Canadian contemporary furniture and home decor eCommerce retailer Article has announced that it will expand its Vancouver headquarters into a new space that is more than 20 times the size of its current facility. The company has seen explosive growth, with sales in 2016 being about six times that of the previous year. The relocation will be complete in the summer of 2017.
In 2016, Article grew its business substantially, now boasting a $120 million annual revenue run rate. “We experienced more than 6X growth in 2016 which meant that we needed to find a space that could accommodate our continued growth,” said Aamir Baig, Co-founder, Director and CEO at Article. “We’re expanding in every aspect of our business: We’re hiring more staff, we’re increasing our product range and we’re developing new technologies to make the process for buying designer furniture more efficient. A new, larger office space was necessary at this stage in our growth, and we wanted to find a location that checked off all of the boxes on our wish list.”
The company’s current headquarters, at 520 Alexander Street in Vancouver’s Railtown area, is about 5,000 square feet. This summer, Article will relocate to a 115,000 square foot restored historic building at 1010 Raymur Avenue, in an industrial area next to Strathcona Park. The new space will provide Article with more office space and regional distribution facilities that it requires as it continues to see exceptional growth.
The new space will have a modern-industrial aesthetic, featuring exposed wood timber and concrete, and will be outfitted with Article furniture.
The upper level of the new building will be transformed into an open-concept office to facilitate seamless collaboration and provide creative spaces for Article’s in-house photography team. There’s room for up to 300 employees in the new space, which could fill up quite quickly — Article currently employs 80 people, and it’s expecting to grow to more than 150 by the end of 2017.
The new facility will also include a research and development centre for new warehousing technology, allowing the Article to test and validate new ideas before implementing them across its warehouse network. Part of the building will also serve as a warehouse to fulfill orders in Western Canada—the company currently has three existing warehouses in Seattle, Los Angeles and New Jersey, with combined capacity of 375,000 square feet.
“2017 is going to be an important year for us, and expanding our office resources and building our warehouse network are the first steps we’re taking to set ourselves up for ongoing success,” said Mr. Baig.
In 2016, Article delivered more than 25,000 orders, and since the start of 2017 has already shipped more than 9,000 orders to customers across the U.S. and Canada. The contemporary furniture and home decor brand was founded by four software engineers in 2013, and it uses proprietary technology to “remove inefficiencies in the traditional retail model to make the customer experience simple and easy,” according to the company.
