TEAM PLAYERS
High-flying Canadian menswear brand FRANK & OAK puts people first
Frank & Oak has seemingly discovered the elusive secret to retail success.
The Quebec-based company exploded onto the ecommerce scene in 2012, offering men a comprehensive range of affordably priced stylish merchandise.
Since then, the company has expanded to include in-house brands ranging from activewear to suiting and accessories, as well as opening a dozen bricksand-mortar locations in North America.
But according to Ethan Song, one half of the Frank & Oak founding team, the reason behind the company’s success is far from a secret.
“People often say you need the best marketing, the best product or the best technology. But that doesn’t come on it’s own. It comes with people,” Song says. “We spend a lot of time finding the right people for our company and then working on what is the best culture for our company.
“I always tell people that having the best team is the most important.”
Song and his business partner (and childhood friend) Hicham Ratnani set out to create a brand that offered stylish options for men — with an integrated lifestyle angle — presented in a modern, magazine-inspired environment.
“We looked at what was happening both in the men’s business as well as what was happening online,” Song explains. “We realized there was a huge opportunity to both create a cool brand while also offering men an experience that helps them to dress better.”
While the company’s history may read a bit like a modern day fairy tale, there is a calculated strategy and business sense behind Song and Ratnani’s brand model.
“When we first started, it made a lot of sense to focus on ecommerce just because, right away, you get access to a much larger pool of customers,” Song explains of the online-first approach.
Rather than relying on traditional forms of advertising, they opted to explore social media channels and key online influencers to spread the word about the young menswear brand.
In a way, they sold the Frank & Oak lifestyle rather than the clothing itself.
“It’s not so much that the product that we sell isn’t important. The product is extremely important,” Song says. “But I just find that with people of this generation, they want to know, they want information. They want transparency. They want to know where the product comes from, who are the people behind it and how it is going to contribute to their lifestyle.”
And with this model in mind, the pair hasn’t looked back.
The Frank & Oak team now numbers 75 full-time employees at the company’s headquarters in Montreal.
“We design our own product, we do our own marketing, we run our own website and our own mobile applications as well,” Song explains. “We are fully integrated.”
Not bad for a brand that launched just a few years ago as an online retailer with a team of two.
“It sounds like a lot, but everyone works really hard, and most of those people are serving our online business,” Song says. “We have over 20 people in customer service alone.”
Customer service, from the central to the retail level, is an essential building block of the growing Frank & Oak empire, according to Song.
“We’ve just made sure the relationship we have with our customer is not transactional, but has a real value behind it,” he says.
“It’s not just about the product, it’s about the experience that we create — whether it’s online or in stores.”
For example, in the newly opened Vancouver store, located at 316 W Cordova St., shoppers can receive complimentary personal styling services or sit for a barber service in one of two barber’s chairs located in the back of the shop.
“I think the main difference is that when it comes to our brand we work very hard to make your life easier,” Song says when asked what makes Frank and Oak different from other contemporary menswear offerings. “It goes back to the idea that we want to help men feel and look better.”
It’s this customer service-oriented atmosphere, along with the brand’s target demographic — men aged 25 to 35 who usually work in a creative field, according to Song — that makes the Gastown location such a good fit. “There are so many startups around here — and around town as well, it is a very creative network,” Song says. “There are a lot of exciting things happening here in the food scene and in arts, as well, (so) it made a lot of sense for us to be involved in the community, which has been up and coming for a while. But there is still a lot more growth to happen. And we are happy to be a part of that.”
Song might be focused on growth in the store’s neighbourhood, but he’s not too focused on the growth rate of his brand.
When asked about the recent Deloitte 2015 Technology Fast 50 program win, which posted the menswear brand’s four-year revenue growth rate at more than 18,000 per cent, Song’s remark was succinct.
“Growth rate is not that important, to tell you the truth,” he says. “We don’t talk about it.” But it’s not secrecy that silences Song. It’s that he genuinely seems not to focus on the numbers.
“There is no point in growing fast if you can’t make every single relationship matter in the same way that it did with your first order,” he says. “That is what we are focused on. That is what is really important to us.”
The brand’s product design and quality most certainly is open for discussion, and to Song, it’s at the core of what makes Frank & Oak different.
“One of the differentiating points about Frank & Oak is that the price point is quite affordable,” Song says. “How we achieve that is by being fully integrated. We don’t wholesale our products, we control the entire supply chain. And we focus a lot on fabric and silhouettes.
“We believe that a great fit and a quality fabric is all that a man needs.”