By The Namesake, a DTC custom-leather-jacket brand, recently made its return to the US with a two-week pop-up in New York City’s Nolita neighborhood. And the Canadian company will be back soon. With another pop-up.

The new space, set to open in March, will be its fourth pop-up in New York. It’s already signed on for a fifth in September, By The Namesake owner Rosa Halpern told Retail Brew.

“Each time we’re coming for a bit longer. So we used to do a week, then we did two weeks. Now we’re doing three weeks, and hopefully in September, we will be there for a month,” she said.

• The brand also plans to venture north next month with a new location on the Upper East Side.

Space out: Pop-ups are an integral part of By The Namesake’s business model, Halpern explained. (That’s true for other brands, too.) For starters, its leather jackets are primarily made-to-order, so the company doesn’t carry inventory in the temporary space. Secondly, customers will often want to be measured in person before making a purchase—you don’t need a huge space to do that, Halpern said.

The company, founded in 2016, built toward the strategy, opening pop-ups in cities like Nashville. In September (aka leather weather) of 2019, it started to experiment with new, month-long spaces in different cities—Los Angeles and Chicago, for example—until the pandemic hit.

“We actually noticed that people were coming to New York expressly to shop,” Halpern said. “That gave us pause and made us realize, rather than going to three different cities, let’s just go to New York for longer next time.”

• The city accounts for 80% of By The Namesake’s online sales.
• And: Its pop-ups in New York have brought in 6x more sales than other locations where the company popped up. Roughly 15%–20% of annual sales can be attributed to a two-week pop-up in Nolita, according to Halpern.

Click here to read more about By The Namesake’s pop-up strategy.—KM

DTC olive-oil brand Graza and its squeeze bottle seem tailor-made to be shared on Facebook and Instagram. Kendall Dickieson, the brand’s social media consultant, and Grace Clarke, its marketing consultant, knew that from the start. But to help it sell out, Graza added a new element to its influencer strategy: retail stores.

Marketing Brew’s Phoebe Bain digs deeper, but here’s an excerpt from her story:

“We got to take a really wide view of what influencer and creator meant,” Clarke told us. The team reached out to 80 retailers around the US, offering them samples for customers as well as a few free bottles for employees. About half initially responded, and more came on board after Graza officially debuted. Her team told retailers they weren’t obligated to post about Graza, or do anything at all, in exchange.

Graza sent packages to a variety of small retailers, focusing on stores where other olive oil brands probably wouldn’t be sold—like pet stores and kids’ toy stores—under the assumption that their clientele are likely family people. These shops included Two Kids and a Dog in Dumbo, Brooklyn; Miracle Mile Toys and Gifts and Healthy Spot in LA; and Mishka Dog Boutique in San Francisco.

“Whether family for them means humans or animals, they are taking care of another creature. And we thought that might mean that they want to spend time building a home and nesting,” she said. For example, she figured parents who cook with children nearby might be interested in Graza’s plastic bottles over traditional glass ones.

Click here to read the full piece on Marketing Brew.—GT

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Today’s top retail reads.

Southern hospitality: Atlanta, Charleston, Nashville…The fashion industry has its sights set on a new frontier. (Business of Fashion)

Doing well: How wellness is changing the face of beauty. (Retail Dive)

On the down low: Remember Astro? Amazon debuted its household robot six months ago, but no one’s really talking about it. (Bloomberg)

More with less: Do you want more DTC customers without increasing CPA? Learn how Bearaby used no-code machine-learning platform Black Crow AI to increase ROAS by 120%. Get the deets here.*

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What happened in the world of retail this week in…1953 and beyond? Retail Brew takes you way, way, way back.

If only someone could take us out to the ball game:

• On February 20, 2009, the buildings that make up New York’s Garment District were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
• Also on February 20 (but in 1953), Anheuser-Busch bought the St. Louis Cardinals for $3.75 million, including debt. It would go on to sell the baseball team in 1996 for $150 million.
• On February 23, 2001, video-game maker Sega sued Kmart for allegedly failing to pay $2.2 million of a $25.9 million bill for Dreamcast consoles it had shipped since 1999.
• And on February 26, 2007, Walmart announced a 35% stake in Taiwan-based Bounteous Co. Ltd., with reports saying the retail giant would spend about $1 billion to take full control by 2010.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• How robots could lend short-staffed grocers a helping hand
• What would a president buy at a Presidents’ Day sale?
• Lids drops a new website for drops