On November 21, 2026, the Danish fashion brand Pitaya will open the doors to its very first physical store in Sweden. The location chosen is the Väla shopping center outside Helsingborg.
The expansion across the Öresund Strait coincides with growing demand on the Swedish market via the online store Pitayacph.se. According to information from Helsingborgs Dagblad, the company's turnover has septupled in just a couple of years.
The brand, whose range consists of clothing, shoes and accessories for a young target group, has built its customer base through social media, its own network of influencers and physical customer events.
We are choosing Väla because we think it is a strong shopping center with a customer mix that suits our brand very well. We have had great success with our online sales in Sweden and look forward to now also establishing ourselves physically in the Swedish market, says Mads Emil Thomsen, CEO and part-owner of Pitaya, to Fastighetsvärlden.
Hired First Employee During School Years
Behind the Danish fashion challenger are siblings Ida Marie Thomsen and Mads Emil Thomsen. The company was founded in 2019 by Ida Marie, who was then 16 years old and started selling clothes from her bedroom in her parents' house.
Already the following year, in 2020, the business had outgrown the girl's room. As a 17-year-old, she sent between five and ten packages a day and moved the business into her first small warehouse and office.
I still remember it as one of the best times, when I also hired my first employee to help with packing and answering customer service inquiries while I was at school during the day, writes Ida Marie about the early days on the website.
When she graduated in 2021, she chose to focus on e-commerce full-time. The same year, the company moved to larger warehouse and office premises while the workforce grew to seven employees. During the year, the team shipped over 35,000 items to customers.
The Crossroads That Paved the Way for Physical Stores
The rapid expansion, from the teenager's room to a growing e-commerce company, was not entirely straightforward.
In early 2022, the company felt growing pains and doubts about how to take the business forward emerged.
The whole year started shakily and the downsides of being self-employed became serious. For the first time, I doubted myself, my company and my whole future. Now I stood at a crossroads and it was all or nothing. I had to believe in myself and in my project, writes Ida Marie Thomsen.
The solution was to combine the online store with physical stores, and in September 2022, Pitaya opened its first store on Badstuegade in Aarhus.
Since then, the rollout has continued at a rapid pace during 2024 and 2025 with five store openings, while the first store moved to larger premises.
From the humble beginnings in the bedroom, the organization has now grown to over 50 employees, with brother Mads Emil Thomsen taking on the role of CEO.
Multi-Million Profit in the Danish Group
The business is owned by the parent company Pitaya Holding ApS and operated through two Danish operating companies.
In the primary company for the brand and e-commerce, Nordic Fashion Stores ApS, gross profit amounted to 8.4 million Danish kroner during the latest financial year 2025. Operating profit (EBITA) landed at 3.3 million Danish kroner and profit before tax amounted to 3.1 million Danish kroner.
At the bottom line, the company reported a net profit after tax of 2.4 million Danish kroner, with equity of 3.5 million Danish kroner and 26 employees.
In parallel, the Danish store operations are run in the sister company Pitaya Retail ApS, which during the same period reported an additional 2.8 million Danish kroner in gross profit and employed 31 people.
In total, gross profit in the two operating companies thus amounted to just over 11.2 million Danish kroner during Pitaya Holding ApS.