Shady Rays is set to open its first retail store this fall.
The Simpsonville, Kentucky-based retailer was one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. last year through e-commerce sales of its sunglasses and its lost and broken replacement policy. Now, it intends to further fuel that growth by establishing a physical retail presence.
Shady Rays will open its first store at The Summit at Fritz Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, later this fall. The 1,000-square-foot storefront, which will create about 10 jobs, will showcase all frame and lens options from the brand’s collection of lifestyle and performance sunglasses, along with seasonal availability of snow goggles and other outdoor wearables.
CEO Chris Ratterman, who founded the company in 2012, told me the shift to an omni-channel strategy has been in the works for more than a year.
Omni-channel commerce is an approach to sales that aims to offer customers a seamless experience, no matter the environment they are shopping in.
"What a lot of direct-to consumer brands have identified — including ourselves — is that to continue to scale to the degree that we want to, we need to engage in different sales channels, and more specifically, we need to be able to react to the different consumer buying trends as that can shift between the digital and retail environments," he said. "We've seen that in the pandemic; consumer buying habits going very heavily toward online and then retail surging a bit.
"We have the opportunity to open up key flagship stores in markets where we are already doing quite a bit of business and have a strong awareness and strong customer base, and be able to expand that footprint and reach customers that we might not have otherwise."
Related: Meet the two Louisville brothers behind Shady Rays' fast growth
As I previously reported, Shady Rays was No. 54 on the Inc. 5000 list in 2020, recording a 5,683% three-year revenue growth. Declining to disclose specific figures, Ratterman said the company is continuing to grow at a substantial rate, maintaining a three-year annual growth rate of more than 100%.
Lexington is the first retail market, but it won't be the last, Ratterman continued. The company anticipates learning from the Lexington store to determine the right size, right inventory and right layout for its future flagship brick-and-mortar retail space.
"The look and feel of [the Lexington Store] is definitely a clean, modern aesthetic with aspirational outdoor lifestyle imagery," Ratterman said. "We want people to walk into a very interactive, premium retail experience. That was the goal when we set out to build this store, which has all been custom designed and built to our specifications for this first opening."
To develop a fluid experience between Shady Rays' online and in-person environments, customers can expect similar deals in both channels, such as the brand’s popular $18 “Mystery Pair” addition to any regular-priced purchase, as well as extending the company's ongoing practice to fight hunger in America through its contribution of 10 meals for every shades purchase going to Feeding America and other Global FoodBanking Network partners.
Notably, Shady Rays just launched $89 prescription eyeglasses with its most popular frames, still falling under its lost and broken replacement program like the sunglasses. For more information, check out the company's website here.
