dtclosures

In partnership with

mornin’ merry makers 🛏️👟🏃‍♀️🪞🕯️🧵📦

first, thanks to the few brave souls who actually replied to last week’s truth or dare. you passed. the rest of you lost,

but redemption is one reply away.

😇 

ok back to your monday merrymaking.

every couple of months, the media dusts off its favorite headline: retail is dead again. cue the stock photo of a “store closing” sign and an empty mall.

this year’s obituaries belong to forever21, party city, and joann fabrics.

it’s overused and overdone.

but what’s far juicier is the quiet fadeout of the dtc darlings that once ruled our feeds. the brands that sold us minimalism in millennial pink. that turned instagram grids into storefronts. that believed “community” could justify a 10-year lease.

today we’re talkin’ about the post-hype hangover driven by landlords…

casper | 66 → 40 stores

i vividly remember hauling my first casper mattress into my west village 3rd-floor walk-up. not glamorous, but the whole “bed-in-a-box” promise made it easier than lugging a full-size set across nyc.

the price felt right…maybe too right. the problem being that you don’t buy a mattress that often…. competition moved in (hello sleepers, competitors, new hybrids) and the “fun start-up mattress brand” novelty started to fade.

even nap pods didn’t save them.

then: it was peak 2019, peak dtc, peak valuation: ~$1.1B market cap at IPO.

now private again, valued closer to $300M.

lesson: if your product is only an occasional buy, your brand story better refill itself faster than your lease expires.

allbirds | 58 → 23 stores

if you worked in dtc in 2018, these were your work shoes and your personality. tech bros wore them to wework. brand girls wore them to sweetgreen.

i got gifted a pair myself and wore them around nyc. comfortable for a while, but by day two my feet were sore. they weren’t bad, but they weren’t addictive either. no second purchase from me.

to make matters worse, they popped real estate like royalty. oversized locations in cool neighborhoods, high rent, lots of hype for $100 shoes. the product was strong in brand story, but the actual shoe market is brutal and put them in place quickly.

then: stock hit $650 at IPO in 2021, valuing them around $4B.

now: today they trade under $7 with market cap around $50M.

lesson: purpose doesn’t pay rent if product goes out of style.

parachute home | 26 → 7 stores

remember when buying just a bed sheet + pillowcase at a high-end dtc brand felt like innovation? circa 2017 this was hot. but you don’t live and die by bed sheets.

the moment micro-luxury linen exploded into tens of brands, the “world building” element started to matter. walking into a parachute store fet indistinguishable from any other bougie-sheet brand like brooklinen, buffy, boll & branch….

no financials to share but they’ve raised almost $50M so going to assume the valuation was much higher once upon a time.

lesson: if your brand feels like a neutral palette, it dies a neutral death. retail needs color, even if it stains.

outdoor voices | from 10→ 0 stores

the blueprint of girlboss energy. outdoor voices was basically a moodboard come to life with spandex shorts, tote bags, “doing things.” they sold movement as a lifestyle until the boardroom drama turned it into a case study.

the stores closures were last year, but felt relevant given their loud rhinestoned return.

then: valued for $100M+ in 2018, slumped to $40M in 2020.

now: recently sold for under $10M to consortium brand partners who also own draper james and jonathan adler.

lesson: community is cute until payroll hits, especially in hyper competitive industries like athleisure.

i’m going to save the “final one” for the thursday issue.

because i get sweaty just thinking about it and i want to dive deep.

all of this to say that what we’re really seeing is a 10-year reckoning of leases coming up for renewal. the era of venture-backed optimism is writing way less checks.

rent is due, literally and metaphorically.

p.s. if you’re looking for an excuse to come visit me in atx, check this out 👇️