Claire's expands through licensing, raising pressure on value retailers

Claire’s is growing by spreading its name across other retailers, and that matters for Big Lots workers because the fight in value retail is increasingly about who can win space, attention and margin without opening another store. Centric Brands and Claire’s said on May 18 that an exclusive licensing deal will push the Claire’s brand into more than 7,000 additional retail touchpoints across North America, including Walmart, Kohl’s and CVS.

That is a different kind of expansion than the one many retail workers grew up with. Claire’s is not just adding stores; it is building reach through partners, new categories and distributed shelf space. A later report said the push fits Ames Watson’s strategy to grow Claire’s beyond its core footprint of 900-plus owned locations. For store teams, that kind of growth changes what success looks like on the floor: not just ringing up sales, but keeping displays consistent, tracking fast-changing assortments and explaining why a brand suddenly appears in a seasonal aisle, checkout lane or partner display.

Claire’s has been moving this way for years. Retail Dive reported in 2023 that the company had displays in about 700 Kohl’s stores, had launched a Walmart partnership in 2018 and expanded it in 2022, entered a Macy’s shop-in-shop deal in 2022 and partnered with Walgreens in 2023. At that point, Claire’s said it already worked with more than 40 grocery, apparel, toy, pharmaceutical and department stores. The new Centric Brands deal suggests the company is doubling down on a model that treats distribution as brand building.

The leadership side matters too. Retail Dive reported on March 2 that Claire’s hired Jillian Cueff, a former Walmart and Macy’s merchant, as merchandising chief. Her job is to keep the accessories brand relevant to Gen Z, Gen Alpha and their millennial parents. That is a clue for where retail careers are tilting: the most valuable people are increasingly the ones who understand partnerships, merchandising strategy and how a brand shows up across multiple banners, not just inside one chain’s four walls.

For Big Lots, the comparison is blunt. The chain filed for bankruptcy in September 2024, then Variety Wholesalers acquired 219 locations out of bankruptcy. The first reopening wave began on April 10, 2025, with nine stores in six states, and later plans brought the reopened count to 219. Reopened stores were set to carry new categories such as family apparel and electronics. That kind of reset shows how much value retail now depends on vendor mix, category discipline and execution after the fact, not only on store count.

It also shows why this shift can be felt by workers long before a headline about expansion or contraction. Ollie’s said former Big Lots openings had gone better than expected and that it benefited from product pipelines that used to flow to Big Lots, especially consumer packaged goods. When brands move through more touchpoints and competitors pick up the leftover traffic, the pressure lands on associates, assistants and managers who have to keep the floor accurate, the story clear and the inventory moving.