Sundays, a Canadian home goods brand, shares its journey from a side hustle to an international business. Learn how they grew through product curation, strategic social media, and are now diversifying marketing and expanding into the U.S. market amidst changing economic conditions. This episode offers valuable lessons on balancing growth with curation and adapting to evolving customer acquisition landscapes for DTC brands.
Sundays is trying to become the leading DTC home furnishings brand in Canada, but it also has its sights set on international expansion. The company started as a side hustle of two married entrepreneurs and has snowballed into a full-blown international business. While most of its business is in Canada, Sundays has been slowly building out its U.S. business -- and has plans to open a pop-up in the country hopefully sometime in the next year. "We started just with living room pieces, and over time we moved into dining room and bedroom," said co-founder and co-CEO Barbora Samieian. "But what we really stayed committed to is that curated line. So, not going very broad in any of those categories, but really selecting the best pieces for our customers and iterating on those pieces." Barbora and her husband Moe, who serves as the other co-CEO, joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about the company's growth plans. Sundays first launched in 2019, and after about a year of trial and error -- along with a pandemic-induced home goods boom -- started seeing sales consistently grow year-over-year. Sundays sells a variety of home furniture including sofas, end tables, beds and chairs. While it has expand its product-line, the co-founders insist that its focus has been on curation over expansion. Much of its growth was thanks to leveraging social media and local influencers to grow its presence in key cities like Vancouver and Toronto. But now, with rising customer acquisition costs and changing digital dynamics, Sundays is trying to diversify its digital marketing to include a variety of channels including podcasts and Pinterest. While the co-founders admitted that the last six months didn't have the same growth as the previous two years, given the changing economic landscape, things are still looking good for Sundays. "We're still able to have growth numbers even in q3 and q4 of 2022," said Moe Samieian. "But we've been we're going forward cautiously."