Happy Monday. And a belated happy New Year! We’re excited to kick things off with our first newsletter of 2022…and then catch you back in the inbox tomorrow (and the day after that, and the day after that, and so on).

In today’s edition:

• Why Draper James is into malls
• Walmart is winning on click and collect

—Katishi Maake, Glenda Toma

Who said malls were dead? Ok, maybe a few people, but Draper James doesn’t believe that to be the case.

The clothing and lifestyle brand, founded by Reese Witherspoon, recently expanded its IRL footprint with two new stores: one in Houston’s The Galleria and another in the Mall of America. The locations are part of a strategy to put the brand in front of more customers, CEO Erin Moennich told Retail Brew.

• Draper James plans to open five to 10 more locations in the next two years.

Why malls though?

The company hasn’t had a mall-based location before, and previously only had three other stores, including its Nashville flagship. But over the last year, Draper James felt like “there’s more opportunity in physical retail,” Moennich said.

To start, Draper James looked at where its DTC sales were coming from, using zip-code data to find out where demand needed to be met.

• The Houston metro area turned out to be Draper James’s single largest market for sales over the past year.

Beyond the data, though, the team walked around the two malls to see which brands might be potential neighbors and who the customers are. The experiential component—Mall of America literally has an amusement park, for example—also played an important role.

“They’re really centers where people come to shop, but they also come to do other things,” Moennich noted. “We were confident in that customer.”

• BTW, Draper James isn’t alone: Las Vegas–based jeweler Karma and Luck opened its first location outside Nevada at The Galleria in December, while the Mall of America plans to welcome a bevy of new apparel brands, including PacSun Kids and Psychobunny.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been “an overexpansion of retail,” she noted. But Moennich said Draper James and its investors are aligned on the mall.

“There will always be an appetite for mall-based shopping in the US…[Class A malls], the primary centers in these big metropolitan markets, are important, and people will return to them,” she explained. “There’s an appetite for finding new brands in them, and there’s a lot of traffic in them.”

That’s my jam: High foot traffic is key, especially for a brand like Draper James, as the cost of acquiring customers online is only getting higher, Moennich noted.

• “Having some diversification in where we’re meeting new clients is an important part of our go-forward strategy,” she said.

IRL spaces can also create an appreciation for a brand in a way that online cannot, Moennich added. For example, the Nashville flagship is styled after Witherspoon’s childhood home, an aesthetic replicated (albeit on a smaller scale) in the brand’s new locations.

That welcoming feeling is what Draper James hopes will draw new shoppers in—and keep them around. It has been piloting using QR codes at the point of sale to collect more info from its customers, like emails, to continue conversations both online and IRL.

“The idea that an omni customer is more valuable still absolutely holds true,” Moennich said.

Looking ahead...But Draper James’s new spaces aren’t limited to malls. The brand announced a new exclusive capsule collection for Kohl’s late last year that will put Draper in 500 stores starting in February.

“All of these great physical retail initiatives going on are going to bring new name recognition to Draper,” Moennich said, and help the brand “reach a whole new customer base.”—KM

There’s (probably) no curbing Walmart’s excitement—at least when it comes to BOPIS.

The retail giant made up 25.4% of all click-and-collect orders in 2021, according to estimates by Insider Intelligence, totaling some $20 billion in sales—and the most of any US retailer. To put it another way: Walmart picked up $1 for every $4 spent on click and collect, CNBC noted.

• Home Depot came in at no. 2 (with 13.3% of sales), followed by Target, Best Buy, and Lowe’s.

Another big number: Click and collect is predicted to top $100 billion in sales in 2022, a 21% bump YoY, per Insider Intelligence. It’s also expected to account for ~11% of e-comm sales next year.

But click and collect is already table stakes for retailers. (Keep in mind that Walmart has had BOPIS on the mind for years: It first piloted online grocery pickup in 2013, CNBC mentioned; today, it offers curbside at 3,700+ stores.)

“When people make a purchase decision, a lot of things go into that decision—price, quality, availability, but also fulfillment and returns. So the ability to offer curbside pickup is key to a customer experience for the modern-day shopper,” Salesforce’s Michelle Grant, senior manager of strategy and insights, previously told Retail Brew.

“Consumers have become addicted to convenience in all aspects of their life. And this is the most convenient way of fulfillment for those who have a car, which is a lot of Americans.”

What’s next? The challenge now is how retailers can differentiate themselves—and how curbside “can be a component of an overall customer experience strategy,” Tyler Higgins, retail practice lead and managing director at AArete, also explained to us.

• He predicted that new incentives like curbside benefits programs and surveys are on the horizon.—GT

Today’s top retail reads.

New horizons: After years of rebranding efforts—including a new CEO and introducing inclusive sizing—Abercrombie is shifting its focus to digital sales and data analytics in 2022. (Modern Retail)

Visionary: Beauty brands are acquiring tech companies in droves in hopes of incorporating new tools such as computer vision and AI to amplify their personalization efforts. (Vogue Business)

Omnipresent: Shopify’s Tobi Lütke has transformed the Canadian company into a global e-comm powerhouse. Can he continue to do so as the company’s entire staff remains remote? (Bloomberg)

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.

Is Nike the “best idea” for 2022? Guggenheim thinks so—despite supply-chain issues and a slowdown in China.

Analyst Robert Drbul wrote in a note, per CNBC, that innovation (and online growth) is primed to help the retailer maintain—and even boost—its dominance this year.

• Plus, the firm is keeping an eye on Nike’s metaverse play.

Run it: Do you agree? Or is there another retailer on your radar? Click here to cast your vote.

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

• The evolution of buy now, pay later
• Why one chocolate company is ditching dairy entirely
• Our most popular stories of 2021