Celebrity Brands, An Emerging Retail Category, Really Like Malls

Celebrity-founded and backed brands such as Rihanna's Savage x Fenty and Kim Kardashian's Skims flourished during the pandemic and, as part of their growth cycles, expanded into physical spaces. As the sector continues to grow, that could be good news for some retail owners, especially those who specialize in malls.

These brands often look to malls rather than main streets to set up shop, potentially bringing new tenants to the property type, RetailDive reported, citing JLL data. 

Celebrity brands moved into more than 300K SF in the past decade, and that number is expected to continue to grow. Of that retail space, 76% is in malls, though the report did not identify whether a particular class of mall was preferred. Of the brands that open a permanent physical store, 82% are in the apparel world. Los Angeles was a preferred location for a brick-and-mortar store for these brands. 

“These brands seem to be following a similar trajectory and seem to have found a lot of luck in malls,” JLL National Research Manager for Retail Ebere Anokute told RetailDive. “It’s a positive thing for mall owners to be attuned to this as a new sector that could take up some of the occupancy in these shopping centers across the country.”

Celebrity-backed retail alone is, of course, not enough to bring malls across the country to full occupancy. Of all the celebrity brands that have existed, JLL said only 11% made it to the brick-and-mortar stage of their business. 

Meanwhile, there is nearly 909M SF of mall space in the nation and 8.8% of that space, roughly 80M SF, is vacant, according to a Q1 2023 retail outlook from JLL.