“We wanted to put ourselves in front of more people.”
That’s what CEO Sarah LaFleur said of M.M. LaFleur’s opening in Union Station four years ago. It would turn out to be an incredibly ill-timed decision, with the concept opening inse a train station just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shattered physical retail plans across the globe. But the brand still wants to put itself in front of more people — and is doing so with a new store in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood that opened May 8, as well as a few more on the horizon.
“We opened in Union Station like six weeks before the pandemic — and they were the six greatest weeks of that store,” LaFleur said in a recent interview reflecting on the period.
M.M. LaFleur ended up closing all of its stores in 2020, with a slow reopening process since then. Now, the retailer — known for its workwear — lists seven locations on its website, most of which opened this year, including the recently opened store in Georgetown and another that opened a few weeks later in Philadelphia. The Georgetown location, a few minutes walk from the main M Street drag, is across from Maman, a cafe M.M. LaFleur has partnered with before in New York. It joins another store in D.C., on K Street, which was the first to reopen and is more closely located to one of its key demographics — people who work in corporate offices.
“That location has done phenomenally for us. There are a lot of professional women who stop by during their lunch break or right after work, even in between meetings, so that location’s actually been very good for us,” LaFleur said of the K Street store. “We were like, ‘OK, D.C.’s grown so nicely, we could probably support another location. Where does it make most sense?’”
‘We don’t really have the luxury of locations not working’
Georgetown stood out as a spot where many of the brand’s customers in Maryland and Northwest D.C. like to shop, but M Street “didn’t feel quite right,” according to LaFleur. Georgetown’s main drag features a plethora of name-brand stores and up-and-coming retailers, including Glossier, Skims, Patagonia, Allbirds, Free People, Warby Parker and more.
“It's heavily trafficked, but it didn't actually necessarily feel like it was our traffic. There was a lot of tourist traffic, and obviously some Georgetown University traffic, but I was like, ‘This is not quite right.’ And then when we walked down Wisconsin, I was like, ‘Ah, this feels much better,’” LaFleur said about the road that runs perpendicular to M Street. “And, I mean, we're still very much underdogs. It's not like we've got hundreds of thousands of dollars to just drop on a new store opening. So we were also really opportunistic about what we could find.”
So far, the store has performed well. Katie Twidwell, vice president of sales and operations at M.M. LaFleur, told Retail Dive via email that the store saw double the expected sales in its first month in business. M.M. LaFleur is thoughtful about where it opens stores, for the most part only opening once there’s a certain level of e-commerce presence in a given city. And most of its stores are four-wall profitable, according to LaFleur.
“We don't really have the luxury of locations not working,” LaFleur said. “L.A. we know, online, we don't have as many customers as San Francisco. So even though I know L.A. is a big market and probably would be a good opportunity, we can't just open a store there and consider it a loss leader … We can't have it be a top-of-funnel strategy, like it has to return money to the business fairly quickly. So I guess that is the conservative approach here, but I think the one we feel comfortable with.”
"Warby Parker is a fabulous brand, but I don't think of it as a brand-driven consumer goods company. I think at the end of the day, it's quite utilitarian and fashion doesn't have the same luxury."
Sarah LaFleur
CEO of M.M. LaFleur
The brand is planning one more opening this year, in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and likely “a few more” next year, according to LaFleur. But even long term, LaFleur envisions a U.S. footprint of only about 20 to 25 stores. That’s low compared to some other DTC brands, but that might not be a bad thing.
“A lot of DTC companies look at Warby Parker and they say, ‘They opened stores and that's been really successful for them, so we should go and follow the same playbook.’ And like, Warby Parker is a fabulous brand, but I don't think of it as a brand-driven consumer goods company. I think at the end of the day, it's quite utilitarian and fashion doesn't have the same luxury,” LaFleur said. “I just think the number of stores that you can open before you might see that kind of slower return is lower.”
