Danish audio brand Bang & Olufsen is choosing California for a retail rollout for its high-end products that include $1,500 ear buds advertised as “a study in wearable sculpture."
The company will open three stores in the state next month, in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The century-old chain will run its largest store worldwide in a two-story, 5,100-square-foot flagship in Union Square, San Francisco's gradually rebounding central shopping district.
A spokesperson for the company said in an email to CoStar News that the stores are the first stage in an “ambitious” West Coast expansion plan.
“California is a pivotal market for Bang & Olufsen,” said CEO Kristian Tear in a statement, adding that “it’s essential for us to be present in a place that continually inspires and influences cultural expression.”
The flagship store in San Francisco’s Union Square will occupy the former Britex Fabrics building at 146 Geary St., which still bears the distinctive bright red blade sign of its former tenant. Britex, one of San Francisco’s oldest independent businesses known for its quirky clothing prints, occupied the entire building for more than six decades until it departed in 2017 amid rising rents.
The debt-plagued building appears to have sat vacant ever since, while the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the surrounding neighborhood, the city’s once-bustling premier shopping district.
Acadia Realty acquired it a decade ago for $38 million but defaulted on the loan in 2023 and returned the property to its lender, according to public records. The building's new owner is 146 Geary CA LLC, which appears to be an affiliate of Acadia's original lender, New York bank Aareal Capital Corp.
Coffee bars and 'listening zones'
This isn’t Bang & Olufsen’s first time opening in Union Square. The new store comes nearly a decade after the chain shuttered a previous outlet located just a few blocks away at 535 Sutter St. in 2016.
The company is also opening a 4,000-square-foot store at 370 N. Robertson Blvd. in West Hollywood and a 3,200-square-foot store in the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto.
The new stores will serve as showrooms where customers can test drive Bang & Olufsen’s high-end speakers and televisions with displays of “intimate vignettes evocative of customers’ own homes.” They will also have coffee bars and “listening zones,” and will host live performances, vinyl listening nights, film screenings and other cultural events, said the company.
Bang & Olufsen opened a Madison Avenue showroom in New York in 2023 that, along with its sister showroom in Soho, also captured the brand’s reputation for futuristic electronics that function as home design pieces.
For Union Square, the return of the upscale Scandinavian brand is the latest evidence that luxury brands in particular are helping bring the city’s storied downtown retail district back to life. The neighborhood vacancy rate has dipped gradually in the past months to 14.6%.
The downtown shopping neighborhood was among the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the hardest-hit city in the country following the pandemic, with a vacancy rate that soared from 9% in 2019 to about 22% by early 2025, more than five times the nationwide rate of just over 4%.
Mayor Daniel Lurie — who was elected last year running on the slogan “San Francisco is open for business” — and upbeat brokers point to a spate of store openings in the past few months as a result of new leases from Rolex, Bulgari and the Nintendo Store. Global fashion giant Zara is also planning a four-story flagship store on Post Street; the Spanish retail brand is among several that have relocated to Union Square from the failing San Francisco Centre a few blocks away.
In recent months, the AI boom has fueled downtown San Francisco’s recovery, drawing well-paid tech workers back to the city and driving up rents.
“Both retailer and investor interest in the neighborhood is very strong right now,” Union Square broker Julie Taylor of Colliers previously told CoStar News. “You can see it and feel it on the streets.”