From Pop-Ups to Profits: The Growth Formula Behind Maguire Shoes With Myriam Belzile-Maguire

Myriam Belzile-Maguire is the Founder and Designer at Maguire Shoes, an independent fashion footwear and accessories brand based in Montreal, Canada. Co-owned by Myriam and her sister, Romy, the award-winning brand has built a strategic presence in digital and physical marketplaces. Under Myriam’s leadership, Maguire Shoes operates boutiques in Montreal, Toronto, and New York and was honored with the Emerging Talent Award in Accessories at the 2022 Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards. Before founding Maguire, Myriam designed for dozens of renowned brands, such as Opening Ceremony, and held creative positions at United Colors of Benetton in Italy and Aldo Group in Montreal.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:58] Myriam Belzile-Maguire on launching Maguire Shoes with an ecommerce-first approach
• [4:37] How holiday markets boosted Maguire’s website traffic and online sales
• [6:43] Opening the first retail store and its unexpected impact on the brand’s growth
• [9:39] Navigating the tough decision between opening stores in established versus emerging markets
• [13:40] Leveraging the "wardrobe system" to convert in-store shoppers into online customers
• [17:48] Myriam's mentor's advice on funding new store openings and managing cash flow

In this episode…

Expanding an ecommerce brand can be challenging, especially when online sales plateau and customer acquisition costs rise. Many brands struggle to find ways to scale beyond digital advertising and wonder if brick-and-mortar stores are worth the investment. How can physical retail locations drive online growth instead of competing with it?

With experience growing a thriving fashion brand, Myriam Belzile-Maguire has navigated the challenges of blending retail and ecommerce to fuel her brand's expansion. Initially starting with a Shopify website, Myriam realized that participating in local markets and opening physical stores significantly boosted online traffic and sales. The strategy involved a mix of pop-up events and permanent retail locations, allowing customers to experience the brand first-hand, which in turn drove them to shop online. Myriam demonstrates how creating a seamless customer experience across all channels, engaging local communities, and using data-driven strategies like using pop-ups to test new markets can boost online conversions.

In this episode of Minds of Ecommerce, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Myriam Belzile-Maguire, Founder and Designer at Maguire Shoes, about how retail stores can supercharge ecommerce growth. Myriam discusses the balance between physical and digital sales channels, the strategy behind pop-up shops, and her unique "wardrobe system" that converts in-store visitors into repeat online customers. Tune in to discover how strategic retail moves can elevate your brand's online presence.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle on LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Myriam Belzile-Maguire: LinkedIn | Instagram
• Maguire Shoes
• Romy Belzile-Maguire on LinkedIn
• “From Series A to Nine Figures: Leveraging Offer Testing for Ecommerce Growth With Cherene Aubert” on Minds of Ecommerce
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Quotable Moments:

• "We really saw the relation between physical and online quickly — opening a store brought more online sales."
• "Shoes are tricky to buy online; the experience of trying a pair at least one time is key."
• "Pop-ups help us understand what products customers like and if a market fits our brand."
• "Our goal is to get people in as many pairs as possible — no pressure, just experiencing the product."
• "We treat retail and ecommerce as one. It’s the same customer, just two different brand experiences."
  
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Action Steps:

1. Test new markets with pop-up shops: Pop-ups allow you to gather real-time customer feedback and gauge product interest without committing to long-term leases. This helps identify promising locations and reduce financial risk before opening a permanent store.
2. Integrate retail and ecommerce strategies: Treat physical stores and online platforms as one seamless customer experience. This approach boosts brand recognition locally while driving online sales through in-person interactions and follow-up digital marketing.
3. Use in-store experiences to build email lists: Encourage customers to sign up for newsletters after trying products in-store. This lets you reengage them online, increasing the likelihood of future purchases and fostering brand loyalty.
4. Prioritize high-traffic, trendy locations: Choosing the right neighborhood can significantly impact foot traffic and brand visibility. Paying a slightly higher rent for a prime spot often translates into more in-store visits and online conversions.
5. Leverage data to personalize customer recommendations: Track in-store purchases and fit preferences to offer tailored suggestions online. This creates a more engaging shopping experience, boosting customer satisfaction and lifetime value.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we design, test, and manage high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences for fashion, luxury, and lifestyle ecommerce brands. Our optimization program pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most, and then we help you fix that.

The result? Increased conversions and profits for our clients.

With our team of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, and conversion-focused designers, we've got your back when it comes to testing and optimization.

Request a proposal on SplitBase.com today, and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend.

You can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Don’t miss out on our exclusive podcasts at Minds of Ecommerce.

