The Frankie Shop opened a 1,200-square-foot flagship on Via Verri in Milan's Quadrilatero della Moda last week, the eighth physical location for a brand that began as a Soho wholesale boutique in 2014 and rebuilt itself as a direct-to-consumer digital operation by 2019. Founder Gaëlle Drevet told WWD the company expects to double revenue by 2027, which internal projections place near $200 million based on the brand's current $95-110 million annual run rate. The Milan store follows recent openings in Los Angeles, London, and a second Paris location, with New York and Tokyo flagships scheduled for late 2026.
The Frankie Shop represents the second wave of digitally native fashion brands attempting brick-and-mortar density after the collapse of Warby Parker's store-per-quarter model and Everlane's thirty-percent same-store sales decline in 2024. Drevet's approach differs: each flagship occupies heritage retail corridors—Melrose Place, Rue Saint-Honoré, now Quadrilatero—and operates as content studios first, transaction points second. The Milan store includes a $45,000 Dieter Rams archive display and hosts invite-only styling sessions for local family office principals and their adult children, the brand's core $800-1,200 average transaction customer. Worth noting that The Frankie Shop's wholesale channel, once seventy percent of revenue, now sits below fifteen percent, with eighty-five percent direct.
This matters because Drevet is building distribution infrastructure that luxury hospitality developers are beginning to notice. Three branded residence projects in Europe are in early partnership discussions with The Frankie Shop for in-residence styling services and limited capsule collaborations, according to two people familiar with the conversations. One project, a forty-unit conversion in Milan's Porta Nuova district, is exploring a ground-floor Frankie Shop presence paired with quarterly resident-exclusive product drops. The model mirrors what Aesop did with residential developments in Melbourne and Sydney between 2018 and 2022, monetizing brand access rather than unit sales.
The challenge is execution speed versus capital efficiency. The Frankie Shop is reportedly burning $12-15 million annually on flagship build-outs while maintaining profitability through its core digital channel. Drevet has resisted institutional capital—the company remains ninety-five percent founder-owned after a small $8 million friends-and-family round in 2021—but fifteen stores by 2027 will require construction capital the business doesn't currently generate. Two luxury conglomerates have approached Drevet about minority stakes in the past eighteen months; she declined both.
Operators should watch whether The Frankie Shop announces a real estate partnership or HNWI syndicate by Q1 2027, which would fund the Tokyo and New York builds without diluting Drevet's control. Branded residence developers should monitor how the Milan store performs against the Paris Saint-Honoré location, which does $2.8 million annually per 1,000 square feet—a benchmark that would justify dedicated retail allocations in mixed-use projects. Agency strategists managing luxury fashion portfolios should note that The Frankie Shop spent zero dollars on paid social in 2025 yet grew its Instagram following by 340,000 accounts, all organic.
The Tokyo flagship is scheduled for Aoyama in March 2027, contingent on build-out permits clearing by November 2026.