| At one time teens might have mourned the potential closure of the Claire’s store in their local mall. Today they’re more likely to be distracted looking for a new phone case on TikTok Shop. Bloomberg Businessweek senior reporter Amanda Mull writes about the changing retail landscape for cheap jewelry and other accessories. Plus: How a restraining order against warrantless detentions in one district is holding up, and why the integrity of sports is at risk from some of the smallest bets. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. The accessories retailer Claire’s filed for bankruptcy protection this week, marking the second such filing in less than a decade for what was once a titan of the teen economy. The company, which began in the 1960s as a chain of wig shops, hit its stride in the 1990s, having transformed itself into a trinket emporium with thousands of locations around the world. The stores specialized in a variety of cheap, enticing tchotchkes for middle- and high-school students looking to spend their babysitting money—jewelry that may or may not turn your skin green, decorative pens and notebooks, every manner of hair clip. They also became destinations for girls looking to get their first real earrings from a slightly older teenager armed with a piercing gun at the mall; the company claims to have pierced more ears than any other. But Claire’s, like many of its contemporaries from the heyday of the American mall, has long since fallen on hard times. The company’s suite of problems is familiar: falling foot traffic at aging shopping centers, ballooning debt, too many bad leases, more nimble competition online. Add in an initial public offering effort that was abandoned in 2023 and this year’s tariff chaos—the cheap accessories business is heavily import-dependent—and the pressure was apparently too much. There were bright spots, including a Walmart partnership that got Claire’s products into more than 200 of the megaretailer’s stores. According to the filing, the company has marked more than 1,000 of its roughly 2,700 current stores for possible closure if it’s able to survive this round of bankruptcy proceedings.  A store at Claire’s headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, in 2015. Photographer: Michael Noble Jr./Chicago Tribune/Getty Images It isn’t surprising to hear of a ’90s mall favorite teetering on the edge of oblivion, but it is a little strange to think that any retailer might be having a hard time selling trinkets to teenagers right now. So many of today’s viral products involve cheap little objects to seek out or collect—Labubu, Sonny Angel, bag charms, friendship bracelets—on top of all of the decorative little bits of vinyl and plastic that adolescents have been seeking out for as long as they’ve existed, like phone cases, sunglasses and cosmetic bags. What is TikTok Shop, with its array of bright, sparkly novelties all available for little more than a nominal fee, if not Cyberspace Claire’s? That, of course, is sort of the problem. Before the internet existed, Claire’s knew teen girls could be enticed by inexpensive versions of grown-up luxuries to experiment with, even as most other teen-focused retailers focused on bigger purchases like clothes and shoes. Now, inexpensive versions of grown-up luxuries can seem like they’re more or less the entirety of what the consumer economy has to offer, no matter your age or demographic. Amazon, Shein, Temu and TikTok Shop are overflowing with bargain-basement versions of every bauble, tchotchke, trinket and knicknack you can imagine, and at the mall, fast-fashion retailers like Zara and H&M offer huge arrays of jewelry and accessories. When everything’s cheap and novel, cheap and novel aren’t as much of a selling point as they used to be, even if none of these retailers will pierce your ears (with parental approval) for your 13th birthday. Amazon and Temu, though, will both sell you a piercing gun of your very own for less than 10 bucks. |
