For tween millennial girls, Claire’s was a mall hot spot, its purple sign a beacon for endless trinket shopping at its floor-to-ceiling displays of hair clips, charm bracelets, and soda-scented lip balms.
But times, and young shoppers, have changed.
In its bankruptcy filing earlier this month, Claire’s referenced declining foot traffic, inflation, tariffs, competition from lower-priced retailers, and “disparity between inventory and customer demand” among its challenges. Forever 21, another youth-focused retailer that peaked in the early 2000s, referenced many similar roadblocks when filing for bankruptcy earlier this year.
While it isn’t what it was at its peak, mall shopping isn’t necessarily dead—indoor malls saw 1.3% YoY foot traffic growth in July. Gen Z shoppers in particular are continuing to hit the mall, and Gen Alpha is opting for in-store shopping, as the digital native consumers find in-person retail experiences a novel concept.
“The experience of going in store and trying stuff on is actually more unique than it was to previous generations,” Lauren Beitelspacher, professor in the marketing division at Babson College, told Retail Brew. “But what they want from that experience is different than what previous generations wanted.”
Retailers targeting young consumers face the conundrum of either growing up with their consumer base or reinventing themselves for every generation. In both circumstances, they must change to meet shifting needs—and those that don’t will be left in the dust that even deep-seeded nostalgia can’t clear.
Shadow of your former shelf: The old retail strategy of “stack it high and watch it fly” doesn’t fly with younger generations, who have become increasingly “discerning” with more access to information, Beitelspacher said. Neither inventory selection nor the browsing capabilities of in-store shopping will ever rival stores’ e-commerce counterparts and social media, so using cluttering brick-and-mortar shelves to fit as many products as possible—a tactic employed by stores like Claire’s and Forever 21—isn’t productive, she noted.
“The customer is not necessarily going to the stores just for the stuff,” Beitelspacher said. “They’re going to the stores for the experience that surrounds the stuff. If you don’t invest in that with this younger audience, then you’re not going to thrive.”
For Claire’s specifically, its online experience and prices couldn’t compete with Shein and Temu (a claw clip from Claire’s could be more than five times the price of one on Shein), according to Kirthi Kalyanam, professor and executive director of Santa Clara University’s Retail Management Institute. Those issues, combined with its in-store woes, means Claire’s was “not the destination for the category,” he said, which is essentially a euphemism for “not cool.”
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Successful youth-focused mall stores have to think of their brick-and-mortar stores as a “differentiator,” and can set themselves apart by having strong “design capability” that consumers opt for over dupes or a value-added in-store experience catering to trying out products, Kalyanam said.
Beyond your teens: To remain in the tween and teen consideration set (i.e., to get the cool kids to like you), retailers whose core consumer base first shopped with them during the days of dial-up internet have to evolve.
Many couldn’t do it (RIP Wet Seal and Delia’s). JCPenney made an ill-fated attempt to make itself hip by rebranding to JCP. Another tween mall staple, Limited Too, tried last year to cater to its old fans and bring in new ones, though the initial buzz over the effort seems to have died down.
But some retailers that thrived in millennial mall culture since the early aughts have managed to remain relevant. Take the generation-spanning popularity of the Lululemon belt bag, as well as the ongoing success of Sephora—more popular with teens and tweens now than ever. Anthropologie’s in-house label Maeve, which was launched as a standalone brand earlier this month, has been marketed to a “multigeneral audience” beyond its core over-30 customers, Anu Narayanan, president of Anthropologie women’s and home, told Glossy. And of course, one of the biggest success stories is the turnaround of former teen staple Abercrombie & Fitch, which worked to understand “who you’re serving and how you’re serving them,” to reinvent itself, Nora Kleinewillinghoefer, partner in the consumer practice of Kearney, said.
What a stale mall brand can’t do—despite a resurgence in Y2K style—is solely bank on nostalgia to revitalize it, Kleinewillinghoefer said. It can pair it with innovation, understanding that while trends like bell bottoms, for example, are cyclical, every iteration of that trend is specific to that generation.
“If you’re going to use nostalgia, you need to be unique to your time, and you need to bring that modern relevance back while nodding to your heritage,” she said.