Bolia.com: Never Waste a Good Crisis: Leveraging Financial Chaos as a Growth Catalyst

Bolia, a Danish retailer of Scandinavian designed furniture, disrupted the traditionally conservative furniture category and leveraged the recession to gain market share and accelerate business growth.

Challenge, context & objectives

Bolia.com is a retailer that designs and sells 'New Scandinavian Design' to the modern, ambitious and design savvy through online and physical stores.

The brand launched in 2000, and for seven experienced continuous and steady growth. (1)

New stores opened, online traffic grew, and between 2005 and 2007 profits averaged €437,000 a year. (2)

However, in 2008 the worst financial crisis since the 1930s crushed global economies.

Denmark was one of the first European countries to feel its full force. Consumer confidence collapsed. (3)

Unsurprisingly, one of the earliest victims of this collapse was the...

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