Nevertheless, physical retail is a critical piece of communicating with the customer, and M.M. LaFleur has evolved enough over the years that opening that conversation back up was important, according to LaFleur. The brand, which started with only dresses, still sells workwear-style dresses and tops, but also T-shirts and denim.
“A lot of people still think of us as the brand that was focused really on corporate dressing — and we do a lot more than that,” LaFleur said, adding that advertising on Google and Meta is “hairy and unpredictable” in a way that physical stores aren’t. “Right now, my strategy as CEO is just keep diversifying, diversifying, diversifying. Don't get caught with our pants down, don't lean too hard into one channel versus another.”
Evolving, but not too far
M.M. LaFleur’s current iteration isn’t a complete departure from who it was five years ago. Many of the brand’s best-sellers from 2017 or 2018 are still sold and still crack the top 10 in terms of sales, according to LaFleur. The executive still thinks of the company’s customer strategy as “narrow and deep” — and still sees the brand tied to “elevated clothing.”
“We're not the brand that you would probably wear if you wanted to relax at home. Or if you wanted to … just get a cup of coffee and walk around the neighborhood,” LaFleur said. “We're clothes where you want to just show up a little bit and I think showing up can take many forms, but if you just want to look a little put together, then that's when you put on your M.M. … We're not going to compete against Everlane or Uniqlo.”
But a brand evolution only works if customers come along for the ride. LaFleur hopes that a broader assortment means customers tell their friends about M.M. LaFleur more and the brand becomes more of a go-to store for its current customers. As it is, some existing shoppers are still surprised to discover M.M. LaFleur sells certain categories.
“You could see a world in which they would say, ‘M.M. has gone in a different direction and it's not for me anymore’ — and I'm sure that's happened to some customers, I'm not denying that,” LaFleur said. “But I think for the most part, customers have really kept up with us, and they've liked the direction we've headed in and so we're not churning them.”
Newer collections have been promising, with the sell-through rates of its recent spring line “significantly higher” than its other lines in the post-pandemic era.
It’s not just the product lines that are evolving. M.M. LaFleur’s Bento Box, a Stitch-Fix like subscription service, shut down in the fall of 2019 and relaunched in April, with a focus on having customers preview the items in their box and potentially make changes before receiving it. An initial lookbook usually gives customers eight styles to preview, which they then discuss with a stylist and add or subtract pieces based on what they’re looking for, according to Twidwell. Most shoppers whittle down their Bento Box to between five and six styles that they ultimately purchase, Twidwell said. M.M. LaFleur noted average weekly revenue has grown 12% since the relaunch.
The company's stores have always stressed appointments, and still offer them, but the company is also expanding the in-store experience beyond that. Only two of M.M. LaFleur’s seven stores strongly recommend booking a stylist in advance, and even then, walk-ins are possible.
“We really like our appointments — and I think our customers really like them, too,” LaFleur said, noting good basket sizes and higher net promoter scores from appointments. But part of the reason the Georgetown location was appealing was that anyone can walk in, according to LaFleur. M.M. LaFleur’s K Street store, on the other hand, requires prospective customers to hit a buzzer in order to enter, likely a deterrent to casual shoppers.
M.M. LaFleur is also marketing to customers through new avenues, including through a multiyear partnership with the WNBA’s New York Liberty that launched last year. The brand gives free clothing loans to women running for office and dresses a selection of authors that it works with for their book tours as well. Post-pandemic, M.M. LaFleur stores have also played host to book events for some authors.
The Georgetown store, for example, has its first store “book club” in the works and features a curated book collection in the store, thanks to a partnership with local independent retailer Old Town Books. The events are good not just for existing customers, but also serve as a unique customer acquisition tool, according to LaFleur.
“I’m a big reader, I mostly read a lot of novels. It's kind of my happy place,” LaFleur said of why the company has leaned into partnerships with bookstores and authors. The company’s New York locations also have a local bookstore partner. “We started actually featuring a lot of authors on our blog, maybe six or seven years ago … There is a nice Venn diagram of women who like to read fiction and memoirs, and M.M. customers.”
