls are clean and the floors are neatly painted in a washed concrete blue and beige with wooden chairs and black rails.
The 2,150-square-foot space will house bedding, bath, blankets, kitchen and sleepwear, which is getting in-store exclusives with items such as boxers, T-shirts, sleep masks, herbal tea and carafes made by Japanese glassblower Yoko Anderson.
“We’ve been around for five years, so it’s long overdue, but then we also grew big during the pandemic,” Kristoffer Juhl, cofounder and managing director of Tekla, told WWD in a Zoom call with Christoffer Lundman, creative lead at the brand.
Tekla has grown from a team of 30 to 41 with Juhl focusing on professionalizing the company internally ahead of opening a flagship.
“Up till now our interaction has been mainly online with our direct consumers. A lot of work went into the process of how we want to sell the product and engage with people coming into the store,” said Lundman, who thought about what a modern homeware and textiles brand would feel like physically.
Copenhagen isn’t Tekla’s biggest market, but for the brand it’s about loyalty and the ease of collecting feedback from their customers and community, who tend to reside in the neighboring countries next to Denmark.
The U.S. is Tekla’s biggest market, followed by the U.K. and Germany. The brand has seen tremendous action in Japan and South Korea recently.
“It’s been intensified significantly over the last year. Asia has really started embracing our terry towels and we’ve seen the demand out there growing. South Korea is our biggest audience on social media and we’ve managed to gain traction there, maybe due to our collaboration with Stüssy,” Juhl explained.
“The U.S. took over as our biggest market more or less on Day One of the pandemic with New York and California being very excited about Tekla,” he added.
The brand said it has been profitable since 2019 and in the last four years has grown by 240 percent.
“We’ve managed to have a great start to the year, but strategically, the focus is very much on resilience and building a healthy growth to ensure that we work smarter and we’re more efficient,” said Juhl, who runs the business with Charlie Hedin, the other cofounder.
Tekla is privately owned with no external investors, but at the inception of the brand, friends and family chipped in to help the two men launch the company.
In Danish fashion, Tekla’s approach to product production is slow and considered. They will be releasing a new flannel quality this fall and new bedding is in the works that won’t be out until next year.
The brand received its official B Corp certification on April 13 for meeting the standards of social and environmental impact, transparency and accountability.
“In order to really create a sustainability impact and leverage, we’re looking for external partners to work with because we realized you can’t be an eco-centric brand thinking you’re the only one there. We have to work together to unionize, you have to go political,” said Juhl, adding that sustainability practices must start within companies.
At Tekla he still makes sure that the bins are sorted to their waste categories.
In the summer, they have a second fundraising event with ClientEarth, an environmental charity. Last year they raised 400,000 pounds.
The event is not a fancy gala or a self-serving act for the brand, but rather an intimate gathering where the team at Tekla and ClientEarth cook food and invite a high-level network of creatives and businesspeople from Copenhagen to inform them of ways they can help the planet.
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