mornin' merry makers ☀️🔄📦🛍️👀
one kardashian sister raised $225M last year to blanket the world in stores. the other didn't open a single one. meanwhile a shrinking showroom brand added 1,000 doors, & goop's fastest-growing storefront is one you can't walk into 🙃
welcome to the shapeshifters.
five brands from last summer's 100 stores of summer that spent the year quietly rewriting what their stores are for. none of them failed. some had their best year ever. but nobody looks like they did last summer.
plus we’ll briefly review all the brands holding steady at their current fleet size.
last week i covered the eight growers doubling (or more) down on doors. today is the shapeshifters, plus the quiet middle holding steady & studying.
this is exactly why i waited a year to check in.
retail strategy doesn't pivot in a press release. it pivots in lease non-renewals, wholesale door counts, & hiring pages. you only see it by holding two summers side by side.
ordered from subtle shift to full identity change.
in today’s letter, you'll learn:
→ the prep darling that grew 4x without adding a single door
→ the brand i predicted to double to 10 stores & opened 0
→ how goop's fastest-growing storefront became one you never enter
→ the 10 brands still holding at the same count (& why that's not failure)
tuckernuck (2 → 2, but 4x bigger at home)
last year i wrote about tuckernuck’s checkout counters shaped like kitchen islands & fitting rooms wrapped in grandmother's-parlor wallpaper, right as store #2 opened on madison ave.
this year:
zero new addresses, & a completely different footprint.
the georgetown original relocated & reopened at nearly 4x the size, rebuilt as a sequence of rooms: foyer, parlor, scullery, conservatory, boudoir.
tuckernuck is betting that one deeper store beats three shallower ones. growing the room instead of the count is still a growth decision. it's just measured in dwell time, not doors.
good american (5 → 5, but 79 macy's doors)
last year i mapped the kardashian-grede family tree & good american’s inclusive store design with 75% larger fitting rooms, adjustable hangers, denim fit experts. i predicted they'd double to 10 stores & was very much wrong.
this year:
zero new standalone doors.
the growth went sideways into wholesale instead as good american launched in 36 macy's stores in march, expanding to 79 doors by fall. that's a deliberate step from nordstrom & saks positioning into the middle market.
their retail agenda is still advancing, just through other people's real estate first & with less attachment to full price positioning.
world (6 → everywhere & nowhere)
last year i wrote about the most futuristic stop of the whole series. world(coin) stores that sell nothing, pay you ~$40 in crypto to scan your eyeballs, & employ actual "orb operators.
this year:
the flagship era seems to be in a slight retreat.
world's april announcements were all distribution, not destinations: zoom verifying call participants, tinder expanding verification to the us, docusign, okta, shopify.
orbs now sit inside a gap store in san francisco (even though gap doesnt use word). world is packing sf, nyc, & la with enough orbs that most residents will be 5-10 minutes from one, & orb-on-demand brings the scanner to your door.
clearly eyeing a different growth path.
therabody (10 → 5 own doors, 1,000+ ulta doors)
last year i called how therabody was going theragone as they were already in a shrinking phase, with 12 stores & reset centers closed plus another reset instagram gone quiet.
this year:
the thesis completed itself.
5 more showrooms closed as well as their nyc resent center. instead therabody expanded into 650+ more ulta stores in march, passing 1,000 doors. they’re also now at costo. for a $600 device you buy once & rarely replace, ubiquity beats temples.
goop (7 stores → 25 kitchens)
last year i covered goop’s ambition to be hte disney-of-lifestyle-brands, the 20-30 store goal, & buried in the middle: 8 la ghost kitchens that raised $15M at a $90M valuation. i predicted goop kitchen would expand to another market. i was both right and wrong about this.
this year:
i underestimated the growth plans.
the stores did fine. lido marina village opened (store #8), palm beach & greenwich are next.
but the real story is that goop's fastest-growing storefront is one you never walk into. goop kitchen now runs 14 locations across la & the bay area with 3 million orders served. 7 nyc locations open by year end. the target: 25 total by the end of 2026, including their first-ever dine-in concept.
revenue grew 60% last year. the ceo says they want to feed "more than just the most affluent people in the country," which feels very un-goopish to me.
the wellness empire decided their better growth engine is a delivery bag.
the steady staters
then we have 10 brands from last summer are holding at the count where i left them:
c.bonz is still stitching pet portraits in malibu
commodity is still making scent visible on crosby street (& picked up an interior design award for it)
gigi burris is still hand-blocking hats on pell street
nick fouquet is still venice's temple to slow headwear
good quality human is still ringing the kindness bell in century city & venice.
offe market is still throwing block parties in echo park, but in a slightly larger location.
flor keeps is still austin's water-less florist.
the elder statesman is holding at 3.
cult gaia is holding at 10.
the realreal is holding at 16 while telegraphing in earnings that its planning to open more as sellers who touch a store deliver 40% more value.
don't read any of these as failing.
a year of holding steady is a year of learning what your one (or ten) rooms actually do: which sku pays the rent, which events fill the room, whether the founder can ever leave the counter. the single-store powerhouses especially are doing retail's most honest work right now, figuring out the model before multiplying it.
same size isn't the same as standing still.
the pattern
put all 100 stores across 23 brands together & the scoreboard gets a little less obvious.
8 grew. 5 shapeshifted. 10 held.
more doors is not always momentum. fewer doors is not always weakness. same doors is not always sameness.
a store can be a flagship, a fit lab, a stage, a service counter, a wholesale proof point, a delivery kitchen, a neighborhood habit, or a very expensive way to learn what your customer actually wants.
the number of stores tells you scale.
the purpose of the stores tells you strategy.
the growers had a room that worked, so they copied it.
the shapeshifters had a room that taught them something, so they changed the assignment.
the steady staters are still in the room, studying & listening. honestly, that might be the most underrated retail strategy of all.
because physical retail is slow, expensive, operationally annoying, landlord-dependent, weather-sensitive, labor-heavy, emotionally revealing, & still somehow one of the clearest ways to see what a brand actually believes.
press releases tell you the ambition.
stores tell you the truth.
just not right away…
