Sebastian Öhrn (Myrqvist): companies are moving towards more ownership of their brands and products
Today we talk with Sebastian Öhrn, founder of the brand Myrqvist. After organising a successful Kickstarter campaign, Sebastian created a business where we decided to cut out middlemen and sell its shoes directly to customers online and via a flagship store in Stockholm
About Myrqvist
Myrqvist was born almost six years ago with a Kickstarter campaign. This was at a time I was still at University, but I had an idea of creating high quality footwear at a reasonable price. And in order to be able to do so, we had to eliminate some of the middlemen. Basically, the traditional retailers. So, by selling direct to consumer, we can offer quality and design at almost half the price of our traditional competitors.
Most of our sales are done through our online store, worldwide. While Sweden is our biggest market, we have significant sales across al of Europe, even in Americas and in Asia.
Made to Order service
The Made to Order service, as we call it, basically allows a customer, to take an existing model form our product array and then change the sole, or the colour of the suede, or the leather or add details like laces, engraving the sole to make it more of a personal product.
We offer this made to order programme that allows the customer to make a completely customised shoe. As an option, they can also order an extra width if they have a different type of foot, or maybe if they need a super narrow shoe, or a extra large size.
Retail Channels
I think for us it always has been a quite omnichannel business, and we do it both offline and online. We like the physical kind of feedback loops that we get from meeting costumers in real life and we try to apply that to our online business as well.
Really what we have seen in the retail sector, and it really comes along with what we are doing: I think traditional muti brand retailers, who do not own their own brands are suffering a lot, because they cannot provide any additional value to the consumer. And then the consumer can always find the product online at a better price. I think that more and more companies are following the type of business model that we are doing. Maybe not completely, but sometimes to a certain degree, to have more ownership and control of their brand and product.
Pandemic
Since the start of the pandemic, dress shoes, the typical kind of shoes that you wear to a suit, drastically went down in demand. We had to change our business a bit and widening our product array. We have started to add more casual styles, but we still make them within the sign and the brand of Myrqvist.