Episode Transcript

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  00:01

Welcome to the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, where you'll learn one key strategy that made leading ecommerce companies grow exponentially. We cut the bullshit and keep the meat in a 15-minute episode. Founders and executives take us through a deep dive of a strategy, so you get to learn and grow your online sales. In the last episode, you heard from Cherene Aubert, VP of Digital and Ecommerce at ILIA Beauty, and she shared how to create entry offers to win at customer acquisition. Now, today on episode number 42, get ready because we've got Myriam Maguire, who's co-founder with her sister of Maguire shoes. And it's a fast growing shoe brand with both an established ecommerce presence and a growing number of stores. Now, Miriam sees retail stores as key to their ecommerce growth and a strategy. So this today is how they do it. And we're going to do a bit of a deep dive. So I'm your host, Raphael Daigle. And I'm the founder of SplitBase. This is Minds of Ecommerce. Now this episode is brought to you by well SplitBase. We help leading direct-to-consumer brands such as Doctor Squatch, Hyperice, Amika, She's Waisted, and Laundry Sauce AB test, design, build, and manage, high-converting landing pages and on site experiences. Our optimization programs pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most and then, well, we help you fix it. The result? You grow your brand, you increase your conversions, AOV and of course improved marketing efficiency with our team of conversion optimization specialists and performance marketers and even conversion focused designers, we got your back. When it comes to testing and optimization, go to splitbase.com to request a proposal and to learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend. All right, Myriam, welcome to the show.

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  02:04

Thank you for having me.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  02:05

Yeah, well, thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited about this episode because, you know, most of the time I interview brand owners that are all on ecommerce, and it's kind of rare that I have people come over that actually also have retail stores. And as you know, this podcast is all about going deep, right? Dissecting one key growth strategy so our listeners can get the most value right away. And I know that from our earlier discussions, you've had a lot of success growing your ecommerce presence through retail stores. And it's really from our earlier conversations. You said it's 50 over 50, right? Yeah. So I want to dive a bit more about that. Did you start with ecommerce, or did you start with the retail store first? Let's start with that. Just to give people a bit more context.

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  02:58

So like everyone, I started with ecommerce. So at first I wanted to hire someone to do a website for me, for me and give them share. Then my friend at the time worked at Shopify in their early days, and he was like, just do a Shopify website. It's going to take 30 minutes and you're going to save yourself like someone having shared your business. So we did that. And what happens when you open your website, it's just like a few friends that buy a few things and friends of your parents, and that's pretty much it. So when a website opened, there's not much action. So we started doing Christmas market and like different like small business market. Every time we did this market, we saw more traffic on our website. And we saw like more online sales appearing. And at first, we used to Google every single person that would purchase to try to understand, do we know this person? Like, are we related somehow with friends of friends? And then when we were doing this market, we realized that we were selling to people that we didn't know And then that the brand was starting to reach a bit further. So right away, I think it was on six months after we started, I saw a shop inside someone else, a glasses shop. So it was a rent of $1,000.  And then we had two products at the time and five samples, and then we opened a shop and shop in the glasses store, and we outgrew this shop. And this is how we started with our concept store so quickly. We saw that a physical presence equal more online sales.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  04:37

So that's and how many years ago was that? Maybe just for context.

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  04:40

So we started in 2017 and then we opened the first shop I think it was early 2018. So like pretty I think we started like mid 2017. I quit my corporate job in 2016. So I used to be a shoe designer for a big company, and so I did that all pretty quickly. And and then we saw that when we opened Toronto. So we opened Montreal, a small store, then a bigger store with a special concept, and then in right away in 2020, we said, okay, let's open in Toronto. And all the family of my partners there for is there. So I was like, I know people that could build a store. So we built the store in Toronto and we were supposed to open March 2020, and it never opened for like almost a year and because of Covid, obviously. But even though we didn't have a physical store running, we saw our online sale in the English part of Canada going up just because we had article and like Retail Insider in local media. So when you open a retail store, you also become a local, which is really nice. So super interesting. So we really saw like the relation between physical and online quickly.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  05:59

So let's backtrack a little. So obviously you started that brand you said in 2017 or so and then now Maguire Shoes is a multi-million dollar brand, which is great. Congrats. But now when you're thinking so back then, right, you're growing in e-commerce and you're looking to open a pop up store. At the time, was the goal of the retail store to conquer the market locally, or was it to expand the ecommerce presence locally? But to get people to try the shoes and then buy online? What was the strategy or what was the train of thought behind the synergy between the store and the e-commerce store? When you first opened.

