People walk near a store in Claire on December 11, 2024 in San Rafael, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty images
Claire’s heads for a major youthful cure.
The retailer Tween, known for his ear drilling stations, his jewelry and his purple carpets, said bankruptcy in early August, the second time in seven years, citing nearly $ 500 million in debt and an increasingly competitive environment.
A few weeks later, the private portfolio company Ames Watson announced that it bought around 1,000 Claire stores across North America in an agreement of $ 140 million to rebuild the brand. The announcement has interrupted the liquidation process in most Claire’s stores.
“We went and started to make a very deep reasonable diligence, and we came to the conclusion that it was a broken company, not a broken brand,” the co-founder of Ames Watson, Lawrence Berger, told CNBC.
The WATSON SUMS portfolio includes relocations of other companies, in particular the hat retailer and the female retailer South Moon Under. Berger said that the company, which has more than $ 2 billion in income, considered itself a “mini Berkshire Hathaway”, buying and transforming businesses without any intention to sell them.
In addition to her growing debt, Claire’s faces a multitude of challenges. The retailer is expected to deal with the opposite winds of the world prices of President Donald Trump, and the shopping centers have seen the drop in traffic in recent years. Competitors, such as studs and Lovisa, also arose, aimed at offering more elegant ear drilling experiences.
The co -founder of his compatriot Ames Watson, Tom Ripley, said that he had been presented for the first time to Claire of his twin daughters, who both made the ears pierced in one of the retailer stores more than a decade. Ripley said that this experience, associated with customer loyalty to the brand, showed him that it was worth investing.
“It is a temple of youth and this place where you buy your first lip brilliance, a friendship bracelet and your first drilling,” Ripley told CNBC. “Claire’s was a rite of transition to generations.”
Revitalization plan
Ames Watson has identified three main areas of the research of the company which, according to her, are at the heart of the rebirth of a clear: merchandising, work and marketing. At the same time, the co-founders said they intended to keep Claire’s identity which was so central to the millennials.
With merchandising, Berger said that the company planned to update store products to reflect current trends while retaining the classic appearance of Claire’s products. New products may include collaborations or exclusives, he added, the company looking at a range of products specifically organized for pajama evenings.
“I think merchandising, probably 70% of it is quite good, but there are 30% that I think we have to change,” said Berger. “So I think that it will take us six to nine months for customers to see it.”
Ames Watson also plans to increase the remuneration, benefits and training for store employees, including having a “piercing excellence team” dedicated who will travel across the country and will train stone in each store. The drilling stations themselves will also receive an upgrade, added Berger.
Finally, the new Claire will look at a new marketing that connects to the nostalgia for the company and will bring customers for each new stage in its youthful cure, said co-founders.
“We are going to be very, very open with our community on what we change, in the hope that we can really connect with them and build a relationship that lasts many years,” said Berger.
The co-founders of Claire Tom Ripley and Lawrence Berger
Photo: Watson Ames
The co-founders said that their strategy with the taking of a retailer in difficulty in a revitalized company informs the way they approach Claire. Ames Watson acquired covers in 2019 for 100 million dollars And has increased business income, improved its embroidery experiences in store and increased employee wages.
For Claire’s, its drilling activity is just as central to its brand as embroidery for covers because they are both experiences that customers cannot connect, said Ripley. The framework for modernizing the covers without losing its essential commercial elements – focusing on the product, experience and people – is the same as Messe Watson plans to use for Claire.
“We do not exceed the lever, we do not outspoken the hard work and we do not return to companies,” said Ripley. “We are rolling up our sleeves, do the work ourselves and build for the next generation.”
Ripley said that nostalgia was at the heart of Claire’s brand, and that society focuses on Claire’s modernization without losing its “magic”.
The windows will also receive overhaul, the emblematic purple carpets obtaining a new cleaning and the presentation of the goods obtaining an upgrade.
“Part of Claire’s wonder and pleasure is the possibility of walking in this store, and you don’t know what to expect. You are sort of, and you discover things,” said Berger. “We don’t want to change that.”
The co-founders said they hoped that Claire’s rebirth will also speak to mothers of the Y generation who would bring their children in the stores. The pair said that the company experienced the addition of products in the store for the generation of women who grew up with Claire in its peak.
With these changes, Ripley and Berger said they hoped that Claire will reappear as a major actor that he was once in shopping centers across America.
“We hope that we will be profitable from the first day – this is what our investment thesis is and, to be frank, this is what healthy companies are,” said Berger. “We think it is structured in a way that it should be profitable, but it means that we have to do our job.”