Please don’t think I’m dancing on Claire’s Accessories’ grave – far be it from me to crow over anyone’s demise – but when I heard the news that the chain had fallen into administration, I did allow myself the tiniest smirk of schadenfreude.
Claire’s has said that all outlets will continue trading while it considers “the best possible path forward”; its appointed administrators from Interpath reported that they will “assess options for the company”, which could include selling the business to “secure a future for this well-loved brand”.
Ah, the “well-loved brand” that is Claire’s. I’d say it’s been a high-street stalwart for as long as I can remember, but the reality is that the US retailer only hit British shores in 1997. Being 10 at the time, I was the perfect age to appreciate its stock of gaudy jewellery, sparkly plastic butterfly clips and decorated headbands aimed at aspirational tweenage girls.
Back then, this was a unique proposition. Along with Tammy Girl, which flogged a pitch-perfect collection of tween and early-teen fashions in the Nineties and Noughties, Claire’s was catering for a market that had previously been criminally ignored and underserved: girls devouring copies of Mizz magazine and clamouring to be “stylish”.
The business flourished over the next decade or so, expanding to 465 stores nationwide by 2010, with success fuelled in part by its in-store ear-piercing service. Ask anyone with pierced lobes who grew up in the Noughties, and chances are they got it done at Claire’s (and that it was executed by a 16-year-old with train-tracks who’d nevertheless been given the power to wield a gun and punch holes through strangers’ flesh).
But its fortunes took a turn the following decade. Underperforming shops were forced to shut; in 2018, Claire’s restructured its European arm, cutting the number of UK outlets to 370. Across the pond, the US arm went into administration that same year, and filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.
I wish I could say I’m surprised. Given my age, you’d be forgiven for assuming I’d hold a healthy dose of rose-tinted nostalgia for the brand that marked my coming-of-age aesthetic. And indeed, seeing a multipack of sterling silver studs adorned with jazzy shapes in eye-watering shades of neon does stir something akin to fondness. Yet I can’t really say the news of its downfall sparked anything other than the thought, “Well, it’s about damn time.”
Obviously, the potential loss of jobs – totalling 2,150 across the UK and Ireland’s remaining 306 stores – brings me no pleasure whatsoever. They are to be mourned, not celebrated, and I feel for all the employees currently looking down the barrel of an uncertain future.
But as for the business itself... I do feel that failure was not just inevitable, but somewhat deserved.
Claire’s Accessories’ speciality was always, to put it bluntly, cheap tat. Janky bits of plastic. Costume jewellery liable to rust up and turn green the moment it was exposed to the elements. Ugly keyrings and multicoloured earrings so hideous that only a minor could be tempted to purchase them. These items already carried the whiff of future landfill fodder about them upon purchase. But worse still – and this is the crime I can never quite forgive Claire’s for – they didn’t come with the price tags to match.
What should be pocket-money-friendly merchandise is frequently anything but
What should be pocket-money-friendly merchandise is frequently anything but. A child’s strawberry lip balm for £6? Ha! You could get three for the same price in Boots! A necklace with a plastic star on it designed for three- to six-year-olds retailing at a whopping £12? Absolute madness!
Even the beloved ear-piercing has long been beaten on price. While the service itself is “free”, clients must pay for the earrings; Claire’s pairs start at £25. High-street jeweller H Samuel offers the same thing for £19.99. Oh, and a bottle of piercing aftercare solution costs a staggering £15 (it retails for around £4 elsewhere).
For a time, this mismatch between product and price could be somewhat bridged due to a lack of direct competition. Claire’s stood alone on the high street – if you didn’t like what they charged, you were, of course, free to shop around. But where, exactly?
Now, competition comes from every corner of the globe courtesy of the explosion of online shopping. And, while I am very much not a fan of sprawling fast-fashion brands such as Temu and Shein, one can see the appeal when parents are after genuinely cheap and cheerful accessories for kids. Temu, for example, has a pack of three children’s plastic star necklaces for the grand total of £1.77.
It’s one thing to argue that we should pay more for quality goods that have been made sustainably, but when the battle is between similarly low-grade, mass-produced trinkets, it’s difficult to make a moral case for picking Claire’s over its vastly more affordable rivals.
Claire’s is the latest in a long line of former high-street heavyweights to come a cropper in the UK. First Woolworths fell, then Wilkos, then WH Smith – the last having been sold to investment firm Modella Capital in March this year. These once-mighty giants all discovered an age-old truth: rest on your laurels for too long – and rely too heavily on a familiar name to compensate for poor customer experience, dated products and trumped-up prices – and you can hardly feign surprise when consumers vote with their wallets and turn elsewhere.
Yes, whenever I spy that distinctive Claire’s lilac hue, I’ll admit that a corner of my mind is instantly transported back to a simpler time. But if there’s one thing we’ve learnt this past decade, it’s that shops cannot live on nostalgia alone.
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