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  06:43

I think there was many strategies, and in this move, I think one of them was shoes are tricky to buy online because of sizing, and even within our own brand, if you're 38, sometimes you might be at 39 because the shoes make more narrow, more large. So I feel the experience of trying a pair at least one time. And when you have a reference of, let's say, one shoe that a customer purchase or try, we're able to give recommendations for other shoes because we know how they fit compared to each other. And so that was like key for us. The other thing is like running a physical store in an area in a city that is trendy, or where there's a lot of traffic right away, you're speaking to the right customers. So it's a good way to get known in a community. And like before we open in Toronto, we did five pop up, a small pop ups with different brands, different local brands. So we really got immersed in the local community before we opened our first store out of Montreal. So that was really powerful as well, to be known by the local community. And I would say ultimately, the goal is to get more people online to subscribe to our newsletter that we can like, reach out. So our newsletter actually work pretty well. So when we have products that have been out of stock for a while the store asked us, don't send the newsletter, please, because we're going to if we don't have the stock, because sometimes the stock gets to the warehouse on the Monday. That's the case this week we have a best seller coming. The stock have been in stock in the warehouse since Monday. We could launch it, but the store like please don't because we're going to get full of people coming to try the product in person and.

Raphael Paulin Daigle  08:28

They don't yet have.

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  08:29

It. Yeah. So we it.

Raphael Paulin Daigle  08:30

Sounds like it's very important to treat almost those channels as one in a way, even though they're two separate things. You really have to think through what's in the store, because at the end of the day, it makes sense, right? It's the same customer. It's just two different experiences, but it's the same brand as well. Yeah. So that's really interesting. Obviously in the beginning. So there was a lot of strategies, and I'm sure you guys were also testing the waters and see what was working, what wasn't working. But now you said I believe you're at four stores, correct? Yep. So what is the strategy now and going forward? I know in previous episodes for example. I don't remember the episodes number, but probably 20 episodes ago I spoke with the founder of cotton, who also used brick and mortar as a big strategy for growing their e-commerce presence. They. I believe my memory serves me correctly. They would open stores in markets they knew were already doing well. Is that the case for you guys, or are you also utilizing it more for market expansion in markets that maybe you aren't big into yet?

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  09:39

Yeah, I think we've done both. So we've done, let's say in Toronto, we are already at a big customer base because of the pop up, so we had people waiting for us. But in the case of New York, we had a few customers. But I mean, it was nothing crazy, and to be able to open a store in the US had to incorporate the company in the US, because I'm a Canadian business, so I had to create a new corporation. So we just decided to go for it and we choose a neighborhood. And this is when it's important to find the right neighborhood. Right now, let's say in Nolita, where we open our first US store, I feel I'm not exactly on the right side of the street, but then my side of the street, like my build up, because we just got a call last week that an important brand wants to open next to us. So that could bring a lot of traffic. So the so that's why I always sign like five years lease so that if I find the traffic is not exactly what I expected, then I can get out of it quickly and then move to a better place. I would say that's really important. If you're going to a market where no one knows you to be on the right street at the right corner, pay a little bit more, I think can go a long way. We move our store in Toronto from a location with less traffic to more traffic, and we see it. We saw a difference. But for Brooklyn last week, that we just opened, we it was our second market in the US, so we realized most of our their customers in New York live in Brooklyn. So that's why we decided to open a second location there. And now we're mixed in between. Do we stay on the East Coast because our product is four seasons? So that would be easy to kind of keep it in the same season. Or do we go in our third market, which is L.A., but as a completely different season. So this is where we're at right now.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  11:31

So it sounds like also thinking about, you know, the how your products are getting used will also impact if you're ready or not for subsequent markets. Yeah. But I'm wondering so you said that and I remember because I actually lived right above your first pop up many years ago.

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  11:51

But which one?

Raphael Paulin Daigle  11:53

The one in the eyewear store. Nice. But so you used so you used pop ups as a strategy. Is that still the strategy moving forward? So when you're entering new markets, new cities, do you always start with a pop up before signing a lease or.

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  12:08

Yeah Ideally, that's what we do. In the case of New York, we were not we couldn't do it because we needed to incorporate the company we needed like working visa. It was a bit complicated for the paperwork. So that's why we went and just took a leap of faith and opened the first store. But for my future markets in the US, I want to go and test and do pop ups. And we did one in Seattle last, I think, spring, just because friends were doing a pop up there. So I wanted to test if that could be a good market. So I feel like doing pop up for sure helps to understand what kind of product the customer likes and if it's a good match for like the products we have because we don't cater to every market. I would say like we're pretty casual, so maybe some markets are too dressy for us.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle  13:02

Interesting. Now, obviously we've been saying that your stores are an integral part of your ecommerce strategy, and it's really used as a way to drive people back to e-commerce. Now, you mentioned that you you guys came up with the strategy, the wardrobe system, to get more people to go from the retail store to then an owned customer, where then you can extend their lifetime value, I'm guessing by turning them into an online customer. So can you walk us a bit more through that strategy and how you're turning physical shoppers into actual online customers as well?

