October 2025. The OMHU team gathered at their Copenhagen office in cowboy hats. Months of US launch prep behind them. A teaser campaign with around 200,000 email sign-ups waiting on the other side of a countdown. Within seconds, the first orders came through. The room went static.
That energy was incredible, looking at the live view on Shopify and seeing all the orders, all the visits coming in.
OMHU is a Copenhagen design studio that sells the viral Teddy Sofa direct to consumers in 25 markets across Europe and North America. After migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify in June 2024, the brand doubled monthly revenue within three months. In October 2025, it launched in the US with around 200,000 email sign-ups waiting at the door. In May 2026, the Danish Chamber of Commerce named OMHU Best New E-commerce Business, Best Export Case, and overall Gold Winner of the year's E-handelsprisen, an awards sweep against 1,200 nominees. With Shopify Markets, Sidekick, and the native checkout running the technology, OMHU's team focuses on supply chain, brand, and product instead of platform maintenance.
At a glance
- Monthly revenue doubled in 90 days
- 25 markets on two storefronts
- ~10 hours/month saved with Sidekick on analytics
With Shopify, OMHU:
- Doubled monthly revenue in the first three months on Shopify (up 25%, then 60%, then 100%) and consolidated five region-specific stores into two now serving 25 markets
- Launched a US storefront on Shopify Markets to around 200,000 pre-registered customers. Orders within seconds, three new monthly revenue records to follow, no replatforming required
- Uses Sidekick daily across the ecommerce team to track new SKU launches, accessory demand, seasonal shifts, and market performance, saving around 10 hours a month on analytics Simon would otherwise pull manually or wait for someone else to run
"I can ask questions without creating internal noise. I'd rather have a robot to support me, and then the people can do what they're best at," Simon explained.
The challenge: a platform built for a smaller brand
OMHU's founders, Frederik and Jonas, started the business out of a garage with a single sofa as the showcase. The first webshop was built on WooCommerce by a one-man consultancy. It worked for a few days. Then the Teddy Sofa hit product-market fit, and the cracks showed.
International expansion was the bigger constraint. Selling a 1,600-euro sofa across Norway, post-Brexit UK, Switzerland, and the rest of the European Union meant managing VAT rules, currencies, and compliance logic across markets. The team launched separate stores for Switzerland, Norway, and the UK to handle the complexity, which split operations across multiple instances.
The Teddy Sofa is heavy enough that it can't go through DHL or UPS, but viral enough that OMHU now fights dupes on Temu and Alibaba with help from its own community.
The solution: Shopify Markets, Sidekick, and a checkout that converts
OMHU moved to Shopify in June 2024 with a partner agency, rebuilt the site for multi-region selling, and switched on Shopify Markets to manage currencies and tax logic across Europe. Over time, the team consolidated five region-specific stores into two: one for the European Union, one for North America. Adding a new country shifted from an engineering project to a click in the admin.
Enabling the market or clicking on the market, that is super easy. Now it's not the software or web shop that is the hurdle holding us back. Now it's our logistics, compliance, and finance.
The team kept the native Shopify checkout intact rather than customising it, on advice from their agency. At a 1,600-euro price point, there can be no friction.
Where they did invest was the thank-you page. Post-purchase surveys recover attribution data in a world where customers move across six months and four devices before buying. Post-purchase upsells add incremental revenue at the moment of highest engagement. The team also turned on Shop Pay and Shop Pay Installments for the US storefront.
Sidekick: curiosity without the internal noise
Sidekick is used daily by OMHU's ecommerce team as a first stop for Shopify analytics. The team asks practical questions in natural language: what is driving this week's conversion drop, which collections are underperforming versus last month, how many Grips accessories have sold month over month for the last 12 months, or how a new product like the Teddy Chair has performed since launch.
That makes Sidekick especially useful when OMHU enters new markets — the US is the clearest example — and when the team is tracking seasonal shifts in product performance. They use it to monitor signals like Grips sold, Zebra covers sold, collection performance, and product launch momentum without waiting for a manual report.
One recent reorder decision came from Sidekick. After using it to track Zebra sofa and cover demand, the team used the answer as a starting point for reordering decisions, a faster read on demand than pulling the data manually or waiting for someone else to run it.
An AI-first operating model
Sidekick sits inside an operating model where AI use is not optional. OMHU has 40 people in the organisation, including 25 on the ecommerce side, and Simon says everyone on the ecommerce team uses Sidekick regularly. The team trains people on use cases and shares weekly AI learnings in its public Slack channel, #ai-inspo.
Simon is direct about the expectation he's set: "For us, it's not an option if people want to use AI or not. They have to. And they have to inspire each other every week, write in our channels what we've learned by using it." — Simon Salomonsson, CEO, OMHU
OMHU runs agents inside Slack, hosts local LLMs in-house, and uses AI across customer service and data warehouse reporting. Shopify is the commerce backbone, the single source of truth that makes the AI layer trustworthy.
The results: doubled revenue and a record US launch
Growth followed the migration directly. June to July: up 25%. August: up 60%. September: doubled.
"This definitely couldn't have happened without us coming on board the platform," Simon said.
A year later, OMHU set new monthly revenue records three times in a single month, supported by a full EU supply chain rebuild (new factory, new logistics, new EDI and API integrations) pushed live in July, the worst possible window. The US launch in October 2025 set the playbook: closed storefront, teaser, around 200,000 sign-ups, countdown, live view on Shopify, orders within seconds. The team ran it again for Black Week, its strongest yet, notable for a brand that doesn't discount its hero product. Today, the US is OMHU's biggest market and represents roughly 20% of total revenue.
Instead of discounting the Teddy Sofa, OMHU runs offers that protect the brand: free shipping, an extra cover, half-price on the ottoman. Customers know not to expect 50% off. They show up for free shipping anyway.
What's next: more markets, fewer hurdles
"OMHU has set a new standard in Danish ecommerce, particularly in their ability to merge online and offline experiences, supercharge exports, and create content that drives huge demand." — Lene Juel, Gold Jury, Danish Ecommerce Awards 2026
International expansion now waits on logistics, not technology. OMHU is moving into Eastern Europe this year and planning a formal APAC expansion later this year or early next. The team decides where to go using an internal scoring app (population, buying power, category demand, brand fit), cross-referenced with a Shopify-backed waitlist that pings a Slack channel more than 10 times a day every time a customer in an unsupported country signs up.
A "Friends of OMHU" program places the Teddy Sofa in more than 60 sneaker stores, vinyl shops, and art shops across the EU and US, a low-cost way to bridge online to offline for a high-ticket purchase customers want to feel before they buy.
The platform used to be the work. Now that it isn't, OMHU's team gets to focus on brand, product, and the next 25 markets.