‘Retail as a service’ platforms want to answer new demand for physical stores

By Jill Manoff

As brick-and-mortar earns back its reputation as an essential retail channel, a growing number of companies are offering to help DTC companies transition into the offline.

On Wednesday, one of these types of firms, Fourpost announced its first two retail locations, set to open on Nov. 1 in the largest malls in North America: Mall of America in Minneapolis and West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada. It’s one of many new companies positioning itself as “the Shopify of physical retail,” pointing to the turnkey e-commerce company powering sites for direct-to-consumer brands from Allbirds to Kylie Cosmetics. Shopify is reportedly worth $17 billion.

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