How Claire’s new C-suite hire is making the tween retailer a ‘life moment retail destination’

When revitalizing a once-beloved tween retailer that’s passed its heyday, who better to hire than a seasoned retail vet who is not only adept at youth marketing and turnarounds, but also got her ears pierced at said retailer at the age of 8?

That retailer, you might’ve guessed, is tween trinket seller Claire’s, and the hire is Michelle Goad, who led Gen Z digital innovation at Nike, served as chief digital officer at Athleta in the midst of the Gap-owned athletic wear brand’s turnaround, and most importantly, spent her childhood shopping at Claire’s.

It's the retailer’s first C-suite hire since investment firm Ames Watson bought it for $140 million following its bankruptcy filing last August. At the time, Ames Watson Co-Founder Lawrence Berger told Retail Brew the firm had a lot of changes planned for the retailer.

Nostalgia won’t be enough to bring the once-cool Claire’s back to life; it’ll have to work to gain aura points with a fresh crop of Gen Alpha shoppers. But Goad—who oversees Claire’s marketing, retail experience and design, and product creation—is poised to implement changes that’ll establish the retailer as a “life moment retail destination.”

Handle with Claire’s: The rise of e-commerce sellers like Shein and Temu has made low-priced trinkets Claire’s once specialized in widely accessible, so Claire’s is doubling down on piercing as an IRL experience that can’t be replicated online, Goad told Retail Brew. It’s pierced 110 million consumers over its history, and anticipates 2 million more this year, so it’s “transforming” the experience that’s garnered criticism in recent years. That includes a new piercing excellence team and equipment partners, using pressurized machines rather than classic piercing guns.

Beyond piercing as its differentiator, the brand needs to “get out of the commodity game—which we’re not going to win,” she said. The retailer is shifting its target age demographic from 6- to 8-year-olds to 10-year-olds, which might seem like a miniscule change, but for tweens, “opens up a whole new world” of products it can offer, Goad said. It’ll lean into more age-appropriate takes on teen trends, she said, expand its licensing and third-party program beyond Claire’s products, and offer more premium-priced jewelry and unique product use cases.

With its products, Claire’s is leaning into co-creation, an increasingly essential practice to attract Gen Alpha shoppers. Its new brand platform, “We are all Claire’s girls,” nods to its efforts to include its consumers’ input into its product assortment.

“We really strongly believe we’ll only win if we create this brand with her, for her, because I think where the team lost its way was using a playbook that was no longer adapted to its Gen Alpha customer,” Goad said.

The Gen Alpha trend cycle works quickly, so keeping up “starts with org structure,” Goad said. She said she’s combining product creation and brand marketing into one unit, ensuring there’s “no red tape” to move from social trend to product. The retailer will start piloting certain products in a handful of its 900 stores before scaling across its fleet.

Ears to the ground: Goad is tapping into lessons learned throughout her extensive retail career to effectively reach Claire’s new core audience. The most essential mantra—“the consumer decides”—she learned at Nike.

“You have an idea of what you think that consumer will like and not, and when that collides with reality, the consumer decides,” she said. At Nike, she worked on NbG, a social commerce app designed for Gen Z consumers, and learned the importance of targeting and truly getting to know a certain demographic, rather than being something for everyone.

That’s also a core lesson she’s learned in executing turnarounds, as determining “who you are for and who you are not for” was a core “tension point” during her time as CDO at Athleta.

“When you become laser focused, it just removes so many friction points and decisions that you have to make,” she said.

Girl of wisdom: One of the unique challenges of targeting such a specific demographic as a retailer is that you must constantly reinvent yourself for the next generation—what Gen Alpha craves at retail won’t be the same as what Gen Beta wants in a decade (once they learn to walk and talk). Goad believes continual communication with its consumers will spell long-term success.

“As these preferences change, you’re not blindsided—they’re at the table with you,” she said.

While much will change, some throughlines will remain at Claire’s, like its logo, its purple aesthetic, and most importantly, its deep reverence for “girlhood,” a concept that’s received the internet’s renewed admiration in recent years.

“Each generation’s girlhood will look different, it will feel different, and it’s our job to be that third place for girlhood, for her,” she said.