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.
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“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