Claire’s, Aéropostale, Spencer’s, and Build-A-Bear—these are all brands and companies heavily associated with malls in the United States.

Now there’s a new crop of stores looking to make a mark on the celebrated American experience that is the shopping mall.

Rowan is a piercing studio and jewelry store that was born out of the pandemic. The company administered piercings outdoors and even sent nurses to people’s homes, before opening its first brick-and-mortar location on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in August 2020.

Since then, Rowan has opened a smattering of stand-alone studios across the country. But its newest location at the Mall of America in Minneapolis is the brand’s latest opportunity to immerse itself in an advantageous ecosystem of up-and-coming brands. Rowan is one of a handful of digitally native, venture-backed brands that are opening in Mall of America and potentially replacing classic mall brands.

“One reason we felt so comfortable with it was…a lot of the other brands that are there and the wantingness from the customer in the area for this type of experience,” Rowan founder Louisa Schneider told Retail Brew.

Mall of America has bolstered its roster of tenants since the start of the year, and more are on the way.

Tackle shop Karl’s Fishing & Outdoors is casting a line in the brick-and-mortar space with a store in Mall of America that held its soft opening on Friday.

Teeg Stouffer, director of retail experience at Catch Co.—Karl’s parent company—said its Mall of America store is very much an experiment. He said unlike a stand-alone store, a regional mall location gives the company more of a chance to reel in new customers who otherwise wouldn’t have stumbled upon a tackle shop.

Keep reading here.—KM

Mark Eamer has been the CMO of Chewy for a little over a year—or, if you’re a labradoodle, about seven years. Before that, he was at Amazon for two stints totaling more than 17 years (labradoodle: ~119 years), starting on the financial and product side. With an undergraduate degree in engineering and an MBA, he moved into marketing roles “very much from a data-driven standpoint” rather than “a Don Draper standpoint,” he told us.

We spoke to Eamer recently at a virtual Retail Brew Checkout event. Watch the entire conversation with Eamer here. But now: Sit! Stay! Read this excerpt.

Can you talk about Chewy’s popular Autoship program?

We saw a need, we built it very quickly, we launched it, and customers were quick to adopt it. So a little over 70% of our revenue now comes from customers who have Autoship, to give you an idea of how important Autoship is in the ecosystem of Chewy.

Can we back up and talk a little bit about strategies to get customers on your website before they’re customers?

Where Chewy started is lower-funnel—things like Google search ads, Google product listing ads, affiliate programs, and those are all based on a last-click attribution and you can quickly build your customer base that way.

A couple things happen over time: the price always will get higher and higher as more people pile in. As that marketplace matures, it gets more and more expensive, and so [you] have to look for different ways to grow and differentiate.

And so one of the journeys we’ve had at Chewy over the last year plus is really moving our marketing muscle up into the mid-funnel, so more into social. And upper funnel, so television and connected television.

Keep reading here.—AAN

It’s me again, your favorite publisher, Jacob Donnelly. It’s hard to believe, but we are only 22 days away from our very first IRL one-day summit, The SKU, hosted right here in New York City.

When we set out to create The SKU, we knew we didn’t want to get people on stage who were just trying to sell something. Who wants to pay to hear a full day of sales pitches, am I right? Instead, we wanted to bring the smartest operators in retail to our stage with a single focus: giving insights so retailers can make better business decisions.

That’s what the team has delivered. On October 25, we have some powerful speakers joining us from major retail brands and startups, experts in DTC growth, and investors in leading retail brands.

Here are a few sessions I think you’ll want to check out:

• Kat Cole, president and chief operating officer at Athletic Greens, is taking the stage with Morning Brew’s co-founder Alex Lieberman to talk about how the brand is driving growth while sticking to its mission of empowering health ownership.
• Crocs has had a fascinating brand evolution. But whether you love them or not, the magicians at Crocs have made something deemed so uncool into something very cool. Heidi Cooley, SVP and CMO, and Adam Michaels, EVP and chief digital officer, will talk about how they took this polarizing brand and tapped into the cultural zeitgeist.
• Marketing Brew reporter Ryan Barwick will chat with Matt Cleary, TikTok’s US head of retail and e-commerce, and Kendra Stokes, VP of brand marketing at Express, to learn how retailers use TikTok for brand ethos and evolution.

These are just some of the conversations we’ll be having on stage. And when you’re not hearing from our great roster of speakers, you’ll have ample opportunity to meet with the 400+ other Retail Brew readers in attendance.

As I said last week, for a community to really be a community, it needs to come together. This is your chance to make new connections with people from some of the most exciting retail brands in the world.

Register today so you don’t miss out. Use my coupon code FromThePublisher to save 25% on your ticket. See you there!

—Jacob Donnelly, publisher of Morning Brew

Today’s top retail reads.

Sneaking around: Inside the world of sneaker authentication. “There will always be some customers that are fooled and are victims themselves, but there are some customers who are part of the problem,” said Susan Scafidi, founder and director of the Fashion Law Institute, about shoppers who seek counterfeits. “So it’s a supply-side problem and a demand-side problem at the end of the day.” (Washington Post)

Pharm-assist: How Walgreens is using robots to fill prescriptions. (Wall Street Journal)

The claw of attraction: A lobstering union in Maine could be a model for how to unionize for gig workers. (Bloomberg)

Interested in networking and engaging with top retail brands? We’ve got you covered.

Just give us a quick update on what you’ve been up to in the world of retail and you’ll be entered to win a ticket to The SKU.

We almost forgot the best part: You don’t have to come alone. You’ll also get a second ticket to give to one of your colleagues.

At the mall, it’s where band tees are the only tees. In Retail Brew, it’s where we invite readers to weigh in on a trending retail topic.

Surely no trend has had a more protracted death watch than skinny jeans.

• Bloomberg reported that the fashion industry was predicting the trend was over back in 2014, only to report in 2016 that their demise had been “greatly exaggerated.”
• In 2021, Business of Fashion declared that skinny jeans “will never die.”
• They’re “officially dead” Quartz declared in March, and in August, Elle couldn’t find a pulse for skinny jeans either—because they’re “dead.”

Beginning to see the slightest lack of nuance here?

A recent study by retail platform Edited noted that while skinny jeans weren’t exactly doing high kicks, it’s not toe-tag time yet, either.

• The portion of men’s denim jeans delivered to retailers that were skinny-fit was 25% from January 1–July 31, down from 48% during the same period in 2021, the study found.
• Skinny jeans represented 21% of women’s jeans delivered to retailers from January 1–July 31, down from 26% in the same period in 2021.

You tell us: What’s your deal with skinny jeans?

Circling back: We asked what you thought about those who’ve been convicted of marijuana-related crimes being given priority for a retail license for a weed store—as New York is doing after legalizing recreational marijuana in 2021. You weren’t so green on the idea, with 45.3% saying people who’ve been convicted of marijuana-related offenses should not be given priority and 21.3% saying they should not be able to get a retail license for weed at all. Only 29.3% thought that people who’ve been convicted of marijuana-related offenses should be given priority, while 4% weren’t sure or didn’t know.

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

• In 1953, the bread clip came along with a fresh take
• Changes hit retail C-suites in September
• Google Shopping revamps tools for consumers to reach merchants