It was the move to rainy London and the memory of her mother’s handmade umbrella with an intricate duck handle that inspired Morgan Cros’s entrepreneurial journey. She had recently moved from Paris and was looking for a business idea. At the same time, she was feeling a little tired with the glut of disposable black umbrellas on the market.
So, in 2012, Morgan combined her love for classic design and her frustration with throwaway umbrella culture to create her dream umbrella company. Original Duckhead offers premium products made from 100% recycled materials. Each umbrella is equal to nine post-consumer plastic bottles in the canopy alone. “Every year, there’s one billion umbrellas that are discarded worldwide,” Morgan notes, highlighting the staggering environmental impact her company aims to address. Her brand of colorful umbrellas and mission of sustainability is resonating with consumers: Original Duckhead sells approximately 1,000 units a day, a benchmark it hit in 2024 with 100% year-over-year growth.
Before Morgan started building her brand online, she strategically targeted retailers first. To get onto the shelves in stores and independent boutiques, Morgan exhibited at tradeshows. Later, she used this product recognition and visibility to leverage Original Duckhead’s established customer base before expanding into ecommerce. This time spent refining her brand offline and in the marketplace meant Original Duckhead’s online launch was informed by market-tested messaging and established connections with loyal customers.
Morgan knew she had to be strategic about launching direct to consumer, since she was using her own finances to keep the brand afloat. “Because I was self-funded, I didn’t have a lot of money for customer acquisition, and I knew that retailers already had a built-in audience,” Morgan says. “So I thought, ‘Let me tap into that first and then prove product-market fit, and after that scale into DTC.’”
Validating the brand’s concept and building up its brand recognition allowed Original Duckhead to generate revenue without the burdensome marketing costs it would have needed to fund the online launch if it had launched both the brand and ecommerce site at the same time.
A winning retail strategy
Ahead, Morgan shares how to partner with retailers to confirm product-market fit, acquire customers, and translate that success to dominate online sales.
1. Make it easy for retailers to say yes
Morgan removed barriers to entry, making it nearly risk-free for retailers to carry Original Duckhead. “I made it as easy as possible. Very low—very low minimums, but still giving them [retailers] great margins,” she explains. “If it didn’t sell, I would do returns for them, so it made it really risk-free.”
Staying ahead of retailers’ merchandising challenges goes a long way. “A lot of them didn’t know how to display the product in-store. So I made sure that very early on we had point-of-sale displays,” Morgan says.
Morgan suggests making it easy: low minimums, mapped out displays, and if the product doesn’t sell, take it back.
2. Stay persistent—timing is everything
Don’t hesitate. Make the cold calls. “We talk about eight to 10 touch points to convert a retailer. That’s what I tell my team so they don’t get discouraged. It’s like, OK, you’ve only reached out five times. You still have to keep going,” Morgan says.
Morgan doesn’t just send cold emails; she also gets her umbrellas in front of people. This includes trade shows, sending samples, and detailed brochures—all designed to nurture and grow retail relationships over time. This persistent strategy has helped Original Duckhead secure partnerships with prestigious retailers like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Kew Gardens.
These partnerships with cultural institutions lent Original Duckhead credibility with customers who later found the brand online.
3. Offer social media support to retail partners
Social media promotion is pivotal to in-store success, and the team goes out of its way to feature retailers on both the Original Duckhead website and its social channels. This view, that retailers’ success is as valuable as its own has been part of the brand’s overall growth strategy from the start.
“We don’t see them as competitors. I know certain brands will look at retailers as competitors to their online store, but we see it as we’re all working together,” Morgan says.
4. Translate in-person brand trust into ecommerce sales
Expanding online after establishing strong retail partnerships has grown Original Duckhead’s DTC sales faster than if it had initially launched online with little-to-no brand recognition.
Moving online wasn’t only an expansion strategy to capture additional sales, it was also a tactic to deepen the brand’s connection to its customers. “It was time for us to tell our story and to be able to showcase our story through words, our website, but also through beautiful imagery,” Morgan says. “I just had the desire to speak to—she’s mainly a woman who buys from us—and I wanted to know more about her shopping habits.”
This direct relationship with customers provided valuable insights that shaped both product development and marketing strategies. “We have learned so much from our customers,” Morgan says. For example, when customers expressed a desire to see products in use, the company conducted its first photo shoot with models—a change that boosted engagement and conversions.
Customer feedback has also driven product development. The company’s newest umbrella, which doesn’t feature the signature duck head handle but maintains the brand’s sustainability credentials, came directly from customer requests.
Throughout Original Duckhead’s growth, sustainability has remained a non-negotiable core value. “All of our fabrics are recycled plastic bottles. Our wood is FSC certified. We now are a member of 1% for the Planet, so we donate 1% of our revenue to charity, and we are on track to become a B Corp,” Morgan says.
Launching online right away is not always the best way to find your initial customer base if funding is limited. Morgan reminds founders, “It’s all well and good to have a great product, but if no one knows about it, then you’re not gonna go anywhere. So it goes back to being relentless with selling, calling … , making sure you put in those calls, in those emails, and that you shout your product from the top of the roof. Because best known beats best product.”
Check out the full Shopify Masters interview to learn how Morgan scaled production to handle Original Duckhead’s growth and more firsthand lessons to help with your retail strategy.