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  13:40

Yeah. So when we were telling people we're opening stores like we didn't have experience running stores, like I was a shoe designer and my sister was in marketing, I never wanted to work in retail. Like back in the days I was working in restaurants as a student job, and retail for me was like, I don't want to sell at commission. I don't want to be on my feet all day. Like it's just like I didn't like the retail experience overall. So when we got to work retail in our pop-up, we decided to change a few things that we didn't like about running a retail store. So first of all, there's no commission. So it's a group effort of our staff to help customers. So the goal of the staff is just to get customers in is as many pairs as possible, just so they feel the product and they don't feel pressured to buy, because that's often the case in shoe stores. Or you feel shy asking for another color. So that's how we came up with our wardrobe concept. So it's these big wardrobe where we put sizes from like 36 to 40, so that the average customer is in between these sizes. So we'll try different pair different colors. So we put like 36 to 43 different colors. So you can put your feet in different colors. You can see if it's always nice to try the size up and the size down, just to make sure you're making the right decision in shoes. And you don't often have the opportunity to try a lot of shoes a shoe store. So we designed these wardrobes so that people can really experience different products. And, you know, some people come in because they have a product in mind, but then they realize my narrow foot doesn't fit in this product, but there might be a better fit in another product. So they can try different things to to find the right fit. So that was like a big thing for us. And it helps. Often customers will leave with a card with the name of the style they tried the and their size so that they can purchase later if they don't need the pair right away. But they have an event in three months, at least they know the size to buy online.

Raphael Paulin Daigle  15:49

Amazing now. So it sounds like you've really started integrating that strategy. So you know, if I can if I kind of recap this opening, preferably pop ups, but also in the States, just opening straight up stores as a way to get into new markets, and especially with a with a product like shoes, where people want to try. That's been a really key strategy to your growth. But then you're also making sure that that customer can be both the retail customer and an online customer, and that you can hopefully extend their lifetime value by having, you know, a buy, by getting them to come back online later if they're not ready to purchase right away in stores. I'm curious though. Now the brand's been around for a couple of years. You've grown a lot. If you were to start everything all over again from an e-commerce point of view or from a opening retail store point of view, what would you do differently?

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  16:46

I think I would get more funding from the start, maybe because when we started, we started with like very little money and to this day we're still like bootstrapping. So I think one of your question you asked was like, when do you know how to open a new store? All of that. I was talking with one of my mentor, the owner of La Vie en Rose, and he says, like, I only open store when I have the cash for it, my own cash. So because he's generating a lot of money, he has like a lot of store. But in our case, because we started the business with $15,000, we had no choice to borrow to start stores. So I would say my dream would be to get to a point where I can have my own. I don't have to borrow money to open stores. Like that would be the dream situation and we're like working towards that. But to this day we're still borrowing to, to, to make store and like my mentor is completely against it. But like I think it. It allowed us to like carve our place in the market. I would say so, yeah, I think like financing, I would do it differently and maybe be more surrounded by advisors at the beginning.

Raphael Paulin Daigle  18:02

Amazing. Myriam, that was amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. Now, if people want to connect with you or want to learn more about the brand, where should they go?

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  18:13

I mean, for more about the brand, you can go at Maguire shoes on all the platforms. It's Maguire Shoes. Maguire. Like Jerry Maguire, the movie. And then to find me, I think on Instagram, I'm Miriam Beam. And then you can reach me on Instagram or on LinkedIn. I'm Myriam Maguire. So. So you can find me there.

Raphael Paulin Daigle  18:38

Fantastic. Myriam that thank you so much for joining us. So for everyone listening, Myriam is the co-founder of Maguire shoes. Highly successful shoe brand started in Montreal, grew to a couple million dollars and is still growing quite a bit through a very strategic split of retail stores and ecommerce, two channels that are intertwined together to form one growth strategy. Thank you, Myriam, for joining us and have an amazing day.

Myriam Belzile-Maguire  19:10

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Outro  19:12

Thank you. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. And thank you so much for tuning in. Now, if you like what you've heard, and you don't want to miss any of the new episodes that are about to come out, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and well bonus points if you also leave a review in the iTunes store or wherever you're listening to this. Now, if you're working on an ecommerce store that does over $1 million in revenue and you need help with conversion optimization or landing pages, well, I've got some good news because there's a pretty good chance we can help with that. Go to splitbase.com to learn more, or even to request a proposal. If you have any guest requests, questions or comments, tweet me @Rpauldiagle and I'll be super happy to hear from you. And again, thanks again for listening.

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