JEWELRY

Easy on the ears

In 2019, we wore heels to the office. In 2020, we napped in dresses. This year, we sport leggings from 9–5. Now lazy fashion has made its way to our ears. 

Listen up: The #earparty has been in full swing since Zoom let us dress from the waist up.

“During the pandemic, you weren't spending on lots of things, like travel or eating out. But you could spend on jewelry,” Marie Driscoll, head of luxury and fashion at Coresight Research, told Retail Brew. “Covid was lazy. People still want to be comfortable, but they want to be a little more dressed up.”

• Last summer, US retail jewelry sales grew by $1 billion year over year. 

But more recently, ear cuffs—or piercing-free earrings—have emerged as the party guest of honor. 

• Exploding Topics, which analyzes internet trends, found searches for the accessory were up 50% over the last six months and 42% over the past two years.
• While the #earparty hashtag has racked up 140,000+ posts on Instagram, #earcuff tops 1 million.

Easy does it

“There's a whole trend in comfort dressing, and this is the lazy girl's way of getting the ear party,” Trisha Okubo, founder and creative director of DTC jewelry company Maison Miru, told Retail Brew. Okubo said the company sold 13,000+ ear cuffs and 5,000+ huggies (aka mini hoops) in 2020. 

• Huggie sales have tripled since Maison Miru introduced the product in 2017, and its best-seller was up 48% YoY in June. Cuff sales have grown 4x in that period, while its category topper increased 15% YoY. 
• Maison Miru recently developed flat-back earrings, which Okubo calls “nap earrings,” to feed the trend.  

Designer Adina Mizrahi, of Instagram favorite Adina's Jewels, also chalked the fad up to convenience. “The reason huggies and ear cuffs are so popular is because they’re comfortable,” she said. 

Don’t think twice: That low-maintenance mentality extends to the #earparty purchasing experience. Customers are more likely to order an array of earrings when they can hit up Instagram and “buy the entire look exactly as pictured,” Mizrahi said. 

That approach to product curation is one retailers beyond jewelry should embrace, Coresight’s Driscoll said: “It’s the ease of buying things together without having to think. How do you make it easy for the consumer?” 

• Another example? The Gen Z charm trend, Driscoll noted, which gives something mass-produced the appearance of customization.—JG

STORES

Moving in

Out with the old, and in with the food. Wegmans Food Markets will open its first Manhattan store (and second NYC location) in the one Kmart just vacated.

• Wegmans entered a 30-year lease with Vornado Realty Trust after striking a deal with Transformco to buy out Kmart’s lease.
• The new grocery store is slated to open in the second half of 2023 (so don’t hold your breath waiting for those free samples).

Location, location, location. “Good space is good space,” Kearney’s Michael Brown previously told Retail Brew of the Astor Place store. And that's what sealed this deal. 

The building had “the bones” and “the DNA” to accommodate a high-volume business, Gene Spiegelman, vice chairman of Ripco Real Estate, which brokered the agreement, told us. “There were other spaces that were available...but they really were not big enough.”

• The location totals 82,000 square feet, “with large floor plates, loading docks, and freight elevators.”
• Wegmans has been hunting for NYC space since early 2020, Spiegelman said.

Zoom out: As the physical retail landscape evolves, what grounds a space is also changing. “We’re seeing a shift from mall-based to off-mall, and leveraging locations that are not anchored by retail, but anchored by community and food and entertainment,” Brown said.—JG

SPONSORED BY ATTENTIVE

Do Your Homework

After a year of virtual learning and cleaning crayon off the walls, a whole lotta students, teachers, and parents are ready to get back to the classroom.

So let’s kick this thing off with a little statistics lesson: According to a recent Deloitte survey, 40% of parents expect to spend more on back-to-school items this year compared to last year.

We actually got a C in college stats, but that right there sounds like a pretty big opportunity for you marketers.

Attentive gets it—they even spoke to marketing leaders at Biblio, Michaels, Paper Source, Zulily, and more to learn how they’re thinking about this back-to-school shopping season. 

And like the good note takers they are, Attentive wrote down all the SMS marketing insights, strategies, and tips you need to know to be prepared. 

Take a look here—nobody said it was cheating.

E-COMM

All the way up

We all know prices for goods offline are increasing. Well, that goes for online too. 

After years of declines, online prices were up 2.3% YoY in June, according to a new report from the Adobe Digital Economy Index. Pre-pandemic, in June 2019, they decreased 5.2% YoY. 

• From 2015 to 2019, prices fell an average 3.9% each year. 
• The categories with the highest YoY price increases include apparel (up 16.22%), non-prescription drugs (+4.04%), and sporting goods (+3.46%). 

Why? “The combination of shortages and logistic challenges is being combined with a lot of people all of a sudden needing and wanting to buy goods online,” Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, told Retail Brew. 

• Online spending, which grew at a record pace last year, now accounts for a larger percentage of consumer spending, per Adobe: $1 of every $5 in 2021, compared to $1 of every $6 in 2017. 

Even items like computers, which consumers could count on being regularly discounted pre-pandemic, aren’t going on sale like they used to, Pandya said.   

• Online prices for electronics fell only 2.5% YoY in June, compared to an average 9.06% from 2015 to 2019. 

Looking ahead: Pandya said fixing many of the supply chain issues would keep prices from soaring higher, but returning to pre-pandemic levels would still be difficult. 

“The fact that you have this consumer base that is incrementally purchasing more online, and supercharged their online purchasing through the pandemic—that’ll keep prices from going in that deflationary trajectory they’d been on,” he said.—KM

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING…

• Walmart said it will require workers to wear masks at Covid-risky locations. 
• Amazon has been given a record $887 million fine by a European Union privacy regulator.
• GoPuff scored another $1 billion in funding, giving the delivery company a $15 billion valuation.
• Restaurant Brands International earnings topped estimates, thanks to a digital sales surge.
• Pet food is getting harder to find, as the sector faces increased demand and supply chain strain.
• Sephora plans to double its Black-owned brands by the end of the year.

SPONSORED BY RIGHTPOINT

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SWAPPING SKUS

Today’s top retail reads. 

Hot commodity: Why Starbucks is the new breeding ground for corporate talent. (Bloomberg)

Read up: Book fairs are a defining part of the school experience, but pandemic-era versions just aren’t the same. (Refinery29)

Bye, bye, bye: Frozen pizza, mani-pedis, and uncomfortable shoes are a few things shoppers say they’re never buying again post-pandemic. (The Cut) 

ICYMI

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

• Athleta introduces new digital community platform
• Twitter pilots shopping feature for brands
• Made In pivots back to B2B as restaurants reopen

FRIEND OR FAUX?

Three of these stories are real...and one is most definitely not. Can you spot the fake? 

1. Possibly the world’s largest sapphire cluster, worth $100 million, was found in someone's backyard. 
2. The Justice Department seized a $1.6 million tablet engraved with a portion of the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” one of the oldest works of literature, from Hobby Lobby.
3. Kyrie Irving thinks his own upcoming Nike sneakers are “trash.”
4. Panera is filing a trademark for the term “bread bowl.”

Keep reading for the answer.

FRIEND OR FAUX? ANSWER

We’re not even sure Panera could file that trademark if it wanted to.